BBS systems on 8bits

[Atari-Jess]

Quick question, I know that high-res text mode native on the majority of 8bits was 40x24/25 whatever, but my question is, how many BBSes were IN that resolution?

 

did programs "fake" a width of 80 by using a graphic mode to make the text thinner?

 

Or were there just, 40 width bbses and 80 width bbses

 

(using time frames helps also)

 

appreciated.

[Goochman]

The Apple BBS's tended to be 80char - the Atari and C= ones 40 char (prior to the ST)

 

I believe some of th eApple BBS's offered 40/80 char mode, but 40chars in the early 80's was not an unusal thing.

[kevin242]

Quick question, I know that high-res text mode native on the majority of 8bits was 40x24/25 whatever, but my question is, how many BBSes were IN that resolution?

 

did programs "fake" a width of 80 by using a graphic mode to make the text thinner?

 

Or were there just, 40 width bbses and 80 width bbses

 

(using time frames helps also)

 

appreciated.

887442[/snapback]

 

Im not sure what you mean. Just because the computer is in 40 columns doesn't

mean you cannot deliver text in 80 columns. I ran a bbs back in the 80's (on and off)

on my 130xe and I offered 80 column's as well as ANSI, despite the fact there was

no easy way to display either on an 8bit.

[Atari-Jess]

Its just that a lot of text is formatted for specific widths

 

I've seen more text files built for 80 width than I have 40.

 

But that wasn't my point, I just wanted to know if BBS packages on the 8bits really just went and displayed in 40 as they were able to.

 

Which apparently they did

[yuppicide]

I had a Commodore 64 and it looked HORRIBLE in 80 cols. It was meant to display 40 and with certain software you were able to change into 80 cols, but it looked like pure crap and was hard to read.

 

I've ran a crapload of software for my C64 on up to my PC.. I don't even remember all the names.. some of them were elite release only, so not everyone could use them.

 

For the PC I remember using Renegade, Wildcat, PCBoard.

 

For the Commodore I can't remember one of them for the life of me! LOL! I wish this one BBS was still around. I don't remember the name, but it was in Pennsylvania. I used to call all the time and trade files. I even wrote some ANSi animated cartoons. They were drawn pretty crappy, but the guy put them on his website along with the others.

 

I was in a few ANSi/ASCii art groups and you can still find our work online.. I am just kind of sad they have every art pack of mine but one. I had it on a ZIP DISK and the disk went bad.

[Bill Lange]

I remember using AMIS and Antic's BBCS when I was a kid.

 

Is there an archive of Atari 8-bit BBS software anywhere?

 

Bill

[Mindfield]

I don't know of any that were capable of running in an 80 column mode, but as far as I know they all offered the option to callers. I ran (and beta tested) Oasis BBS back in the day, and it certainly offered 80 columns. On my end it would just wrap the text every other line (since local display was still 40 cols)

[Xebec's Demise]

I used to have 80 columns on my Atari 8-bit and used it to connect to BBSs. It was not a graphical or font hack, but instead a hardware card. There were usually settings for 80 columns on BBSs.

 

I have one in storage.

 

It's an XEP80.

 

I used to use Bobterm with it, but I am not sure if that was the one that supported 80 columns or not. It seems like there was another I used also, but I don't recall the name.

 

Edited July 8, 2005 by Xebec's Demise

[Bill Lange]

I just found this site that lists tons of BBS software for multiple systems including the Atari 8-bit.

 

It has screen shots, documentation and the software.

 

http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/

 

Bill

[Atari-Jess]

Another quick question

 

colour text, I know its around, but did the 8bits have it through the 80s?

[mos6507]

Another quick question

 

colour text, I know its around, but did the 8bits have it through the 80s?

889510[/snapback]

 

The Atari can't do color text the way the C= can.

 

The C= can actually do a passable attempt at ANSI graphics.

 

The C=128 also has a dedicated 80 column mode.

 

The Atari can do a workable VT100 emulation with things like FlickerTerm80 and ICE-T. I used to use FlickerTerm this with ANSI BBSs or telnetting to ANSI MUDs since ANSI is like a superset of VT100 control codes.

 

Soft fonts that ran in mode 8 were equally slow because of the overhead of blitting to graphics memory. ICE-T I guess overcame that with clever programming but at the time I was still using my 8-bit FlickerTerm80 was state of the art because it used alternating 4-bit character sets.

 

The XEP-80 sucked because it interfaced through the joystick port and the datarate was limited to something like 2400 baud. Once people started using faster modems, that became a bottleneck.

