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We control an industrial control system in our building using HyperTerminal (dialing a particular extension number). Now that we are upgrading to Windows 7, I would like to do away with every computer having a modem. (I know that you can get HyperTerminal or a replacement for Windows 7, but it is hard to find modem drivers and there really is no reason to maintain so many analog phone lines.)

I am looking for an application that I can put on one of our webservers (that has a modem) that can emulate HyperTerminal (including saved connections). (The webserver can handle authentication.)

Does such a program already exist or am I on my own?

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  • does the web based terminal need to be windows?
    – Journeyman Geek ♦
    Oct 25, 2012 at 12:24
  • And if it does need to be Windows, 2003 or 2008 (or other)?
    – Dave
    Oct 25, 2012 at 12:25
  • Does not need to be Windows, we have several Ubuntu systems too (and if necessary, I can consider installing something else). Just needs to be accessed through a web browser and needs to be able to dial a modem and show the terminal.
    – yakatz
    Oct 25, 2012 at 16:08

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There's a couple of options. There's quite a lot of web based ssh terminals but very few that support explicitly claim to support telnet. Most of them act as terminals so they would probably use standard linux telnet tools - anyterm pretty much has your situation as a suggested use case, and works with a apache install.

Shellinabox apparetly does telnet as well, since sshterm.com seem to use it for that purpose, and its a standalone server

Both of these are for linux, so may take a bit of hacking if you're running your server on windows.

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Why, why, why?

Seriously, every place I've at with a serious industrial control system uses ancient hardware and software (like modems and hyperterminal), because that's what the industrial machinery's built to communicate with, and it's cheaper to keep using a $5 PCI modem than re-engineer everything to use Ethernet.

So why rock the boat? In a previous life a few years back, we monitored a 9 figure datacenter environment with a Windows 95 whitebox PC, because that's what all the industrial systems were designed to communicate with. Had a bunch of identical spares on the shelf, hourly backups of the system, and when it failed, we popped a new one in its place and dropped an image on it. (Only happened once in ~12 years, which was pretty impressive.)

What you're doing here is trying to create a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. Leave the thing running Windows XP and a modem instead of trying to spend thousands of dollars to do the same thing that you're currently doing for free.

EDIT: Still a bad idea, but if you don't have a choice, I think this is what you're looking for.

The Null-modem emulator (com0com) is a kernel-mode virtual serial port driver for Windows. You can create an unlimited number of virtual COM port pairs and use any pair to connect one COM port based application to another. The HUB for communications (hub4com) allows to receive data and signals from one COM or TCP port, modify and send it to a number of other COM or TCP ports and vice versa.

Still a better/easier idea might be to just buy a PCI modem that comes with Windows 7 drivers, such as this one, this one or countless others. Good luck with that mess, by the way.

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  • It isn't too serious of an industrial control system (although it does control HVAC). I figured that it was easier to ask the more general question rather than explain exactly what system it is. If it matters what the system is, I can probably share.
    – yakatz
    Oct 25, 2012 at 16:11
  • @yakatz What the specific industrial control system is isn't really the point. The point is more that you seem to be going down a path of a lot of effort and expense for what you already have for free. Granted, actual modems make me feel icky too, but sometimes they're the best tool for the job.
    – HopelessN00b
    Oct 25, 2012 at 17:16
  • It is not in my control in this case whether we keep the old XP systems. I am being given Windows 7 systems to put in and I need to find another way to do what we have done before.
    – yakatz
    Oct 25, 2012 at 17:38
  • @yakatz See my edit. Alternately, convince whoever is in charge that they need to start using their brain for something more than keeping their skull from caving in.
    – HopelessN00b
    Oct 25, 2012 at 17:56

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