Setting up a Lantronix UDS-10/100

[David Nelson]

A short discussion on comp.sys.cbm newsgroups led to one rather interesting individual looking for information on how to set up his Lantronix. He was hung up on the Com Port Redirector section of the manual, which has nothing to do with setting the Lantronix up for a Commodore BBS. So I decided to write up my experience with setting up the Lantronix. I did not have much time to try everything out, so this "guide" may need to be altered as I hear from others who have done this, too. But here it is, in case anybody here has been struggling.

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Configuring the Lantronix UDS-10/100 to work with a C64/C128 BBS:

Before I dive in, let me start with a quick disclaimer. This procedure is based upon notes I took recently when I received my Lantronix UDS-100. I quickly set it up and tested it out with an old BBS program I had written. The BBS was using 2400 on the standard serial port and I used CGTerm on the PC. It seemed to work fine. I then had to pack everything up because I am in the middle of moving. It's going to be quite awhile before I have a chance to set it up again. So if you find some incomplete portions or (hopefully not) errors, please feel free to point it out. If you have suggestions for better settings than those I chose, speak up and explain to us why so we can all benefit. The goal of writing this down was to help those without an extensive computer background get their Lantronix devices up and running. With that said, here we go!

Part One – Plan Ahead

We should spend a couple minutes thinking about what we are hoping to achieve before we start configuring the Lantronix. We need to gather some information that we will need later:

1. By default, a brand new Lantronix is set to use DHCP to obtain an IP address. If you bought a used one, like me, then it has probably already been configured and we need to do a factory reset to make sure we're starting fresh.

2. Using DHCP is not very useful for our purposes, so we are going to want to assign it an IP address. I'm going to use 192.168.1.25 in this example. You will also need to know your gateway address. I'm going to use 192.168.1.1 in this example. Your private network might be using a different subnet. You can check this real quick under Windows XP by clicking Start->Run and typing cmd. In the command prompt box, type ipconfig. It will tell you your XP computer's IP address and also tell you the gateway. To choose an IP address for the Lantronix, simply change the last set of numbers to one that is not used by DHCP in your network. You might need to check your router to find out what IP addresses it is using for DHCP. For example, my router uses 192.168.1.10 thru 192.168.1.20, so 192.168.1.25 is safe to use for the Lantronix.

3. Keep in mind what baud rates your BBS software supports and what baud rates your hardware supports. You will probably only be able to go as high as 2400 unless you use a Swiftlink or Turbo232. With one of those, you could easily obtain 38400 or higher if your BBS software supports those higher rates. The Lantronix supports 300 thru 115200. Also note if your BBS uses numeric responses or full verbose response from a modem.

4. Decide what incoming port you'd like your BBS to use. I've seen 6400 and 23 commonly used. 23 is also what Telnet uses. I'm going to use port 6400 in this example.

Part Two – Serial Logon Setup

As much as I'd like to use the web based setup to configure the Lantronix, I quickly found out some of the settings I needed to change were only available by using the telnet or serial logon. Since my Lantronix was used, I couldn't telnet in. That left me with the Serial Logon as the only method of setting it up. As I discovered, that's probably the easiest and least frustrating way. As long as you're using a good cable. ?

Unplug the Lantronix first. You're going to need a suitable serial cable (not a null modem!) and a terminal program. The serial settings are 9600 baud, 8-bit, no parity, one stop bit, and no flow control. (This cannot be changed, so you will *always* be able to access setup through the serial port.) For the purists at heart, you might want to use your Commodore and a program such as DesTerm to set it up. Just make sure your ASCII translation is set to communicate with a PC, not another Commodore. The rest of us can suffer with HyperTerminal under Windows XP (Start->Programs->Accessories->Communications).

Once you have the serial cable connected, and your terminal program set to connected as well, plug the Lantronix back in. Type three lowercase x characters *within one second* to activate the configuration mode. The manual suggests holding down the x key while you are plugging in the Lantronix. That worked for me.

The very first thing to do is to choose 7, Factory Reset. Now we're ready to start configuring our Lantronix.

