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Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station
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."
Kermit Alive and Well on the Space Station
This place is starting to sound like the Weekly World News.
"Archie disappears, Veronica suspect! Gopher dug the hole far aWAIS!"
Trolling is a art,
Immediatly have the image of a large green frog floating around in the weightlessness?
(which was scorned in favor of Zmodem)
:)
With good reason.
IceZmodem rocked.
hi-ho, kermit thee frog here, and welcome to thee ISS.
Weren't you using it to download porn back then too?
the greatest technological achievement of humankind
I think 'debateably' should be added to that.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Talk about flash back.
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
The Army reading list
And sometimes a resource hog. I was told by the admins of the public Sun boxes at UT (circa late 80's)not to use it any more since it kept using all of the CPU. Fun stuff.
No sig, sorry.
Kermit is an extensible file transfer protocol first developed at Columbia University in New York City in 1981 for transferring text and binary files without errors between diverse types of computers over potentially hostile communication links, and it is a suite of communications software programs from the Kermit Project at Columbia University. The Kermit protocol and software are named after Kermit the Frog, star of the television series, The Muppet Show; the name Kermit is used by permission of Henson Associates, Inc.
Over the years, the Kermit Project has grown into a worldwide cooperative nonprofit software development effort, headquartered at and coordinated from Columbia University. The Kermit Project is dedicated to production of cross-platform, long-lasting, standards-conformant, interoperable communications software, and is actively engaged in the standards process.
Since its inception in 1981, the Kermit protocol has developed into a sophisticated and powerful transport-independent tool for file transfer and management, incorporating, among other things:
KERMIT PROTOCOL
The feature that distinguishes Kermit protocol from most others is its wide range of settings to allow adaptation to any kind of connection between any two kinds of computers. Most other protocols are designed to work only on certain kinds or qualities of connections, and/or between certain kinds of computers, and therefore work poorly (or not at all) elsewhere and offer few if any methods to adapt to unplanned-for situations. Kermit, on the other hand, allows you to achieve successful file transfer and the highest possible performance on any given connection.
Unlike FTP or X-, Y-, and ZMODEM (the other protocols with which Kermit is most often compared) Kermit protocol does not assume or require:
(although Kermit does not require any of these conditions, it can take advantage of them when they are available). A feature article on Kermit protocol by Tim Kientzle in the February 1996 issue of Dr. Dobb's Journal noted that "Kermit's windowing approach is faster than protocols such as XModem and YModem . . . What many people don't realize is that under less-than-ideal conditions, Kermit's windowing approach is significantly faster than ZModem, a protocol with a well-deserved reputation for fast transfers over good-quality lines."
Thus Kermit transfers work "out of the box" almost every time.
In space, no-one can hear you croak.
Here is a screenshot of kermit: http://www.muppets.com/images/kermithead.gif
MUPPETS...
IN...
SPACE...
</ghostly announcer voice>
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
PIIIIIIIIIIGGGSSS IIIINNN SPAAAaaaccccceeeeee.....
Come on, did *no-one* else think of that muppets sketch ?
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It can be hard when grasping Kermit...just ask Miss Piggy.
Posted anonymously, like saltwater taffy.
International Space Station Incorporates Columbia's Kermit Software Program
slap on a kermit and save the day
by Michael Larkin
New York - Dec 09, 2003
Created almost 25 years ago by Columbia's academic computing center to help manage the high demand on the University's mainframes, a software program known as Kermit has leapt all the way to the International Space Station where it is being used in a scientific experiment.
Designed to allow two different computer systems to interact, Kermit was used to solve a compatibility problem on the space station. Using two versions of program, one of which was modified specifically for NASA, an experimental device referred to as CLSM-2 can now share information with another computer on board the space station that transmits data back to earth.
"Kermit and Kermit 95 have been invaluable tools to improve our computing efficiency, both in development and in the final operational system," wrote Dave Hall, senior engineer, ZIN Technologies on Kermit's Columbia Web site.
The significance of Kermit is not entirely its invention or its inclusion in the state-of-the-art experiment, but its ability to evolve and to retain its viability in the always-expanding computer industry.
And as one of its creators admits, it was never imagined that Kermit would develop the way it did. "Nobody expected the protocol and software to become a worldwide de facto standard, but even if we had, there are not many things we would have done differently, except in choosing a name," said Frank da Cruz, a manager who has worked on the project since its inception. He recalled amusingly how a picture of the friendly green amphibian swayed his judgment when it came time to name the project.
According to da Cruz, Kermit was borne out of a project to alleviate the strain on the University's academic mainframe computers in the late 1970's, which could only provide 35KB of storage per student. Columbia employees developed a protocol to transfer information from the mainframes to floppy disks through microcomputers that were installed around the university. The first Kermit file transfer occurred in April 1981.
