VT52 ANSI and Atasci

[Bikerbob]

Hello all. 

 

For my BBS I want to try and suppost I guess 4 types of terminals

 

ACSI - basic text

ANSI - 16 colour graphics

VT52 - Atari ST graphics 

Atasci - for the 8-bit guys.

 

Now ACSI is just basic text.. no issues 

 

ANSI - I would love it if anyone could supply template type screens, or screens from other sources that I could play with and modify. I also would like to get FANSI and if you know a good PC ANSI editor I could try that as well.

 

VT52 - seems to be the biggest hurdle. No good editor that I know of.. ANyone have a good screens I could play with??

 

Atasci - FoReM does this emu built in.. but I would not mind formating for the 8-bit.. aka 40col screens and menus. Right now doors do not work in Atasci emu mode.

 

James

[+DarkLord]

Okay, here is FANSI. Included inside the PICS_FAN folder is

13 templates that you should be able to fool around with and

get a general idea about what you are doing.

 

I'm also putting up a ZIP file with some VT52 examples from

DarkForce in it. You can see just what you're getting into when

you do VT52 screens by hand (that's what I did). 

 

FANSI.ZIP

 

VT52EXAM.ZIP

 

Hope this helps...

 

[Tillek]

Honestly, back in the day I made the decision to skip VT52 since there was really only one other ST user in Akron and most of the ST users preferred ANSI, so I focused on cool ANSI screens. (Yeah, the lack of a good editor for VT52 and having FANSI was a major factor too).

 

So the question is, should we even worry about it?  I put some basic "edited ascii" screens in, but that was mostly at the suggestion of one person who doesn't even call anymore.

 

If you want to do it, I'd probably consider it last priority.  Speaking as one ST user... I'm going to always call ANSI.  I only really use AnsiTerm on the ST anyway or I'm using SyncTerm.

 

[Tillek]

As for template screens.... I'd just do a search on ANSI graphics... you can easily find them on the net.

 

[Android8675]

My bbs (running Synchronet) has a check for ATASCII. It was a work in progress. Basically you just ask the user to press enter before logging in. Since ATASCII responds with a non-standard enter command, if my board receives that character then it "activates" ATASCII mode.

Originally I had planned to make it once logged in the bbs would rlogin the user over to an actual Atari 8-bit.

 

I still have the logon.js I modified to do it, but there've been so many updates since I stopped futsing with it. My board is neglected at the moment, mainly because it's running so well on Linux now that I rarely have to check it, but I wouldn't be shocked if it's been hacked and someone has tied it into my home security camera network. :P

[+DarkLord]

Can't argue with the lack of support for VT52. I like it and use it but certainly

not because it's easy to work with, coding manually <rolls eyes>. In my case

most of DarkForces's VT52 screens are in place and have been for quite some

time. It's not like starting over or starting fresh with a recently launched BBS.

 

So yeah, if I were starting fresh I'd probably consider that a low priority as

well...

 

My connect script has an auto-detect for ANSI. It works great.

 

'Nix is great. Use Kubuntu here on my laptop. If you do get hacked it's probably

another linux user so I'd say you're in good hands...