Atari 8-bit related BBS(s)

[wemichener]

Hello everyone,

 

New to AtariAge but not to Atari computers. I need some help with finding the documents to Carina BBS version 1.0. I have the board up and running on a SX212 phone modem, its working beautifully but the last time my BBS was up was 1985-1987 here in Colorado and I forgot how to do certain things. I intend to put it back up and make it available by dial up. I've looked all over the internet to try and find the docs with no luck so far. The BBS will be running on an Atari 130XE, 20MB ST225N HD attached to a ICD MIO and two 1050 happy drives. Any help finding the docs would be extremely helpful and appreciated.

 

Thanks to all and I look forward to contributing to the forums.

 

Bill

[+bf2k+]

I have docs for 2.6... do you want those?

[wemichener]

bf2k,

 

I appreciate your help on this. If its Carina and not Carina II then yes, it should have similar setup and commands. I'm figuring most of it out, but still have a few kinks I need to work out, otherwise its running flawless.

 

Thanks for your help.

[Triads]

Maybe posting those kinks here could get you some answers

[+bf2k+]

bf2k,

 

I appreciate your help on this. If its Carina and not Carina II then yes, it should have similar setup and commands. I'm figuring most of it out, but still have a few kinks I need to work out, otherwise its running flawless.

 

Thanks for your help.

I suspect the docs I have are Carina 2 (2.6).

[wemichener]

Well I guess if you don't mind send them to me, I'll see if they will help.

[Tillek]

So I notice that I haven't actually posted anything here in awhile.... I'll try to rectify that.....

 

In the meantime, I have added a web telnet client to the STar Fleet HQ web page so that those who want to call but don't have a telnet client setup can enjoy an old school Atari ST BBS.

 

If you're interested.......... http://www.sfhqbbs.org/telnet.php

[+bf2k+]

So I notice that I haven't actually posted anything here in awhile.... I'll try to rectify that.....

 

In the meantime, I have added a web telnet client to the STar Fleet HQ web page so that those who want to call but don't have a telnet client setup can enjoy an old school Atari ST BBS.

 

If you're interested.......... http://www.sfhqbbs.org/telnet.php

 

THAT looks interesting... I tried connecting but the BBS disconnected. I'll try again later!

[Tillek]

I can tell from the status that something crashed. I'll get it back up as soon as I get home from work.

 

Had an issue with logoff maint yesterday but nothing to do with the telnet.

[Tillek]

Ok... got the issue fixed. Had something that was causing issues with the logoff maintenance (totally my fault, so it's fixed now).

 

Didn't have anything to do with the fTelnet client thankfully.

 

I was actually using it most of this evening to catch up on my messages and do some other maintenance, so it's looking pretty solid.

 

This weekend I plan to do some more enhancement of the site and the status (and put the status on the Telnet page so you can see what the system's status is before hitting connect).

 

For the 8-bit SysOps....... I still haven't heard from the author about the ATASCII functionality. Allegedly it can do ATASCII and I can get it so it can do ASCII with a 40 col blue screen (it even does the buzzer!), but when you hit "return" it identifies itself with an ASCII CR and won't do ATASCII mode.

 

However, looking at the code, the functionality should be there, so I'm trying to figure out how to get it working again and see what issues remain to be fixed. We shall see.

[Tillek]

So just a little news.....

 

I finally got my feed for Usenet Newsgroups working on SFHQ... Getting them on the BBS will take a little time since my first group of packets was apparently a rescan and ended up sending me over 120mb of messages.... for only 5 groups.

 

As that is essentially the size of my entire message area (including my Fido/AtariNet and Nest archvies) Jetmaill will be chewing on this for quite some time I'm sure.

 

Which brings me to the question... Obviously I won't keep the entire history on the BBS. (I haven't decided how many messages I'll keep... if you have thoughts... ) But would people like the history made available as a download? (Probably in a package with the LED editor so you can read it on an ST).

 

I wanted to ask because there are obviously many ways to read archived news groups and unless anyone is really interested, I wasn't going to bother (besides keeping it for myself).