The introduction and the ensuing popularity of IBM's personal computer (PC) prompted the next stage in Kermit's evolution. The university adapted the Kermit protocol to address the PC's incompatibility with Columbia's other computers and released it in January 1983. The PC version proved widely popular and was the subject of books published in English, French, German and Japanese.
At the same time, Kermit programs were developed for minicomputers being used in several Columbia departments. Its popularity continued to grow through the mid-1980s, and by 1986, Kermit was well established at Columbia and a fixture at many other universities, government agencies and companies worldwide.
Through the years, hundreds of Kermit programs have been written at Columbia and elsewhere and distributed through the project. In the early 1990s Kermit software was engineered to handle Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish and many other languages via both their traditional character sets and Unicode, the new Universal Character Set.
"At conferences in Europe, the Soviet Union, and Japan, we quickly came to appreciate the enormous demand for computer communication in diverse languages and writing systems, and worked to make it a reality," said da Cruz.
Kermit 95, which was created for Windows 95 and its successors, was licensed to universities such as Oxford, Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton and the entire SUNY college system; and was bulk licensed to over 800 companies and government agencies worldwide.
Kermit was initially shared with other organizations at no cost, despite the fact that it used a great amount of resources to coordinate the writing of new programs to archive results and to distribute the software. But in 1986, the Kermit Project was formed and distribution fees were establish
The author of the article has a very nice grasp of what Kermit is. It's not just a protocol, but a program complete with scripting capabilities, modem dialing, transfers using several protocols (including Kermit of course). It can even do TCP transfers now. It's a great program, but it's a little hard to use and mostly surpassed by simpler tools now. Still, I needed to use it a few years ago to automate modem uploads to a mainframe.
HTTP replaced Zmodem for most file transfers.
Wasn't it more like Kermit -> Xmodem -> Ymodem -> Ymodem-G / Zmodem?
You need to understand the differences.
zmodem is high performance single streaming large packet size negative-acknowledgement only protocol - it fails badly in noisy or lossy style of environments.
kermit is far more robust, can interoperate with various different systems of different character encoding, had adaptive retransmission, and can perform just as well as kermit under the right circumstances.
The BBS implementations of kermit were not as sophisticated as the protocol could be, and most BBS environments didn't need the kind of features that kermit had. kermit is also of the emacs style: it's not just a protocol by an entire interactive terminal in itself: scripts, command line, etc.
The pompously smug and self-important among us preferred Ymodem-G when on an error-corrected link. And now we are relics.
rz\r
rz\r
rz\r
man screw this
^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z^Z
dsgkh$#@^%@26 3421lj __ 34 NO CARRIER
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
I don't know where your getting that idea from. In 2000 years, when our society is much transformed, just about the most amazing thing we'll be remembered for is the Interstate system. It'll still be around then as ruins for future, alien archeologists.
I still use Kermit 0.9(40) to transfer things to and from my HP-48GX. I never did get it working on any new PPC Mac. Thus it is currently relegated to a Powerbook 190cs that I use for the retro applications that only run on a 68k Macintosh.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
...enemy of capitalism.
Enemy of reason.
Ayn Rand would TKO your ass within 2 rounds. Get in the ring.
TT
..which was scorned in favor of Zmodem
My reaction as I read the first few lines of the post was "zmodem is better". I'm glad the author added that comment, it gave me a good laugh at my own reaction.
The ease of use of zmodem automatically accepting the download and setting the file name did seem like a revolutionary idea to me back then.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Never forget the ultimate in thieving scum protocols.
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.
No, kermit was indeed not spurned to use ZModem.
Many other protocols existed between Kermit and Zmodem that made Kermit obsolete long before.
How about XModem? Or YModem? There protocols are both post Kermit and pre ZModem. Kermit was a 7 bit protocol (only capable of uppercase characters) which is why something as simple as XModem could replace it. Not to mention, XModem had extra error checking.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It sure did. Zmodem was as least 5 times faster than kermit at file transfers.
Man:It's a flyswatter!
Woman:It's a spatula!
Man:It's a flyswatter!
Woman:It's a spatula!
Man:It's a flyswatter!
Woman:It's a spatula!
Announcer:Wait! You're both right!
All's true that is mistrusted
I wanted to handle all EDI communications and processing on the main database AIX box for our ERP, but couldn't find a good SFTP program for AIX. I had to compile it with OpenSSL support due to ridiculous export restrictions, but it's working perfectly for me now. They even had a sample script for dealing with the IBM Information Exchange mainframe, which is a little hairy. Good stuff!
jerkcity (webcomic) on kermit's uses
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Boy, it takes me back to read the word "Kermit" when not related to a frog... I actually used to use that... but there was no Slashdot then to talk about it on.
stuff |
Kermit, it wasn't fast, but I swear that protocol could almost talk through mud. I used it through terminal servers, over X.25, over DECNET, over a freaking IBM 7171 converter (anyone else remember these monsters?). I even used it to stress test a Sun to DECNET comm program (keep signing on back and forth between a and b back to a back to b back to a), and then doing a kermit file transfer. Easy way to simulate 40 people using the system simultanously. But a friend of mine has me beat, IP over kermit over a satellite bounce from the south poll.