Part Three – Server Configuration

This is also known as the Network Configuration. Choose 0, Server configuration, and enter the following settings:

IP Address – 192.168.1.25
Set Gateway IP Address – Choose yes, and then enter 192.168.1.1
Netmask – Number of bits is 8 for 255.255.255.0
Change Telnet configuration password – Yes, this is probably a very good idea. You can assign up to a 4 character password. Note that no password is needed for the serial logon, this only applies to TELNET connections to port 9999, the Lantronix's configuration port.
DHCP Naming – We're not using DHCP, so there's no need to change this.

Part Four – Channel 1 Configuration

Moving on, back at the main menu, choose 1, Channel 1 configuration. The settings are as follows:

Baudrate – Enter the highest value your BBS software and hardware combination will support. You might need to lower this later if you notice garbled characters and other classic signs of speed problems.
I/F Mode – 4C (RS-232C, 8-bit, no parity, 1 stop bit)
Flow – If you're using a low baudrate, 2400 or less, this can be set to 00 (none). For higher rates with a Swiftlink or Turbo232, you'll probably want Hardware CTS/RTS handshaking, which is 02. The other option is XON/XOFF, which is 01. You can try Hardware first, then XON/XOFF, and finally none if you run into trouble.
 Port Number – 6400
Connect Mode – D6 for full verbose with echo, C6 for full verbose without echo, D7 for numeric responses.
Remote IP Address – Leave as 0's
Remote Port – Leave as 0
DisConnMode – 80
FlushMode – F7 (if you have trouble try 77 and then 00)
DisConnTime – This is an inactivity timeout. The Lantronix will drop the connection if there is no activity within this time limit. Enter the time in minutes:seconds if you so desire. Enter 00:00 to disable. 5:00 (five minutes) of inactivity is a decent choice.
SendChar 1 – 0
SendChar 2 – 0

Part Five – Security Settings

Back at the main menu, you can choose 6 to change security settings. This is entirely up to you, but I chose to change a few:

Disable ECHO Ports – Yes to disable port 7 (echo port)
Enable Enhanced Password – You can set this to Yes to allow up to 16 character password for Telnet setup instead of 4.

Part Six – Save and Test

Back at the main menu, choose 9 to save the new settings and exit. Unplug the Lantronix and connect it to your Commodore. Plug the Lantronix back in and fire up your BBS software. Go to your PC and give it a try! Use CGTerm and try to connect to 192.168.1.25 port 6400 and see how it works. If we've done this correctly, it should work just fine.

Part Seven – Open the Port on the Router

Now we are ready to open the port on the router and direct BBS traffic to the Lantronix. The steps for this will vary quite a bit depending upon what kind of router you have. I'm using a Linksys WRT54G, so this example uses that.

Go to Applications and Gaming. We should be looking at the Port Range Forward screen. Edit the first line as such:

Application – BBS
Start – 6400
End – 6400
Protocol – TCP
IP Address – 192.168.1.25
Enable – Checked

What this does is forward incoming traffic to port 6400 to the Lantronix device. If we did not set this up, you would only be able to connect to your BBS from your private network. The firewall would block access to the outside world.

Part Eight – Spreading the Word

While you are in the router, take a look to find out what your current public IP address is. On the Linksys WRT54G, click on the Status page and look for IP Address. Have a friend try using CGTerm to connect to this address at port 6400. He or she should be directed to the Lantronix and connected to your BBS.

You're now ready to look into a DNS service to use a friendly name for your BBS, such as EndofTime.net. If your IP address is static, meaning it never changes, you could just advertise your public IP address. If it does change, such as a DSL connection, then you might want to look into a Dynamic DNS service. I have not looked into this myself, so I cannot advise much more.

Part Nine – A Cool Extra Feature

Now that your Lantronix is set up, you can also use your Commodore to "dial out" on the Internet to other Commodore BBS's. Fire up your favorite terminal program. Type in ATDTx.x.x.x,pppp where x.x.x.x is the address of a BBS and pppp is the port number. For example, ATDTbbs.excalibursstone.com,6400 . The Lantronix will then attempt to make a connection and voila! You're connected, just like the good old days.




I hope this guide has helped. All these settings were taken straight from the Lantronix UDS-10/100 manual. If you have a question about what a specific setting does, please look it up in Chapter 5.

-David Nelson
dnelsonfl at yahoo dot com