TNT, the hostmode terminal program, requires a TNC supporting the WA8DED hostmode. However, in some cases this is not always possible and in particular when -

• the TNC or PR-controller firmware is not compatible to the WA8DED-hostmode, but supports the KISS mode
• the interface is not connected to a radio modem, but a TCP/IP-based connection on the local area network or Internet.
• TNT and DPBox are directly connected to a digipeater using KISS mode.

This is were TFKISS comes to the rescue. In fact, TFKISS is a port of the original TheFirmware by NORD><LINK, written for TNC2 hardware. The low level interfaces were changed and adapted to the unix-like environment. On the radio side a KISS and AXIP interface take the place of the HDLC/modem interface. The host connection is changed to a direct console interface for the terminal mode and a socket interface for TNT and other applications.

NetBSD support was added in February 1999 with the release of TFKISS-1.0.1. The current version is TFKISS-1.2.4 and has since seen a major source code cleanup eliminating a vast number of compiler warnings and several source code bug fixes.

The current version of TFKISS supports the following operating systems and hardware platforms

TFKISS is expected to run on Linux-AXP and Solaris-Intel platforms. Please send a short report to wulf@ping.net.au should you run TFKISS on a platform not listed above.

The last stable version is TFKISS-1.2.4 released on 1 September 2001.

TFKISS Stable Releases - Source Code

    tfkiss-1.2.4.tar.gz     SHA1=4bf8afb539fd155a86de439554f1b5b0ffd45343
    

    Note for NetBSD users: TFKISS is now part of the NetBSD packages
    collection ham/tfkiss. For more information visit
    http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/software/packages.html
    

TFKISS is closely related to TNT and hence the easiest way in staying informed and receiving support is by subscribing to one of TNT's mailing lists. These mailing lists don't generate much traffic so it is quite save to give it a try. The following lists are available:

     tnt-announce    - Important announcements about TFKISS

     tnt-devel       - A forum for new ideas and developments

     tnt-bugs        - A forum for reporting bugs found in TFKISS
  

To subscribe to any of the above lists, send an email to majordomo@excelsior.kullen.rwth-aachen.de and add a line with the following syntax into the message body:

    subscribe <LIST>

    where <LIST> is one of the above mailing lists.
  

Alternatively, the maintainers can be contacted by email

    Berndt Josef Wulf  - Co-author and port maintainer for NetBSD

    Hans Mayer         - Co-author and port maintainer for Solaris

    Matthias Hensler   - Co-author and port maintainer for Linux