 

I'll also be looking into the binary groups to see if there is anything interesting there.

 

If any of you have any suggestions for groups you'd like to see, let me know. I'm only getting ones that seem to have recent activity and I'll be deleting the spam as I read them.

 

At any rate, the BBS will be down for maintenance while I do my HD backups and sort through the initial packets (the ones in the following days were far more reasonably sized). I have no idea how long this will take or when I will start so just bear in mind if you try calling and it's down, you'll know why.

 

Also on the todo list, adding the ability for dialup users to call the BBS. Also have a new battery arriving this week which will be the first step in setting up a solution where I can remotely reset/reboot the Atari and the Lantronix box so that the BBS can be brought back up from a crash faster.

 

Also on the near future list, how many people would be interested in playing LORD or TradeWars on an Atari system?

[+DarkLord]

Just curious about LORD. AFAIK, it was never natively released for the ST

so how were you going to run it?

 

That was a very popular BBS game at one time. In fact people still play it.

 

Thanks.

[Tillek]

Just curious about LORD. AFAIK, it was never natively released for the ST

so how were you going to run it?

 

That was a very popular BBS game at one time. In fact people still play it.

 

Thanks.

Many of the "new fangled" BBSs can't run the dos doors... so they have these game servers that they connect to. I've been looking into it and I can make a gateway that will work on the ST since I have an ethernec also working with the BBS machine.

 

Assuming you have an ethernet adapter you can hook up to your BBS machine, I could get it working for you too.

 

However, I'd have to write the gateway and at this time, I don't know how involved that would be. Right now I'm working on getting the dialup set up for incoming callers... Bought the equipment today and we'll see how it works.

 

After that, I'm going to work on a project to let the BBS notify the webserver of it's status via a web api, which will be much faster than ftping a file with the status information.

 

After that, I'll be working on the games gateway.

 

After that, I'm going to try to see if I can write a "games server" for the Atari 8-bit games, so those can be played by other BBS's.... (But for that I'd have to see if anyone would be interested since if it's just me, I already have Carina running and I would have to see if anyone would even care about the games from other A8 BBS software).

 

And there are other BBS projects I may or may not consider (like re-writing a new version of the fido mailer and/or maybe a new message module for RatSoft) but now that I have time to work on projects, that's my "things I've settled on" and the things that might benefit you and any other ST SysOps as well.

[+DarkLord]

Whew, it all sounds a bit...complicated.

[Tillek]

The funny thing is, it's not all that complicated. Might be a little time consuming... and the hardware won't always cooperate.

 

Like the dial-up thing.... The modem seems to work ok over the Magic-Jack Go.... but it won't send the right ring signal (so I can call out, but not get calls unless I manually answer). So now I have to find a modem that has a b-type ringer. Made more difficult because regardless of all the useless pointless data in the spec sheet, the one thing I need is the REN which they don't put in the documentation I can get access to.

Edited March 21, 2017 by Tillek

[_The Doctor__]

yeah, the ringer equivalency number is pointless because it refers to the load a device puts on a phone line..... and since its not on a real line.... well you get the point... Magic Jack should support at least one full blown ringer device... should not that it does...

I only had luck with Magic Jack when it first came out.... but the lagginess and low speed involved to make it work.... when it was working at later times made it useless.....

 

I went to the fastest modem available at all times... so 300 and 1200 flow was considered slow to me on my Atari... I understood phone bill savings always paid for the modem in months... so I was 300+ flow or embedded protocol 300(believe it or not xm301is) to a ramdisk on the Atari at the start.. I had a 1200 flow lent to me until I bought a 2400 and then it was USR HST and Telebit Trailblazers and that was it...

[Tillek]

yeah, the ringer equivalency number is pointless because it refers to the load a device puts on a phone line..... and since its not on a real line.... well you get the point... Magic Jack should support at least one full blown ringer device... should not that it does...

I only had luck with Magic Jack when it first came out.... but the lagginess and low speed involved to make it work.... when it was working at later times made it useless.....

