
Telix clone - sysoleg
http://www.ath0.net/
======
zorked
Well, as good a time as any to remember an old exploit.

Back in the old days, to put the modem back in command mode, you had to send
it +++ and wait one second without sending anything.

Hayes, a modem manufacturer, owned a patent on this "and wait one second"
idea. Some manufacturers had to implement this idea without that one second.

Then came the Internet, and with it the ICMP protocol, which is a neat way to
make a remote connection repeat stuff back to you. And lo and behold, you
could send a ICMP packet with data that contained "+++ATH0" and when echoing
back the packet your modem would pick it up as a command and disconnect. Same
goes for IRC /ctcp ping commands, and many other protocols.

~~~
JdeBP
You might enjoy
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664979](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18664979)
.

------
karaterobot
My first computer was a 386 SX, which came with a modem, but I didn't know
what that was at the time. I was 12 or so, and didn't know computers could
talk to each other over the phone line. I discovered Telix while dorking
around in DOS, but it made no sense to me.

Some time later, I was talking to the guy at Radio Shack (!) and I mentioned
this mysterious program. He knowingly nodded, said "plug one end of this cord
into your wall jack, the other into the back of your PC, then type the
following command..."

Cut to a year later, I'm running a BBS out of my bedroom, learning to write
door games, and scripting for MUDs. I can draw a pretty straight line between
Telix and my future career (even though Terminate was cooler).

------
torgoguys
I saw the title and thought, "This is probably some other product named Telix,
not the one I know about." And then I clicked on the link and it all came back
to me. So. many. hours. using Telix back in the day.

I eventually switched from Telix to Telemate because of its limited
multitasking. I LOVED the BBS scene. Good times. Good times.

~~~
jamiesonbecker
Can't remember which, but I think Telemate also had programmable macros that I
used to jump in and out of hyperspace in one of the multiplayer door games..

------
nsenifty
Back in India, we had a (somewhat cheap) shell internet plan offered for
students. You dial into a phone number that dropped you in a ISP shell from
where you could use lynx or email. The problem was that our state-owned phone
provider had a "courtesy" beep every 3 minutes to let us know we're being
charged another unit, which would cause the modem to hang up.

I remember setting up Telix to record the session, log into my Hotmail, open
each email and scroll all the way down all in 3 minutes, and then read the
emails from the session log.

------
psim1
atdt8675309

OK

In the 90s, my modem terminal of choice was Terminate. It's still available!
[http://www.terminate.com](http://www.terminate.com)

~~~
fullstop
I used telix until I was able to download Terminate. Nostalgia overload going
on over here. Do you remember HS/Link? Being able to chat with the sysop while
downloading blew my mind at the time.

~~~
blakespot
Nice, I will check this out on my Tandy 1000HX BBS machine. I haven't found an
ideal terminal program for that config. I actually thought you typed
"Terminus," which is the terminal program I used on the Amiga 1200 back in
'92\. Today, I use Radigan's predecessor to Terminus, JR-Comm on the Amiga
1000, which is the system I use most frequently for BBSing.

Some of these systems can be seen on my BBSing page:
[https://bytecellar.com/bbsing/](https://bytecellar.com/bbsing/)

~~~
icedchai
Yes! I remember JRComm! I used that up until 1994, on my A500 then A3000. Not
sure why I never bothered to upgrade to Terminus.

------
l8arrival
Hey guys, this is Colin, the author of Telix. A friend of mine sent me a link
to this thread.

I just wanted to send a shoutout to everybody here. It's pretty cool and
gratifying after all these years to see people still remembering and talking
about Telix!

~~~
jquast
Thank you for all the memories !!

------
tssva
Minicom which is available for most posix systems including Linux and macOS is
modeled on Telix.

My personal favorite DOS terminal program was Commo. It was totally
customizable using macros.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commo)

~~~
EvanAnderson
I used the heck out of Minicom when I finally made Linux my "daily driver"
back in the early 90s.

When I finally did get dialup Internet service I ended up using "dip"[1] to
script the logon to the ISP's terminal server (a Xyplex, if I remember
correctly). I remember that the terminal server answered for finger and showed
you the usernames of the logged-on users, their logon and idle time, and their
serial port numbers. I remember complaining to the ISP when I was getting busy
signals dialing into the modem pool and, when I finally did get on, seeing
users logged-on two or three times with multi-hour idle times.

[1]
[http://ibiblio.org/gferg/ldp/man/man8/dip.8.html](http://ibiblio.org/gferg/ldp/man/man8/dip.8.html)

~~~
icedchai
The good old days.. I remember using dip! I helped to build a few ISPs. We
used Xylogic Annex terminal servers at one place. The second ISP used USR
digital modems (I forget what they were called?) By the time I set up the
third one, we'd outsourced all dialup to a third party network.

~~~
EvanAnderson
I knew a guy who ran a small ISP in the Dayton, OH area. He went from having
banks of external modems on POTS lines connected to multi-port serial cards
attached to a Windows NT Server 3.51 machine to an Ascend router with a PRI
and "digital modems" (CODECs in DSPs, no doubt) to finally using an outsourced
dial provider, all in the space of about 18 - 24 months. I wish I'd been a
little older and a little more business savvy at the time. It was clearly a
wild time, and was probably lots of fun.