Spacecraft confirms it. The Kermit protocol is dying ...
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
That is all.
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Yes, it did! I loved the minigames while downloading on my 300 baud modem. ;)
:)
:)
It was neat, I started BBSing when 56k modems were out, I was the loser with the 300 baud on a PCjr. After a year or so I got a 386 with a 1200, then a 2400, then a 14400, and right before BBSing in my area "died", I got a 56k.
Man I miss all my friends from the old BBSes. Maybe now that I have a static IP I'll make a Telnet WWIV board.
Fact: Kermit is dying
It is common knowledge that Kermit is dying. Everyone knows that ever hapless Kermit is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which Kermit is the worst off of an admittedly suffering Kermit community. The numbers continue to decline for Windows but Kermit may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for Kermit continues in a head spinning downward spiral.
All major marketing surveys show that Kermit has steadily declined in market share. Kermit is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Kermit is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes Kermit is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Fact: Kermit is dying
(Inspired by a Win98 / FreeBSD Troll)
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Proof enough that the author of the article knows nothing about computers.
Thank god people don't refer to 'hardware motherboards'.
Kermit is dead. Zmodem is dead. The argument died ten years ago! Get over it!
It's not pinin', it's passed on! This protocol is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! It's a stiff! Bereft of value, it rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed it to the Space Station it'd be pushing up the daisies! Its CPU usage is now zero! It's off the box! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!!
THIS IS AN EX-PROTOCOL!!
Sheesh, if you want an argument to die around here, you've got to complain 'til you're blue in the face.
John
How do you think my Apple ][+ communicates to /.?
/.
Without Kermit and lynx, I'd never be able to see all the great wisdom that is
greatest technological achievement of humankind
BULLSHIT
Most responsible scientists acknowledge the ISS is a heap of useless space junk designed to fund Congressional district voters and nothing else.
That's true. The purpose of ZMODEM is to transfer data as fast as possible, on a fairly modern system with clean phone lines, plentiful memory for buffering, and fast I/O that doesn't block. On a modern system, ZMODEM is the best character-based protocol out there (there were a few that were more advanced or had special purposes, like BiModem, but they are irrelevant now that everything now uses packet-based data and TCP/IP).
:)
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....
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
Well, I've written implementations of Xmodem, Ymodem, Ymodem-1k, Ymodem-G, Zmodem, and Kermit... For bad lines, or through bad telnet sessions, or very different kinds of computers, Kermit rules for reliability... Nice UI for the day too... Although, I agree on the standard BBS' with a 2400 or 14.4, Zmodem ruled as a protocol...
Logic is the beginning of reason, not the end of it.
You mean they are running it on Linux??? No, that couldn't be it. You couldn't possibly be referring to the ISS could you? If so exactly what about the ISS is a great achievement other than they managing to spend staggering sums to accomplish nothing. The ISS is in a close race with the war in Iraq in that category.
@de_machina
Nicely done. I especially enjoyed "Shuffled off its mortal coil."
Please, someone make the flashbacks stop!
/.??
What's that? Stop logging into
I hereby welcome our cute, reptilian, space-faring overlords (and the pork chops that love them)!!
Sorry had to post it.....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
I found my introduction to the BBS community when I was 8 or so and going through everything that came with our new computer. While playing with lotus 1-2-3 I came across a bunch of options I didn't understand, but one said Kermit, like the frog, so I checked that out. This brought me to the (horrible) built in terminal and gave me some options for dialing numbers. That's what gave me a clue as to what that one weird shaped port was on the back of the computer, so I hooked up the phoneline and dialed PKWare's BBS, which was the first BBS I ever connected to. After hours of long distance charges all over the country, much to my parents displeasure, I had a good terminal program (Terminate FYI :) and a decent list of local BBS.
:) Of course I ditched kermit for Zmodem, and a few other nutty protocols. Anybody remember the ones that would let you play tetris and such? Those were great back in the days of 2400 baud and single tasking operating systems.
:)
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
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Kermit is just another closed protocall/application that you have to pay to use.
I anddtion, C-Kermit/Kermit 95 is just a huge kitchen sink peice of software. NOT THE UNIX WAY AT ALL.
Ketmit is to protocall as Micsoroft Office is to text editing.
I belongs in the dustbin of history: wight next to PCAnywhere and Microsoft MAPI.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Kermit is much more than a file transfer protocol.
Besides Serial communication, it can handle many network protocols: FTP, Telnet, HTTP, SSH to name a few. It can use the telnet comm control, to handle network attached modems. It has a macro/programming language. For those jobs where one needs to recognize success or failure of a transfer, this is a boon.
And in the Windows version it has a large number of terminal emulations.
