technical description

T42 is our Win32 implementation of unix ntalk protocol.

Here is a brief summary of T42 features:

• Supports multihomed machine (ie. accepts connections and issues requests on all interfaces)
• Has a sleep function — you will be notified in case of activity in a backgrounded window
• Your personal secretary will record missed calls akin to answering machine
• Designed to be compatible with our TFTP server and client PumpKIN, for exchanging files with your party while having a talk session
• Can run in background, taking up a 256 pixels of screen nicely packed as a 16x16 square in your notification tray area
• Open source for those willing to add missing features, fix bugs and examine code for potential flaws and fun
• You’re free to torture it the way you want to as long as you preserve original author’s credentials
• It would cost you nothing unless you’re willing to monetarily express your gratitude and make a donation

Whenever you want to talk to your alter ego who is 5000 miles and 15 hops away or next door, all you need is to invoke T42 and enter his or her IP address:

Once you click the “OK” button your party will be notified of incoming request (provided there is an ntalk-compatible daemon running. of course there is a T42 on the other side!):

Now that we’re invited to the party we can chose whether we want to accept invitation, decline it or divert the call to our personal secretary. Luckily for the purpose of this demonstration, callee wasn’t around and we got to talk to the secretary:

After having a cup of coffe outdoors, one can check if there are messages left: