Hacking a terminal service program?

Bare with me for a minute...

I'm trying to cobble a programmable power terminal together using a Baytech RPC3 that I picked up cheap. The device (not a PC) that will be controlling it can send and receive data but doesn't support any terminal services (i.e. no Telnet) which is how the RPC3 communicates. What I thought I might be able to do is spoof terminal communications by sending/receiving data in the same format that would take place during a telnet session.

I'm a long time VB programmer but know next to nothing about telnet (or any terminal services). My thought was to connect my PC to the RPC3 and telnet in according to their specs. Then monitor the serial port and capture all of the data sent or received, in fact I probably don't need VB to monitor and capture the data but it was the first thing that came to mind. After I have all of the syntax/format whatever you want to call it from the telnet figured out I can program my device to send that data to the RPC3 as needed.


I realize this may be a little out there for the VB forum, but I thought I'd give it a shot. If anyone has insight with vb-telnet and/or vb-serial communication please tell me what you think, how would you start? Does this sound do-able?

Your little projects is definitly doable..

However, you need to put some serious thought into what the terminal will connect through to..

Listed from easy to difficult (relative to personal knowledge)

1) a simple chat app, comunicate between the terminal and PC..

2) Simple Telnet terminal. PC has Inet connection and app simply works as a translator, Inet - RPC3 and vice versa.

3) Dos Cmd session. A little harder, but doable.. However you will have to write code to do all the valid Dos Commands. And an executed app will not run on the terminal, but rather on the PC itself.

4) a FTP (and/or) Web browser. Browse the web and download files. this will require a lot of graphic work, and will only work if you can transfer acctual graphics to the terminal. (If it is a fixed character set terminal.. you could still do FTP)

5) Mirror the windows session. (again only if the terminal has graphic capability's. This is a lot of work, and will require a lot of API work to get the image onto the terminal.

To start it whould be a very good idea to try and get full details on the protocol used on the terminal.. Hooking it up and listening, and poking it with different data (while recording everything) will return plenty for you to work with..

Gremmy...