Just a satisfied customer.
being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind
Now, am I the only one who thinks the space station is not the greatest technological achievement of humankind? To me, the greatest invention is obvious: the Thermos cup. It keeps hot stuff hot, and it keeps cold stuff cold. But how does it know the difference??
and people complain about Debian Stable being outdated....
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
It's all that separates us from the apes.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
"But somehow, I can't imagine Kermit Longhorn as a species... :-)"
Oh really?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
FYI, up until very recently, the kermit protocol was still being shipped with Red Hat Linux, via the gkermit application. It looks like a fairly recent implementation, too. It doesn't look like it exists in Red Hat 9, though.
i didn't know kermit was scriptable. I like scriptable (Kermit scripting language is a programming language similar to Perl, but with different syntax ... predates perl) things.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
kermit was replaced by xmodem. Then along came zmodem with it's "resume" thingy. Jeezz who needs resume? My first big download was with kermit. It was a 55k text file. It took an hour or so as I recall. Well, cheers to everyone else who remembers typing fast then your connection speed could handle.
By The Power Of GreySkull!
I do some land surveying on the side, and Data collector I use (an MC-V by Corvallis Microsystems) requires kermit to transfer files to my PC. When I first got the data collector, it took me a while to find a kermit program that would run slow enough (1200 baud) to work with the data collector. I finaly got ahold of a terminal program that supported low baud rates, and it turned out to be the old hyperterminal that used to be included with win 3.1! I never thought I would be runing hyperterminal again.
I remember back in the BBS days, always hated having to use x/ymodem since it required supplying the filename, where zModem defaulted to automagically grabbing it, not to mention how much faster it was/is. Kermit shared that feature, but by the time I was using BBSs alot zModem was already the norm. zModem is Dead! long live zModem!
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
Just a bit of somewhat ancient info for the kids around here. The Kermit protocol was written by Frank DaCruz in 1981 at Columbia University while his son Peter (now an adult studying in Johannesburg) was a very young child. Frank (presently the Director of Communications Software Development Academic Information
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.
Also loging into a VAX at college, with a 300 baud modem, on a Apple //e. To download/upload my FORTRAN programs for honers level FORTRAN programming.
THIS IS AN EX-PROTOCOL!!
There is nothing inherently wrong with the X protocol, simply XFree's implementation of it mmmkay!
Sorry, just a knee jerk reaction.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
I still use the ftp features in kermit for server to server ftp transfers.
Kermit...I used that as a download protocol over our campus network back in college...it was an old system, only active for a couple of semesters while I was there...but the network was "8-bit unclean" and would garble characters and such over anything but kermit...then kermit decided it wouldn't work, so I had to use UUEncode...even devised a little script to resend only the packets I needed...but then again, that was back when I had my Amiga and 14.4Kbps was something great...
You must have been using an ancient/broken version of kermit. Modern versions of kermit can transfer files almost as fast as zmodem. I've used Kermit-95 to download files to PCs and it's damn fast, assuming the server has a reasonably up-to-date version of kermit.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"It's not easy being green in space."
I wonder if the Pigs in Space helped out on this mission?
Now we know the truth behind the Florida electoral problems!
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
You just made a great case for Kermit, but I feel it needs a bit of a summary:
in space, reliability is key
Often triply redundant systems are deployed, and their life expectancy is STILL 5-10 years at best.
You have got to be kidding me. Maybe maybe the moon race qualifies as the "greatest technological achievement of humankind" I have yet to hear of a single usefull discover onboard that (expensive) piece of low flying equipment.
Thanks for explaining why Kermit is still relevant -- I was going to flame on about how choosing kermit over zmodem was about as dumb as choosing 'compress' over 'bzip2' ;)
When I was zmodeming, there was no such thing as windows 95, nor kermit 95. (and I'm not that old!)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Kermit and Kermit 95 have been invaluable tools to improve our computing efficiency
holy crap someone used these two words in the same sentence world coming to end STOP
--dan
Ah, that helps to explain your low userid.
Chillin',
Bruce
Zmodem was designed to transfer over the old x.25 remote modem service. It wants clean lines, but can handle increased latency.
Kermit is one of the first open source projects, as this article points out, it still has value.
I was gonna say the same thing -- I came in right before zmodem, and I'd always use Ymodem (unless it effed up, then to xmodem...). I think Y let you resume files
It know the difference because its smarter then you. Fear the cup, it knows where you go and it knows what you drink. What evil plans does the Thermos company have for the data its smart cups collect.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
One demon included free with every thermos.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Wow, glad to hear it's still going strong. To all who talk up Zmodem: my roomate in college did the same thing....until my kermit file tranfer out performed it AND picked up again after he switched my modem cable during a transfer (by mistake supposedly).
Kermit is the universal translator of all times for computers. Keep sendin' bits!
I thought Frank was the person who wrote the MS-DOS version in 8086. He had a cute method of doing returns from routines that would return one place if successful and another if failed by playing with the stack return value, then doing a ret.
Fight Spammers!
