_The Doctor__ Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 (edited) Metallikat as well as Pickens did a good deal of work on Pro... some folks used to take credit for their work after changing just a a byte or two of code.... then they slapped their name alongside or completely over theirs as well Edited April 8, 2019 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 What's the highest version anybody runs ? I thought it was this 5.0b, but now I hear there's a 7.0 ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 The highest version I have seen is 7.2d. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 (edited) 5.0b is straight up express with all the early players in the mix afaik, the 7.xx stuff is the modified modules and bbs.com as tcpip incarnation, probably with more checks to make sure you are running this DOS or that, ... some IP aware waitcalls, and the phone slot hacked to and ip slot. that sort of stuff. Of course this is all theory. Edited April 8, 2019 by _The Doctor__ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 Ok, so 5.0b is as good as any place to start. Well I've mostly disassembled the bbs kernel, and it's really stupid. Essentially there are two bbs systems, one written to support Action! and the other supports assembler. There's duplicates of all sort of routines. For example there are two checks to see if a carrier is still present. Version 1 checks for a carrier, and returns either 1 or zero for the status. Routine 2 checks for a carrier and if there isn't one, then logs the user off. Now you would think routine 2 would call routine 1, and if the result is zero, boot the user off. No, it completely re-implements the carrier status check part, it just leaves out the zero or 1 return code. This sort of thing is all over, in fact the two sets of routines are often right beside each other. Madness. I thought before 1/3 of the space was wasted. I'm almost to the point where I think half the code space is wasted, there's just so much rubbish and duplication. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 (edited) One could have hoped the the assembler parts where for speed and efficiency and the action parts would have been to help people more easily write their own modules, games, cool little atascii graffiti walls etc... just little flourishes to customize and change things up across the seasons. Why it wouldn't just let the action call access things in a more direct fashion is as good a guess as any.... checking for a dropped carrier helps the bbs know the user is gone and cycle the bbs more quickly, Only reason I could think of would be that timing was so tight they would look for a carrier and then when they see on jump to the r: in out section and only check to see if it dropped cutting out the other cycles and bits etc.... but that doesn't seem to be the case.... It's quite dizzy in there. Logging off and being asked to leave feedback and are you sure you want to got etc etc.. was something some folks didn't like so they just hung up rather than exiting the bbs the proper way. We added a quick hang up to our board back then. So you hand up the normal way with all goodbye messages etc. or the quick way. Some folks still dropped carrier and the BBS would have to time out... looking for CD drop fixed that... Anyhow, it sure can be improved that's for sure. Edited April 8, 2019 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 I don't use any Atari BBS's these days but the odd one on the C64 and thankfully people are encouraged to leave feedback before logging off and NOT dropping carrier....Warnings if that is done.. Just such a lazy practice...Manners of a womprat! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 Puzzling over some of the translation stuff. What's IGS, C64 mode ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tillek Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 I don't use any Atari BBS's these days but the odd one on the C64 and thankfully people are encouraged to leave feedback before logging off and NOT dropping carrier....Warnings if that is done.. Just such a lazy practice...Manners of a womprat! A) - TRAITOR!!! B) - I would think that encouraging people to leave feedback before logging off would encourage people to drop carrier... at least in the Atari "community". Half the time they can't even be bothered to say "hi" when creating a new account when the email editor pops up. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 CGS - color graphics system.... C64- mode?? oh noes commode door character translation ??/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 (edited) A) - TRAITOR!!! B) - I would think that encouraging people to leave feedback before logging off would encourage people to drop carrier... at least in the Atari "community". Half the time they can't even be bothered to say "hi" when creating a new account when the email editor pops up. Haha, yeah, thats me. If IGS isnt the C64, then who is it? I was just guessing, I dont recognize the acronym. Edited April 8, 2019 by Alfred Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 be funny if it were tektronics IGS... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tillek Posted April 8, 2019 Share Posted April 8, 2019 Maybe the old Instant Graphics (IG?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted April 8, 2019 Author Share Posted April 8, 2019 Yeah, I dunno. So CGS is apparently some scheme Tom Hunt came up with. Google doesn't seem to find anything about I.G. Color. I would say forget about them, since it doesn't seem like anybody can use them today. So that would leave Atascii, Ascii, Ansi and VT52 as possible translations modes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 CGS was pretty cool, a number of BBS used it, I bet AA has threads about it from old sysops Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 Is there a a plugin for BobTerm for this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tillek Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 Is there a a plugin for BobTerm for this? Yeah, that's a pretty good point. It really doesn't matter what options are "out there"... It's a question of what terminal programs support them and whether anyone uses them (or if they still exist). Generally speaking, I'm not going to switch terminal programs to just call one BBS unless it's epic. Which also calls into the question of editors. If there is a term that does CGS, but no easy editor... well, SysOps won't make screens, so who cares? That is the question that should dictate what to support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 IIRC, CGS is better than ANSI, so I would like to promote it, once we re-discover its capabilities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnPolka Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 Maybe the old Instant Graphics (IG?) That would have been cool if it supported Instant Graphics! I actually had plans to support Instant Graphics on my Pro! BBS back in the day. I believe my BBS still has a test message I posted several years ago that contains Instant Graphics. -JP 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted April 9, 2019 Author Share Posted April 9, 2019 Instant Graphics appears to be an ST feature, so there’s presumably never been an 8 bit client. I’m inclined to toss everything but Atascii and ASCII until something was working. Then I would maybe look into these other protocols. I really don’t think there will be too many ST users calling 8 bit BBS systems. We need either the doc on these protocols or I can give somebody some code to look at to see if they can puzzle it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 I would like to see all of this ridiculous encryption removed. This is absolutely disgusting. I attempted to run 5.0b and it of course complained. I reverted back to 4.0, and now I am getting errors about not being able to write data. There are MANY free sectors on the drive. What did 5.0 do to my board? It trashed Networking, as well. Same error, can't write. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyle22 Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 ANSI works well for me. ASCII/ATASCII/ANSI would suit me fine. I like the ability to add CGS. The software and documentation are difficult to find, though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alfred Posted April 9, 2019 Author Share Posted April 9, 2019 Well I have the BBS_50B mostly done, I just need to do a pass through to check it’s clean and assembly produces a match to the existing binary. After that it’s just a matter of doing all the command files, each of which takes a couple hours or so. At that point I should have a clean, unlocked 50B to work with. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 (edited) I have it it's not hard to find The Resistance is DOWN... Edited April 9, 2019 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted April 9, 2019 Share Posted April 9, 2019 A) - TRAITOR!!! B) - I would think that encouraging people to leave feedback before logging off would encourage people to drop carrier... at least in the Atari "community". Half the time they can't even be bothered to say "hi" when creating a new account when the email editor pops up. Guilty as charged on A. To be fair the BBS system has long been encouraged on the C64 where its more reserved on the Atari...... As for B. ,again that seems to be an Atari thing for the most part (NOT totally) and yes you will always get the 'can't be bothered' folk but in general its more pushed on the more active BBS systems on the C64 to be a little more polite but you still get folk doing it there. I personally see any access to a BBS as what it is, a privilege, so follow the rules but then again I'm a large user of the BBS systems as I can chat to whoever on other forums without the BUSY issue In general we all need to treat the folks who run the BBS systems with the respect they deserve or just watch that era fade away......The good old way can be as much fun as the new fangled stuff but the wish for instant communication also has a part to play and its as important.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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