Support for PPP in The Old Net WiFi modem
- Thread starter pfuentes69
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Does somebody know if this is still being worked on by Rich?
I've been trying to get PPP configured for many evenings now. If I reproduce exactly what Rich does in the YouTube video in the first post, I still get a "MacPPP: resource error" message. Connecting with ZTerm works fine though, so I figure it has to be a PPP config issue.
Anyone with more luck willing to share how he/she did it?
How stable is PPP at higher rates (e.g. 38400) by now?
I've been trying to get PPP configured for many evenings now. If I reproduce exactly what Rich does in the YouTube video in the first post, I still get a "MacPPP: resource error" message. Connecting with ZTerm works fine though, so I figure it has to be a PPP config issue.
Anyone with more luck willing to share how he/she did it?
How stable is PPP at higher rates (e.g. 38400) by now?
He's not really offering support at the moment. It seems he didn't quite appreciate how offering something like this for sale comes with a whole ton of additional obligations, specifically support. He's restricted the Discord, and just doesn't to have time / energy to provide the level of upkeep he'd prefer by his own admission. On top of that, his attempts to simplify fabrication by moving to SMD components backfired with some bad MX3232's, so support has just gone haywire. By the sounds of it, he's on the brink of just giving up. It sucks, because folks in the community have said they are willing to assist and share the burden, but it seems he just doesn't have the wherewithal. At least for now.
So, apparently anything over 9600 apparently is finicky, but I personally haven't really noticed many issues up to 19200. But generally PPP performance is going to dodgy; Rich figures there's a buffer overrun issue due to the 8266's low amount of RAM - he'd like to move to an ESP32 solution at some point (maybe?) which would theoretically resolve that issue. But PPP is hamstrung with the 8266 out of the box.
I'm able to reliably use PPP using the following steps:
1. ensure the modem is connected to the modem port and powered on, ideally before powering on your machine (I have had success powering on the modem after the machine, but it's a good place to start)
2. ensure the modem has wifi connectivity (either through terminal software like ZTerm, or visiting its web server IP address)
3. dial '777' in your PPP control panel of choice. No init string or anything, just confirm matching baud
I have the v4 model of the modem, and the most recent version of the firmware (20230905), and it's all good.