If you were going to go for a space achievement, I'd think that the Apollo CM/SM/LM system would do it. My freaking PDA probably has more computing power than all of NASA had in 1969. ISS is ultimately just a incremental improvement on Skylab and the Almaz/Salyut/Mir series (pl.).
Kermit always sends, receives data, always did with my Tandy and 300 kbps modem and later 1200 baud US Robotics. Do you think a competent NASA engineer or contractor would let a server running NT with MS TCP, RADIUS, etc. loose in space? Seriously, now. Lives are at stake.
I was about to post the same thing but I see you got here first. Apollo was progress outward bound through the universe. ISS is a poorly ventilated condo in low earth orbit. Its not even a sideways movement -- its a retreat from where we've already been. Its time we go back to the moon. This time we need to build a base and establish some sort of permanent presence there for astronomy as well as low-g manufacture and research.
You know who else still uses the Kermit protocol...! CHAPTERS BOOK Store.. No lie.. check it out, next time your in there. I personally didn't know what Kermit was until i discovered this on one the chapters PC's. Wow... i learned something from h4x0ring. Who would'ah thought... - Wtf is a sig?
would let you shell to dos!
Well, that and large metal fences...
Kermit's limited popularity can probably be traced to the complexity of the software. Its support for every weird and/or broken piece of telecommunications gear meant that it had lots of options and tunable parameters.
XYZmodem had the advantage of being designed for a specific environment, a transparent, 8-bit clean communications link with low delay and error rate.
It didn't help that many third-party implementations of kermit only supported the original core protocol, without any of the extensions that were added later.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
...back in the 80's...
never did use kermit, but maybe that's best left to ms.piggy
Queens of the Stone Age - they rule
Q: What's one inch long, green, and smells like pork?
A: Kermit's middle finger.
The really cool stuff is that NASA is actively starting to use TCP/IP protocol to talk to satellites in earth orbit. Take a look at http://ipinspace.gsfc.nasa.gov/
I thought the greatest achievement of mankind was Jennifer Connelly's breasts? Whaaa?
Nothing!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
THIS IS AN EX-PROTOCOL!!
But what about the WHY-PROTOCOL or the ZEE-PROTOCOL?
I recall using Kermit a few times but it just didn't seem to be supported too well on MS-DOS. It worked but was very slow compared to ZModem. In those days, of course, we had to squeeze all the speed we could get out of our puny connections.
I'm not sure whether it was the fault of the Kermit protocol, the BBS software, my comms software, or some combination. Regardless, I don't have very fond memories of using Kermit!
An interesting retro technology application, however.
Nasa uses kermit, big surprise! Not!
What they forgot to tell you is its running on 8 bit machines with core memory at a blazing 1 mhz. NASA does nothing modern or efficient. I am surprised they stopped using vacuum tubes.
Kermit is dead. Zmodem is dead.
Is it?
I don't know if you've heard or not, but there's a rumor that Kermit's Alive and Well on the Space Station...
> I was going to flame on about how choosing kermit over zmodem was about as dumb as choosing 'compress' over 'bzip2' ;)
What if you had extremely low memory and a low-speed CPU? Wouldn't "compress" look more appetizing in that scenario?
>Kermit joins the old DOS shareware program
>"Compushow" as having The Right Stuff....
Ahh, cshow.exe. The original porn browser.
How far one Mr. Kermit thee Frog will go to get away from one Ms. Piggy.
paintball
got sig?
I think slightly more than half the population would agree the greatest is that jack rabbit vibrator...
Funny little note that had me rolling on the floor when I found it out. In Japanese, the word for thermos is "mahoubin" which comes from the word for magic "mahou", and container "bin".
:X
Magical Container!@$!#$ Can you imagine how that word came into existence? Undoubtedly some westerner brought one over there and they saw it ans said "HOLY !$@!#!@ That's a magical container! It can keep hot things hot, and cold things cold!!! Magical Conatiner!!! Banzai, mahoubin! Banzai!!"
-Tofusensei
Ok chaps. I'm sorry for this, but I have to rant about a time 13 years ago... I was downloading something via kermit at the college computer lab. It had pretty much got there (at the piss poor rate janet [ remember that ? ] use to work at when I really needed a drink. I left a nice note saying "downloading - pls leave" whilst I went for a coffee ( we are talking well before multi tasking pcs here chaps ) anyway, got back and someone else was on the pc. Obviously I thought that the file had downloaded and that he had just started doing his own stuff.. Imagine my surprise when I asked him where on the c: drive my file was and he said "oh sorry I just rebooted it as no one was using it". From that point on ... and maybe this is why I hate users / loosers as much as I do now ... I knew that you should never trust anybody near a keyboard ... esp. people who have no friggin clue what they are doing. Oh yes and this was the time when you use to "book" out computers.
Ok sorry for the rant. Even more sorry for anybody who has got to this point and am still reading. But after 13 years, I really needed to get this off my chest about the only bad experience of kermit I ever had.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
was the whoopy cushion.
that's why I only use internet explorer
But... you surely must know that these 'greatest achievements of mankind' are too far away to be easily updated with latest and greatest software and hardware.
