27 Oct 16 13:43, you wrote to me:

 ml>> yeah but that's not what i was alluding to... physical apples and
 ml>> commodores are on the internet with live BBSes... they are physically
 ml>> linked to another machine via serial cable and the other machine is
 ml>> handling the network comms and passing that to the serial
 ml>> connection... the apple and commie don't know they're taking calls
 ml>> over a non-POTS network... that's my understanding of how they're
 ml>> doing it... something like 9600 is best speed because of the serial
 ml>> capabilities of those old boxen...

 TL> Which is getting away totally from virtual machines, hence the
 TL> confusion. The most virtual thing you'll find there is a virtual modem
 TL> (that handles the telnet session and translates it to a serial
 TL> connection).

actually, it is not that far away... consider this... using DOSEMU, you can
fire up and hop right into a door from a native linux BBS... now, instead of
using DOSEMU, try it using KVM/QEMU...

how do you start the VM on demand?
how do you provide the door with the BBS dropfile information?
how do you connect the remote caller through the BBS to the VM?

i envision the VM running all the time and the "door" being little more than
some sort of virtual serial connection between the BBS and the VM in the same
vein as using scp to transfers files... except that the connection would be two
way and live... if DOSEMU worked on a rPi, it would be great but i've not seen
anyone demoing that with a native linux BBS and existing DOS doors... the only
thing i can see, at this time, is something like the apple guys are doing with
their real hardware connecting via serial to other real hardware but even that
doesn't involved a BBS sitting in the middle...

)\/(ark

Always Mount a Scratch Monkey
Do you manage your own servers? If you are not running an IDS/IPS yer doin' it
wrong...
... I to±d yo±, "Never±touch ±he flo±py di±k su±face!"
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