 

I went to the fastest modem available at all times... so 300 and 1200 flow was considered slow to me on my Atari... I understood phone bill savings always paid for the modem in months... so I was 300+ flow or embedded protocol 300(believe it or not xm301is) to a ramdisk on the Atari at the start.. I had a 1200 flow lent to me until I bought a 2400 and then it was USR HST and Telebit Trailblazers and that was it...

Actually, the NUMBER for the REN is, but sometimes it's also followed by an A, B, (not sure how far it goes and not sure if it's actually the same A/B/C/D typing of the "distinctive ring" spec). It's not just the load, but the letter is the frequency. (I was looking at a site that explained it better, if you care I'll try to find it)... but long story short, I need a B and my current modem is an A (standard old Ma-Bell). Most "modern" phones use the B type ringer (though I don't know what they considered "modern" since I see a lot of 1990's era stuff with B types).

 

I know my FidoNet NC used it (or still does as far as I know) and found it to be acceptable. But let's be honest, as far as calling in to a BBS, many people are cool with 1200-2400. You're not downloading files anymore and people like the "retro" experience. Also, I think sometimes the internet connection is more important than the service itself. Sure, I've heard it called "tragic jack"... and if you have lousy internet, why would it be anything but?

 

Like today. I'm watching the NCAA tournament online because AT&T Uverse and CBS are having a little spat in the Cleveland Ohio market. Every other game in the tournament has been perfect. Even when I'm watching a TBS/TNT/TRU game on the TV. Today, nothing but stutter and the "fuzzy" yo-yo as the quality downgrades and goes back up. The internet is a fickle companion (blah blah ARPANet, blah blah nuclear war, blah blah fault tolerance).

 

At the end of the day, it's a way for hard-core dialuppers to access a telnet incarnation of an old school Atari BBS. When it works, it works... when it doesn't, we'll revive the "buy a Lantronix box" thread.

 

(I mean, if I could actually find someone to install a landline, especially if the price was reasonable, I'd totally do it!).

[Tillek]

Just an FYI that SFHQ will be down the rest of the evening and probably a good chunk of tomorrow as I work on some updates/backups/battery replacement, etc.

 

I'll let you know when it's back up.

[Tillek]

So just an update... SFHQ is still down. I didn't get to things in a timely manner and things kept cropping up.... so it's still transferring tons of files.

 

Just kinda bummed the weekend didn't go as planned.

[Joe Stella]

If there are any Atari 8-bit BBS's out there that run some sort of link (along the lines of Fido or Board sharing), I'd be interested in setting up a node using real hardware.

[Bikerbob]

So just an update... SFHQ is still down. I didn't get to things in a timely manner and things kept cropping up.... so it's still transferring tons of files.

 

Just kinda bummed the weekend didn't go as planned.

 

 

You should put a link in your signature to your BBS.. I would like to call.

 

James

[Tillek]

 

 

You should put a link in your signature to your BBS.. I would like to call.

 

James

bbs.sfhqbbs.org port 5983.

 

And it is up. I actually put it back later that evening.... will have to do some maintenance this weekend though. (I always forget to update my news updates here).

 

Then again, if it's one thing I learned from the multiple threads in the main section, no one new really seems to be reading what we're posting here.

[Tillek]

If there are any Atari 8-bit BBS's out there that run some sort of link (along the lines of Fido or Board sharing), I'd be interested in setting up a node using real hardware.

As far as I ever knew, there weren't any A8 Fido mailers. None of the current A8 BBS's are running any kind of message networking but if I recall there was a discussion on Boot Factory with another former Express SysOp.

 

So the question is, are you looking to set up an Atari BBS, or only if someone is doing message sharing?

[Bikerbob]

Thanks for not putting a dash in your URL - I have no terminal program that can do a dash.

 

James

[Tillek]

Thanks for not putting a dash in your URL - I have no terminal program that can do a dash.

 

James

Always glad to help.

 

Then again, you can always atdt blah.blah-blah.com can't you? As long as you can get into terminal mode... I know it works in ICE-T.

 

I never used the dialing directory anyway since I have a file with the addresses and user/passwords.