ZModem allowed asynchronous communications which provided faster data transfer rates and better error detection.
The error detection of Zmodem was no better than that of Kermit, AFAICT.
Kermit (the protocol) has lots of tunables. Flipping about four settings that are in the FAQ lets you get transfer rates faster than ZModem. Kermit could be a blazing fast protocol.
Most implementations shipped with defaults that were very fast-- if you had a noisy line. Most protocols would either choke and die on very noisy lines, or would slow to an agonizing crawl. Some gateways would intercept certain control characters, which would make other protocols just plain fail. Kermit, with its defaults, would chug right along, faster than other protocols in these conditions.
But those defaults would slow it down relative to the competition on clean lines with all 8 bits available. After about the 1200 baud days, I think that Kermit should have moved to more modern defaults. Yes, I have personally compared a tuned Kermit to ZModem, and Kermit wins. (Some implementations didn't have any way to tune the defaults, so you were stuck with a lousy performer.)
But nobody cares about speed when you're uploading a new program to a sat. You want reliability, and Kermit is reliable as all get out. Somebody said once that it'll work on little more than two tin cans with a wet string. If you've seen some of the networks that uplink to satellites, you'd probably choke. 7 bits, parts with handshaking and parts without, three or four escape characters at gateways, and sometimes an EBCDIC translator in the middle just to mess with you. Kermit can hack that, and that's why it's ideal for this sort of thing.
Sheesh, if you want an argument to die around here, you've got to complain 'til you're blue in the face.
Or Green....
Don't get me wrong, I'm the biggest NASA advocate, always have supported them, always will...
But I was wondering, especially after President Bush lowered ISS's crewsize from ~7 to 3 (and it's estimated it takes a crew of 3 to simply maintain the station), what exactly has been accomplished scientifically? And yes, I am talking about things ASIDE from an engineering point of view (i.e. I don't mean "NASA/Russia have learned X, Y and Z about contruction in space, keeping space stations safe, etc). I'm wondering about the biological/chemical experiements...
I'm an old bbs nerd, and while it gives me a warm fuzzy reading about Kermit on the space station, it makes me wonder about the actual level of technology up there. What I mean is, why would they need kermit in the first place if not to cobble together a hodgepodge of ill-fitting, obsolete technologies?
and I still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea
All I have to say is Columbia advertises Kermit as their diety-status achievement all the friggin time. It's rather annoying. Um, it's a nice protocol guys, get over yourselves and stop pretending it's the cure to AIDS and purveyor of world peace. I'm like "ok, guys, you're great and all, but upgrade my dorm connection to something a lil' better than 10BaseT, and then we'll talk."
I can see how Kermit might be used on a universal remote control, but I haven't quite figured out what it is used for on a standard mini-fridge.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
CSLIP: Compressed Serial Line Internet Protocol. It's for always!!!
open4free
No you don't.
Kermit is NOT comparable to Zmodem.
It CAN be used as a silly filetransfer-protocol but it is more. It is in fact a fully fledged file-transfer suite, including things like recursive directory transfer, preservation of filepermissions, filedate, scripted transfers, etc. and back on the BBS Days only a small part of Kermit was used.
For DOS BBSs Zmodem or even better, Hydra (you could chat while transfering many files in both directions!) were much better.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
When I used it mid 1980s it was by far the worst human interface I had ever seen for any program out of development. And I've programed in APL and Lisp!
Its only virtue was that once you had a script that worked, you didn't need to understand it anymore; it just worked.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
To this day I love telling newbies (i.e. MS Warriors) about Kermit. "We need Windows for serial connections," they trumpet in Sys Admin huddles. They all get the exact same expression across their faces when they are confronted with *gasp* and alternative to the beloved HyperTerminal. It's like they've lost another notch - another task that doesn't have to be done on Windows.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
eg. "The very foundation of the free software movement no longer exists."
What's good about kermit under the circumstances that can be expected on an connect to/from orbit?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Methinks Slashdotters are showing their age. In the medical industry we were saddled with xmodem and zmodem by the Blues and their little Altos commo servers in the corner of the machine room. Within our own groups we would transfer thru fog, sleet, mud and stone using Kermit w/sliding packet protocol and blow their doors off....I guess Slashdotters grew up and moved on before they found out about slinding packet protocols and using Kermit over TCP/IP
Ahh the memories of being 14....
Eat at Joe's.
Look at everyone coming out of the woodwork with memories of their favorite protocols! I love it!
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.
The Rainbow Connection
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
You wan't to complain? Look at these shoes I've only had em for a week and the soles are worn through
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
THIS IS AN EX-PROTOCOL!!
