Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station 356
An Ominous Cow Erred writes "Spacedaily.com reports on the use of the fantastic Kermit "program" being used to communicate with devices on the international space station. While the article's author doesn't seem to have a quite perfect grasp on what Kermit is (and effuses about how Kermit is being used to help war-torn Bosnia and advance AIDS research) it brought a smile to my face to imagine the old protocol from my BBS days (which was scorned in favor of Zmodem) being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind."
transfer protocols comma that suck (Score:3, Interesting)
With good reason.
IceZmodem rocked.
Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
I think 'debateably' should be added to that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
The line of Kermits (Score:5, Interesting)
After Kermit 95, there probably will be Kermit 98, followed by Kermit NT, Kermit ME, Kermit 2000, and finally Kermit XP.
But somehow, I can't imagine Kermit Longhorn as a species... :-)
Seriously, it definitely was (is?) a great program, especially when communicating between less common platforms. It saved my day more than once when I needed to transfer files between the VAX and Amiga, both quite ancient, and without ethernet hardware on Amiga. Many thanks to the creators!
Alex
That's an interesting bulk licensing scheme... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:talk about a flash back. (Score:3, Interesting)
I still use Kermit almost daily. I intereact with my casino's slot system with a VT100 terminal emulator. If I want to download reports to use in another application, I have to use Kermit to get them.
Re:transfer protocols comma that suck (Score:5, Interesting)
LeechZmodem, icezmodem, superzmodem, etc (Score:3, Interesting)
LeechZmodem.
It was a mutation of the Zmodem transfer protocol that never sent an acknowledgment packet at the end of a transfer, allowing you to download an entire file, yet signal to the bulletin board system that you'd never received the complete file. End result: your file credits don't change.
I doubt NASA cares, though.
ah the memories (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Zmodem rules. (Score:5, Interesting)
The purpose of Kermit is to be 100% compatible with pretty much every piece of technology, going all the way back to the earliest mainframe computers!
Different character set (ASCII, EBCDIC, UTF-8, etc.)? Kermit will translate the data as it is transferred.
Strange record length requirement (data must be transferred in units of 80 bytes or so, and can't be addressed as individual characters)? This was common on mainframes. Kermit will pad data as required to make this work.
Limited I/O that can't use the comm port and storage device at the same time? This was common on old DOS PC comm programs that could not multitask. Kermit will delay as needed in order to let data be stored before continuing with the communications, and synchronize this with the other side so that data is not lost.
Noisy phone line? Kermit will do complete error correction, without stalling or aborting the transfer (as ZMODEM was known to do).
Low memory for buffering? Kermit will do handshaking to ensure that the other side doesn't send data until the current data has been fully processed, minimizing the need for memory to buffer data.
Alien directory structure (VAX, etc.)? Kermit includes a mini-OS that can be used interactively to browse directories and initiate file transfers, and it abstracts the local storage conventions of the system's OS into a simple hierarchy that is the lowest common denominator. As an example of what this means, have you ever done a "ftp" into an old DOS system, and found yourself unable to change drive letters, because FTP (being a UNIX-based program) has no concept of drive letters? Kermit to the rescue here.
Now that computers and protocols are beginning to become standardized, thanks in part to the popularity of the Internet, the need for Kermit is fading. Still, it's good to read about interesting uses of Kermit such as this. Kermit joins the old DOS shareware program "Compushow" as having The Right Stuff....
Ah Kermit... (Score:3, Interesting)
So I guess kermit played a crucial role in my life, as now I'm a network engineer
And since I'm feeling nostalgic I'll just throw these in at random.
-Annoying people by creating insanely large and annoying ANSI sigs.
-Fidonet
-KINGCOTT
-ANSI Bombs
-Legend of the Red Dragon
-TradeWars 2002
-Horrible misconfigured MajorBBS sites.
-Wardialing (ToneLoc!)
-Can I have Co-Sys?
If you understand anything in that list, you're probably a geek. If you understand everything in the list, you were probably as annoying of a punkass as I was
Kermit's origins (Score:1, Interesting)
Systems at Columbia) asked young Peter to name the now ubiquitous transfer protocol. Looking up from Sesame Street on the TV, Peter chose "Kermit".
So, yes, it *is* named after Kermit the Frog.
Ahh, yes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's an interesting bulk licensing scheme... (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for a cendant hotel..
cendant recently put in one of four PMS systems at every hotel in the chain.
the one at my location uses linux for the terminal, and uses k95 for windows clients..
when it runs, it identifies itself as part of a 10,000 piece license to cendant.
memories (Score:1, Interesting)
Kermit is the universal translator of all times for computers. Keep sendin' bits!
why? it works (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:ah the memories (Score:4, Interesting)
But getting that level of reliability is dead simple - I wrote a custom protocol implementation for data transfer between two GSM handsets many years ago that had to cope with nastyness such as frequently dropped calls (due to one of the handsets being on a ship that was continuously circling over an autonomous submersible, and the other handset being on another ship, both of them well off shore :) ), and small packet sizes and predictive resends (packages would be resent automatically if it didn't get an ack or nack within a reasonable amount of time was all that was needed to make it "rock stable" (except for the delay caused by the GSM phones reconnecting).
Serial protocols aren't exactly hard to do unless you "need" to squeeze every last byte out of the theoretical maximum transfer speed available.
Re:Takes you right back (Score:3, Interesting)
For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure SlashDot bumped packets with a fair amount of Kermit traffic in its early years. I was a sysadmin at Hope College back when CmdrTaco was an underclassman there in the mid-90's, and we used Kermit for DOS (I created a KERMIT.ICO to use for it with Windows) as our standard tool for transfering files between Vaxen and PCs, across the campus ethernet. Heck, young Rob probably used it himself.
GPL/ OS licence bashing? (Score:3, Interesting)
eg. "The very foundation of the free software movement no longer exists."
Kermit protocol slow.....??? (Score:1, Interesting)
This is the best 'old geek' article in a long time (Score:2, Interesting)
The fastest one I could get to work on my Tandy CoCo III at 2400 baud was Ymodem. A Zmodem one came later under OS9, but I already had a PC by then that could do Zmodem.
Read the whole stinkin' flamewar on USENET (Score:3, Interesting)
I had no problems getting 0.95 line bandwidth out of Kermit, but then protocols 'r us. Note also the ancient Telebit references, now lost to the mists of time.
Re:Hmm (Score:1, Interesting)
Without farming the women would gather fruits and grains, grubs, haul the water cook and sew. The men would hunt or fish a few hours a day and do some arts. We would live as nomads, following our herds as they migrated.
If we lived past being a baby, and through child birth, we would live to be 80 years old on average, much healthier and more fit than the average american right now.
Cancer and most disease would be unknown to us, because we had very little contact with anyone outside the tribe. Drugs would not be used to self medicate because there is so little stress that the desire to do so would be non existant. There would be little tooth decay because we would eat no refined sugars. We would have a sense of wonder about the world that a 4 year old has and be continually astounded at it's beauty.
So, we would work 4 hours a day, if we lived past being an infant we would live full, long, healthy, fit lives, and we would probably be much happier than modern peoples with the insane amount of stress just dealing with all the people in our lives, like the million people in the lane ahead of us keeping us from getting to work on time. Or the long lines at the supermarket, or the long hours we have to work in order to sustain our life style... and so on and so no...
If modern life is so bad, why not go back to a simpler life? Imagine America before the europeans showed up... imagine that america was just being discovered right now, with it's rich natural resources guarded by people with sticks. Imagine how long it would take before America was colonized by the rest of the world, they would probably work a deal and each country gets a split.
If a society did divest itself of all the modern technology and go back to an earlier era, then they would be easy pickings for the ones who didn't, so we are stuck trying to keep up with the jone-skees. Also we already have a huge population, so it would be impossible to sustain ourselves with a tribal society, any attempt to do so would create mass starvation, war and a new society being formed that was technologically based.
Technology is like an addiction.
Re:Anyone else here (Score:1, Interesting)
From their website [columbia.edu]..