~~~
icedchai
I remember working in the "server room" of one of the early ISPs. There were
about 100 individual phone lines coming off the wall, each going into a modem.
It was like a river of phone cable. Each modem also had its own serial cable
and power brick, too, of course. The bricks were pretty large, so there were
power strips chained 3 layers deep. It felt about 100 degrees in there (no AC
or cooling of any kind.) Thinking about it now, I'm surprised the whole place
didn't melt down.

------
ccoyle
I loved the BBS era. Commo by Fred Brucker was my modem progam of choice. Hook
in Zmodem for downloads and you had a hot setup.

------
operatorius
[38,38,40,40,37,39,37,39,66,65].forEach(key => document.dispatchEvent(new
KeyboardEvent("keydown", {keyCode: key})))

------
icedchai
I miss the BBS days... sometimes.

I used to use JRComm on the Amiga. Before that, it was Apple Access II on an
Apple IIc.

~~~
EvanAnderson
A friend of mine hosted a BBS on an Amiga in the early 90s. I was amazed by
the machine's multitasking. He could actually use his computer while
simultaneously hosting the BBS. (Eventually I think I got DESQview for my PC
and could pull off a kinda-sorta approximation.)

The BBS software he ran was Dungeons and Dragons themed, and as I recall it
mixed exploring and combat along with the mundane BBS activities-- messages,
downloads, etc. I think that your experience points in the game-side ended up
translating to BBS-side privileges, too. I should do some searching to see if
I can dig up some details. It was unique across the various BBS's I called.

~~~
icedchai
Yes, I also ran a BBS from my Amiga! I wrote it myself in C when I was a teen.
The Amiga was amazing for the time, and learning about the OS was so much fun.
I still play around with emulators now and then to take me back to that time.

------
th0ma5
I recently found a bunch of Procomm Plus logs where I had typed back and forth
with some local friends.

------
imdsm
alt-z for help

 _Cries in MacOS_

~~~
earthboundkid
In some regions, the option key on Mac keyboards is labeled as "alt". E.g.
[https://www.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3504584/Mac-
Keyb...](https://www.macworld.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3504584/Mac-
Keyboard_thumb1200_16-9.jpg)

~~~
jedieaston
If you press Alt+Z on the Mac, you get this: Ω. Fn doesn't override it either.

~~~
vasac
What happens if you pick Unicode Hex Input from System Preferences -> Keyboard
-> Input sources?

------
acheron
Remember Telix played C-E-G on the PC speaker when it connected?

------
telebone_man
I don't know but if you go into the input box and type on your keyboard...

UUDDLRLRBA

It pops up a cute little rainbow

~~~
joosters
Hold down Return after typing it for a very blinged-out window!

------
mrlonglong
Does anyone remember RoboComms to get mail off FidoNet?

------
cocktailpeanuts
what is this?

~~~
gruturo
The Telix terminal interface. I spent so, so much time on it in the 80s,
discovering BBSes, other people and later exploring the worldwide X25 network.

Also, from the page's source code:

// UUDDLRLRBA! var kkeys = [], konami = "38,38,40,40,37,39,37,39,66,65";

:)

~~~
blauditore
I have a hard time finding information about Telix. How did this work, e.g.
how would one "discover" other people?

~~~
fullstop
Usually you'd find one BBS through word of mouth, and that one would have
listings of systems which were hopefully a local number.

There usually had just the one line so users were limited to a certain number
of minutes a day before they were no longer permitted to sign on. Sometimes a
shareware game or new "Demo" would make to to a BBS and it might take you a
week or two to download the entire thing because of time limits.

Some systems gave you extra time if you uploaded new content to encourage
sharing. It was kind of a neat system, and I miss how small it was.

------
ck2
ha that's some fantastic nostalgia

but ATV and ATI commands not working to my disappointment

------
gameswithgo
whoa that takes me back.

------
snvzz
I clicked expecting an open source clone that I could run on the same
hardware.

How disappointing.