Please don't confuse Kermit or Zmodem with Xmodem.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
We used a teletype at something like 55 baud to dial in from high school. And we had to include a parameter so we wouldn't use up more than 1 cpu second on a given program. And we used IITRAN, some kind of FORTRAN front-end. And there was no "Computer Science" in those days, no. It was Computer Math. And we liked it that way!
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
set fi ty bi
set fi na li
Oh no! Is this going to become a /. standard now too? This goes right along with...
In Soviet Russia, Kermit transfers you!
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of space stations connected with Kermit...
I, for one, welcome our new green amphibian overlords.
Kill me now.
And lets not forget where we learned how to properly pronounce 'gif' so that so many years later we can correct clueless web designers when they say it wrong.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
Kinda morbid, if you ask me. But still slightly amusing.
I'm disturbed at just how many famous people died on my birthday... Jim Henson, Douglas Adams... it's like May 16th is cursed or something...
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Zmodem allowed asynchronous communications which provided faster data transfer rates and better error detection. In particular, Zmodem supported larger block sizes and enables the transfer to resume where it left off following a communications failure.
The thing that made Zmodem much better than Ymodem,Xmodem-1k or Xmodem was that it would perform CRC checking and would only send a NAK if the CRC was bad. It would then resend the bad block. Much better than sending ACK after ACK for good blocks.
God do I miss the days of Microware's OS-9.
--fatboy
> the old protocol from my BBS days (which was
> scorned in favor of Zmodem) being used on
> the greatest technological achievement of
> humankind."
Cool. Kermit is being used to distribute
The Return of the King? Who woulda thunk it!
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
AFAIK Kermit protocol and Kermit the program are unrelated. Kermit the program supports Kermit the protocol, but I don't know that the two originated in the same place.
grisha.org
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.
...-.-
I don't think Kermit could handl 1K CRC packet sizes, which is really what made Zmodem fail.
The real benefit of Zmodem wasn't just its larger packet sizes, but the resume feature. Wow, that made the life of a BBS warez kid so much better. Leave that download going at 2400bps all night, and if the sysop kicks you off because you were too poor to get that 9600... no matter. Just download later where you left off.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
HS/Link really was an awesome program. There was some other bidirectional protocols out there (i think someone mentioned bimodem), but HS/Link really was fast, slightly faster than zmodem as I recall. It also had a spiffy interface and later versions allowed you to chat!
I do recall the major difference between HS/Link and Bimodem: HS/Link produced much better DSZ logs, so elite BBS software like OBV/2 or Vision-X could record how much and what was actually transferred. I could never get bimodem to work with obv/2 for that reason...
I don't read or respond to AC posts
We use YModem on the station to transfer files to and from the Bar Code Readers that the crew use to handle some of their Inventory Management System tasks.
It's an old DOS based platform that communicates via RF mostly, but there is a serial-cable batch-mode used for updating system files and as a backup to the RF mode.
Those units are Handheld Dolphin units, if anyone's interested.
I'm not dead!
I'm getting better!
I don't want to go on the cart.
I feel fine.
I think I'll go for a walk.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
From your sig:
In The Lord of the Rings, the character of "Elrond" was based on "Agent Smith" from The Matrix.
And we all know who's going to be the G-man in the movie version of Half-life.
"bullsquidsss... are a disease..."
"Welcome to Black Mesa, Mr. Freeman."
"We've been rather busy in your absense, Mr. Anderson"
Oh yes, easiest piece of casting ever.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
eats 150 Megs on my P IV.
Zmodem = FTP
You just wanted to tell us your birthday so we wouldn't forget next year right?
We'll all chip in and get that Ronco thing that's on TV in the middle of the night.
You thought he was bellicose and arrogant, when, in 1958 he said:
"History is on our side: we will bury you."
So much for zmodem, now, eh? EH!?
I, for one, welcome our new Kermit overlords.
The article doesn't specify whether they're using the Kermit protocol, or whether they are using the Kermit protocol to handle a different protocol. I guess the Kermit protocol is well suited to the kind of point-to-point comms required by space missions, but it's not made explicit.
In recent years, the Internet and the World Wide Web have surpassed Kermit as a popular desktop communications tool for "ordinary users," but Kermit continues to be an invaluable asset in more specialized areas, such as the Space Station experiment.
CU's C-Kermit and Kermit95 products support all kinds of protocols. I develop and support a commercial service based around FTP/TLS. We strive to be client-agnostic, but my personal recommendation would usually be Kermit -- it does the protocol right, it doesn't get in the way, and it's extremely scriptable. The support structure is excellent too, even for non-paying users.
The only problem for me is that the full documentation is only available in a book, which is out of print. Bah.
can't even read the output of top properly on your P IV.
Do you know that you *can* configure kermit to have all the features of z-modem? Bigger windows, not escaping anything non-printable, etc... You just had to configure it (if you used the *real* kernit)... Kermit really made a great tool, including executing shell commands on the remote node etc... More like "ftp" or "ssh" than the pure z-modem transfers. But of course, the kermit versions included in most terminal programs sucked a lot...
Zmodem is dead
I use zmodem every day in a production environment, and probably will for several years to come. See, I have to build systems that talk to the IRS and other (state) DORs, over dial-up. Yes, they're working on a VPN solution, but you know, this is the IRS...
They are very concerned about weight requirements on the shuttle/orbiter missions. The less bytes a computer program takes up, the less the overall weight of the spacecraft. I heard they had initally run the system on win2k, but would have needed an extra fuel tank to get it off the launching pad, and there was insufficient bandwidth way up there to keep up with the security updates, so this is why they opted for lighter-weight protocols and applications.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
it's up there with elvis!
if (!signature) { throw std::runtime_error("No sig!"); }
every day
There's nothing wrong with the Good Old Stuff. I'm using Kermit right now to talk to the supervisory processor on a cisco Catalyst 5000 switch via a nearby PeeCee, since we seem to have thrown away all of the honest-to-$DEITY terminals around here. (The Cat 5k can't be attached to our network until I clean out some VLAN settings that could play Hob with our connectivity, so serial is the only option.)
Yep ... I remember Zmodem Moby Turbo.
... who needs error correction in the protocol, that's the *modem's* job :D
The true |-R@dd 1337 shit back in the day was always Ymodem-G though
"Kermit's limited popularity can probably be traced to the complexity of the software. Its support for every weird and/or broken piece of telecommunications gear meant that it had lots of options and tunable parameters."
OTOH that's the reason that Kermit is the *only* thing that will be thought of by people who need to talk to weird/broken gear, and eventually when they need to talk to *any* serial gear. Once I got the Kermit habit, I wouldn't think of using anything else.
Besides, it was soooo nice to have that TOPS-20 command auto-completion stuff on a mere PeeCee. I felt as though anyone who bothered to do that deserved to have his stuff used and appreciated.
Kermit is still doing work for me that can't easily be duplicated by anything else I have. It's not dead, by a long shot. There is more to the world than WWW.
HERE HERE!! Z-modem deserves its place in the Hall of BBSes. Without the resume feature of Z-modem I would be in hell screaming in bloody murder after someone picked up the phone in the house while I was downloading some warez or pr0n!!!
It took me about 36 hours of 14.4 download speeds to get Windows 95 when it was first released before the retail stores had them. I had 25+ disks that contained the installation of Windows 95 and I was the envy of EVERYONE!
GOD BLESS Z-MODEM AND THE USA!! WE WILL MISS YOU!! LONG LIVE TCP/IP!!!
If you hadn't nailed it to the Space Station it'd be pushing up the daisies!
Made me laugh!
-kgj
-kgj
I occasionally use zmodem to transfer files to Unix systems over the serial port through SecureCRT. No network connection? No CDROM? Serial console access? Zmodem time.
So they are using the guy named "Kermit" from the old TV series "Kung Fu: The legend Continues" ? How cool is that! He gets to wear his sunglasses indoors and send data back and forth between NASA and the ISS!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Arguments are down the hall. This is the abuse department.
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
That is a load. I remember changing some settings on kermit and I could get it to cook along aleast as fast as Zmodem if not faster.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
He has a point there, you really can't argue with that.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
No, No, No. Not *dead*. ZModem is *dying*.
Communication system consists of tin cans and string? Kermit to the rescue here, too.
Frank da Cruz was (is) da Bom.
I miss those guys on 7 Watson. Frank, Chris G., Max...
I am the Lorvax, I speak for the machines.
Damn straight! ZModem RAWKED.
Let's reminisce, shall we?
Back in the day, I wrote my own BBS using Turbo Pascal 3.01b (the "b" signifying that I'd patched it myself so it would autoload the error messages file). I coded in support for XModem and YModem as built-in protocols. Then came ZModem and BiModem. I built in the configurable ability to fire off external utilities for file transfers, and suddenly my board was HOT! It had a message board, user logins, user access levels, operator chat, and a text RPG. If you lived in Fremont and remember the WarpBBS, that was mine. I was a BBS operator that rolled his own BBS. I was a GOD!!!
And then came the 'net. More and more the modem sat idle. The message board started going stale. No one wanted the latest DOS game, Windows app cracks, or lo-res monochrome pr0n. No longer did the 28.8 USRobotics Sportster modem twinkle in the night as bits rushed across the copper.
Then came the end. There had been no calls for days. My machine had become no more interesting to the outside world than a street lamp burning on someone else's block. As I stood there mourning my BBS's demise, I'd swear a tumbleweed blew across the screen...
I reached down and hit the power button. The Hercules amber monitor blacked, and the fans whined as they spun down. And then there was silence. A heavy silence that had not been found in that room for months.
Quietly, I wept.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
Yeah, I have to confess to zmodem use too, even over full network connections. It means anywhere you have telnet or ssh access and people have forgotten not to install rz and sz, you can copy files easily and quickly without faffing with ftp or scp. zssh helps a lot.
They're hoping some day we'll find the rainbow connection.