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This is simply a page where I wanted to share an experience with you - connecting your series 5 to a Unix box, for the purpose of sending/receiving email and surfin' the Net.
It can be done ! Your Unix box has to have it's own route to the internet of course, but it is possible to get your Series 5 connected in this fashion, using either pppd or slirp. Both allow two computers to talk using tcp/ip over an ordinary serial line. (ppp stands for point-to-point-protocol).
If you are a Linux user you might like to try using pppd, available from here.
There have been reports of success with pppd on comp.sys.psion.comm, from Linux users on the whole, but depending on the Unix OS you are using your mileage may vary ...
I wanted to connect my 5 to a Pentium PC running Solaris 2.5.1, and had great difficulty with pppd. I could connect to a server past my local host but the server was given an incorrect MAC address to send packets back to. Much fiddling and brow scratching ensued, until I came across Slirp, courtesy of Chris Miles (cmiles@connect.com.au). He posted on comp.sys.psion.comm about his results with Slirp, and having spent several weeks struggling with pppd decided to give it a try.
It took me no more than half an hour to download Slirp, compile it under Solaris, and get it working !
pppd went straight in the bin !!
Whereas ordinary PPP software requires the serial line to be dedicated to ppp use, and requires a lot of configuration, slirp is for use with an existing shell login. ie you need to be able to connect your 5 to the Unix box and obtain a Unix login prompt with the Comms application.
So here's a quick ToDo list !
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