95 netser.device
Description
This article is from the Amiga Networking FAQ, by Richard Norman with numerous contributions by others.
95 netser.device
netser.device a shareware package for AmiTCP
You can find it on Aminet CD # 6.
netser is a virtual device driver for accessing remote serial ports as if they were local. Currently, it only supports TCP/IP with the AmiTCP package. netser emulates low-level serial device commands over the network. As a result, your telecommunication (or "comm") program does not know, nor does it care, where your serial port is really located.
Suppose you are running a two machine network at home through a parallel port or Ethernet card. Wouldn't it be nice if one machine could access the other machine's serial port? You can conveniently call out to a BBS on any of the machines. You may even run a two line BBS without buying a multi-serial card! And if you want to run a big BBS, but you don't have enough expansion slots to populate with serial cards. What you can do is get another (slower) machine and connect the two together with Ethernet. netser will allow the BBS machine to use the other machine's ports.
With netser and internet, you may run your favorite comm program on your friend's serial port, which may be half way across the world. This will save you long distance charges.
Now that Amiga LAN's exist, it would be convenient to dedicate one machine on the LAN to hold modems that may be accessible to any other machine on the LAN. (This is commonly known as a modem pool.) It is a common thing on Unix LAN's. Because most modems nowadays come with FAX capabilities , you can now fax from anywhere!
The fact is, whatever you do with the serial ports on your local machine, you can now do it with remote serial ports.
For 2 devices $25, 4 devices $35, and unlimited $50
author is Sam Yee samy@sfu.ca
Works with any amiga. Only requires 50k of Ram. Requires WB 2.04+, and AmiTCP 3.0+
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