TNC Telnet

An AX.25 emulator for TCP connections.

Description

This interface emulates a TNC and makes regular TCP/IP traffic appears like AX.25. So you can connect to a Telnet Ham-Radio BBS or DX Cluster with old MS-DOS Packet Radio software.

For example Graphic Packet:

Or TSTHOST:

Monitor traffic is also simulated:

Remember these are actual TCP/IP sockets in disguise.

Usage

Known stations

Edit stations.txt and add data for known stations.

Example:

# Callsign      ip or hostname       port
EA4BAO          localhost            6300
EA2RCF          cqnet.dyndns.org     6300
EA2RCF-5        cqnet.dyndns.org     7300
EA5SW           ea5sw.ddns.net       6300

Format is space-separated. Empty lines and lines starting with # are ignored.

This file must be in the programs directory. Otherwise, you can set the path with the command line options.

Command line

If you are using Python, launch it that way:

python TNC

Help:

$ python tnc -h
TNCTelnet 1.0
usage: tnc [-h] [--file FILE] [--stations FILE] [--mycall CALLSIGN]
           [--jhost1] [--ch N] [-v]

An AX.25 emulator for TCP connections

optional arguments:
  -h, --help         show this help message and exit
  --file FILE        Device file or named pipe to interact with MS-DOS
                     box (default: \\.\PIPE\tnc).
  --stations FILE    JSON file with IP address and TCP port of known
                     stations (default: stations.txt).
  --mycall CALLSIGN  My callsign (default: NOCALL).
  --jhost1           Start TNC in host mode (default is start in
                     terminal mode).
  --ch N             Number of channels (default is 4).
  -v                 Display commands and responses. Multiple times
                     show more info.

If you are using precompiled binaries, do not open it with double clicking until you are familiar with the software. If something goes wrong, the terminal window will close faster that you have time to read the error.

Setup

Virtual machine

The emulator runs in the host system. Create a virtual machine and configure its serial port as a named pipe (default name is \\.\PIPE\tnc):

Tips for TSTHOST

  1. Configure CKJ driver using ckbiocfg. Use COM1, address 3F8H, IRQ 4.
  2. Load the driver in memory running gkjbios.
  3. Launch TSTHOST like this:
  TSTHOST /H /C1 /B9600

Tips for Graphic Packet

Edit config.gp and set the serial speed to 1200 bauds for a realistic experience.

Caveats

This software only runs on Windows for now. To run it in Linux you’d need to adapt the channel module. TCP sockets error codes are quite different between Linux and Windows.

Compilation

To create the executable file from the Python sources just run:

pyinstaller.exe --onefile TNC\__main__.py -n TNCTelnet

Misc

Since this is basically a telnet client, you can use it to connect to any Telnet server: