STiK Tutorial
by Dan
Ackerman
First let me start with an old nursery rhyme...There was a little girl, with
a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she
was very very good But when she was bad she was horrid. Why start with
that you ask? Well it's really a very simple answer that I've often used to
describe STiK's functionality. People have often been confused as to why
some people swear by STiK2, yet for them it's about as fast as paint
drying. My answer is usually that nursery rhyme. When it is good, it is
indeed very very good, but when it is bad it is horrid.
Pros
- Runs
under any OS/AES combination and any emulator that properly emulates Atari
serial ports.
- Full STiK API compatibility.
This means that the
vast majority of the Atari internet clients run without
any hassles.
- Internal memory management.
Memory for STiK/STiK2 is
all reserved at boot time which avoids fragmentation of the OS memory
pool during operation. Something that some of the other stacks suffer
from.
- Multiple connections at one time is no problem. Of course,
I
don't think this is really much of a problem under any of the major TCP/IP
stacks for the Atari.
- Connection automation scripts possible with
Qdialer. This means you can have several applications or clients
automatically launch when you connect to the internet.
- Recognition of
the connection status. If your carrier is dropped during a session,
everything should properly recognize the fact.
- Memory usage
configurable allowing users of machines with limited RAM to save some space
and users with lots of RAM to really allow it room to take
off.
- Internal identd server support. Servers that require it can
be used whether the client supports it or not.
- Speed. It
can be one of the fastest
dial-up connections you have ever seen as many users have reported
it as fast or faster than their Mac or PC.
- Probably the most important of all.
It's open source and free.
Cons
- Qdialer is a bit buggy and could
use some serious work to become a professional looking application.
- One
communication port limitation in all released versions.
- Legacy script
file confusion.
- No CHAP support.
- Speed. It
can be one of the slowest
dial-up connections you have ever seen.
Where to start All of
the files can be downloaded from www.netset.com/~baldrick/.
Once
you have all the files, the following needs to be done.
First, copy STiK.PRG into
your Auto folder. Note HSModem or FSerial may be necessary on some machines,
however, in general HSModem is desirable to have installed for most machines
anyway. On machines with older versions of TOS, it may be necessary to
have a cookie jar creation program installed as well (a few of these can
be found at my web site).
When copying
STiK and HSModem to your Auto folder, please
note that they should be copied in the following
order.
- Cookie jar
creation (if
necessary)
- HSModem
- STiK
Confirguring STiK
The next step is to create a folder called STIK_CFG on your boot drive.
This folder will be used to store your configuration files. While STiK2
still uses configuration files, for most users you will need only a couple of
minutes to edit the file and then will never look at it again. The
first file to edit is DEFAULT.CFG. There is an example version included in
the STiK2 archive. For a minimal installation the following is
recommended for operation.
VARIABLE
= Value
|
Description
|
ALLOCMEM = 125000 |
Can be any value you want. |
PROTOCOL = 2 |
This states connection
will be PPP on our serial port. |
USERNAME = myuserid |
This is not necessary,
but does give seed values to the internal identd
server. |
HOSTNAME = myhost |
Again not necessary, but seeds internal identd
server. |
There are other values and variables that can be set in your
DEFAULT.CFG file. Some clients like to find values stored here. However
these are up to the user and are not necessary. Editing
the dial script The next file to edit is the dial script.
A dial script can be named anything you
want and need not be located in your STIK_CFG folder. However it is simplest
to keep it there, so that all your STiK2 files are in one location. In the following
example, I have assumed that you want to connect to a modern ISP that supports
PPP and PAP.
First we
need to set up your serial port and baud rate, more accurately this would be
described as your DTE, but is a legacy name from the original STiK. If
you are uncertain what speeds your serial port can handle, there is a program
called Listport available from my web site that will list all of your ports
and their speeds. STiK unlike some other TCP/IP stacks uses the correct
values and does not need to have them remapped to the lower values. SERIALPORT = Serial 2 BAUD_RATE = 230400
* Note: The values
above apply to the TT030 and are for example
only.
Next, you need to configure some of the standard settings for your modem. These may need to be
modified for your system, or you might just be able to use the values in the
example files. For a full description of each of the values you can refer to
the text files located in the STiK2 archive.
VARIABLE
= Value
|
Description
|
HANGUP = ATH |
Your
modem's
hang-up string. |
PREFIX = ATD |
Your modem's
dial prefix. |
INIT = ATQ0M1&C1%C3 |
Your modem's init string. |
If you are using a modem that properly asserts
carrier detect then you would add the line CDVALID = TRUE If
your modem does not handle carrier detect properly or you have a NULL
modem connection then you would have the line CDVALID =
FALSE Dialing parameters Next you
need to set up the dialling parameters for the
modem.
VARIABLE
= Value
|
Description
|
CONNECT_WAIT = 95 |
Number of seconds at most to wait for
connection success before disconnecting
automatically. |
REDIAL_DELAY = 20 |
Number of seconds to wait before re-dialling
the ISP if the first connection fails. |
Connection
success or failure configuration There are three main values for the success
configuration and they work as follows. If you would like to consider
success as a carrier detect signal (note your modem must properly assert
carrier detect for this option) then you add the line SUCCESS =
CDWAIT If your modem doesn't assert carrier
detect or you would rather
watch for the CONNECT response of your modem enter the line SUCCESS =
CONNECT Lastly if you are using a direct connection like a NULL modem
cable, you would add the line SUCCESS = DIRECT One note, if
you are using a direct connection then you will also want to have CLIENT_IP
configured in this file, such as CLIENT_IP = 192.168.1.1 There can be up
to 5 FAILURE test words configured. Sample ones are included in the example
files and are FAILURE = BUSY FAILURE = NO CARRIER FAILURE = NO
DIALTONE Now you might be thinking this is a
lot of information to edit or
add to a file. However for any single machine, once you have a dial script
with this information configured for your machine, you can simply edit the
file to create new scripts. ISP specific
details The next step is to create the connection specific
information. This is the information the deals with your ISP and your
account.
VARIABLE
= Value
|
Description
|
PHONE_NUMER =
0800 1234567 |
Your
phone number for your ISP. You can have
up to five phone numbers configured per dial
script. |
PAP_ID = myusername |
Your login/username for your ISP. |
PASSWORD =
mypassword |
Your password at your ISP. |
NAMESERVER has two options. If
your ISP gives you a name server dynamically at connection then enter this
line. NAMESERVER = 0.0.0.0 If your ISP does not provide it at
connection time then they should provide you with the IP number. Simply
replace the 0.0.0.0 in the above line with the IP number they provide
you. There is one other option that might be useful to use. If
negotiating your connection to your ISP takes a long time, you can try the
following line, which will cause STiK2 to force the connection if
possible. ACTIVE_PPP = 1 Once you have entered all of these lines,
save the configuration file with an easy to remember name with the extension SCR. And you
are finished with all of the complicated stuff. The next step is to copy Qdialer and its RSC files to your
hard drive. It can be anywhere on your system that you desire. Qdialer can
run as an .ACC or as a .PRG. ACC operation requires its installation on
your system in the same manner as other ACC files. With all of this
done, you now need to reboot your system so that STiK2 is loaded. Once your
system has re-booted, run Qdialer, edit any options that you may want to
change under the tools icon, select your dial script and save Qdialer's config file.
The next time you run Qdialer it will remember all of your options. You
should now be able to hit the connect button in Qdialer and start
browsing the internet.
Glossary
|
- HSModem
In order to make good use of your modem, you'll need to install HSModem. This
little program speeds up access to your modem and makes thing a lot easier.
- Baud
Baud is a measure of how frequently sound changes on a phone line.
- Carrier
Detect
When two modems decide that they can talk to each other, they generate a signal
on the serial RS-232 interface called carrier detect.
- PAP
(Password Authentication Protocol)
PAP
is a protocol used
to authenticate
a user's name and
password over a
PPP connection.
- PPP
(Point-to-Point Protocol)
PPP is the successor
to SLIP and defines how your modem connection exchanges data
packets with other systems over the internet.
- TCP/IP
(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)
TCP
and IP protocol
allow computers
to talk with each
other over long
distance networks
(such as the internet).
IP is responsible for moving
packets of data between nodes while TCP is responsible for verifying delivery from
client to server. TCP/IP forms the basis of the internet.
|
|
|
|
|