 

If Atari had come out with the 1090XL card cage expansion then one of the cards on it would have been an 80 column card. I've never seen the 80 column cards that slide into the Atari800 but supposedly they were very good. They must be really rare.

[Mindfield]

I just found this site that lists tons of BBS software for multiple systems including the Atari 8-bit. 

 

It has screen shots, documentation and the software.

 

http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/

 

Bill

888172[/snapback]

 

Jeez, I forgot about that guy. He was supposed to be coming out this way to interview me and a friend or two for his documentary, but never did. Looks like he finally got it all committed to DVD.

[Atari-Jess]

Ive watched it, its fantastic!

[Curt Vendel]

The Bit-3 80 Column cards for the 800's are wonderful, I have 2 800's with them and they are really good, I used to run my BBS in 80 columns with them, between them, RDOS, and Basic XL I squeezed out something like 8-9K extra memory to use on my BBS, plus using the Enter command to overwrite sections of the BBS software allowed for "modules" and made my BBS much bigger, Basic XL's enter command was flaky, so I found myself rebooting often, but such were the woe's of running an 8bit BBS :-)

 

When you ran the Bit-3 with Basic XL, (the reason I don't recall right now) the card gave you 52K total useable memory because the board had 4K of its own memory as well...

 

I never got to see a working Austin-Franklin 80 column RGB board, but they were supposed to have psuedo ansi capabilities.

 

cyber1.org is running a backend simulation of the old CDC Plato Network, if you have a copy of the Atari Homelink Plato software, you can sign up and dial into it and experience what Plato was like, basically it was the features of todays Internet and Instant Messaging in the 70's and 80's

 

 

Curt

 

Another quick question

 

colour text, I know its around, but did the 8bits have it through the 80s?

889510[/snapback]

 

The Atari can't do color text the way the C= can.

 

The C= can actually do a passable attempt at ANSI graphics.

 

The C=128 also has a dedicated 80 column mode.

 

The Atari can do a workable VT100 emulation with things like FlickerTerm80 and ICE-T. I used to use FlickerTerm this with ANSI BBSs or telnetting to ANSI MUDs since ANSI is like a superset of VT100 control codes.

 

Soft fonts that ran in mode 8 were equally slow because of the overhead of blitting to graphics memory. ICE-T I guess overcame that with clever programming but at the time I was still using my 8-bit FlickerTerm80 was state of the art because it used alternating 4-bit character sets.

 

The XEP-80 sucked because it interfaced through the joystick port and the datarate was limited to something like 2400 baud. Once people started using faster modems, that became a bottleneck.

 

If Atari had come out with the 1090XL card cage expansion then one of the cards on it would have been an 80 column card. I've never seen the 80 column cards that slide into the Atari800 but supposedly they were very good. They must be really rare.

889619[/snapback]

[Dr. Van Thorp]

Yes, there was terminal software that would make 40-column machines like C=64 and Atari 8-bit display eighty columns of text. My experience was only with the C=64 software.

 

This software displayed eightly columns on the hi-res screen by displaying 4x8 pixel characters. On a TV set, the little half-size characters looked like blurry mush, but on a good monochrome monitor, it was completely readable.

 

Funny thing about 4x80 pixel fonts. This is enough room to make some letters readable. E's, F's, R's, etc, could be made recognizable, but the designer of the font would have to cheat a little on letters like M and W. Sometimes a single letter by itself would be unrecognizable, but when you saw it in a word with other letters, you had no problem reading it.

 

The terminal software seemed to be able to display 80-column text as fast as my 1200 baud modem could download it. The only delays occured when the cursor reached the bottom of the screen, and the text needed to scroll. It would take maybe a half second or a second for all the graphics to be moved up eight pixels.

[hunter44102]

Yes, there was terminal software that would make 40-column machines like C=64 and Atari 8-bit display eighty columns of text. My experience was only with the C=64 software.

 

On the Atari 8-Bit, I used a program called OMNICOM. It supported many protocols, and had a great 80 column emulation. I couldn't afford a color monitor, but used it on a Black and White TV and it looked very crisp and readable (contrast / brightness).

 

My friend used it on his Color Commodore 1702? monitor and it looked great also.

 

I used it as my primary program for dial-up to the 80 column and Unix BBS's.

[Mindfield]

Yes, there was terminal software that would make 40-column machines like C=64 and Atari 8-bit display eighty columns of text. My experience was only with the C=64 software.

 

On the Atari 8-Bit, I used a program called OMNICOM. It supported many protocols, and had a great 80 column emulation. I couldn't afford a color monitor, but used it on a Black and White TV and it looked very crisp and readable (contrast / brightness).

 

My friend used it on his Color Commodore 1702? monitor and it looked great also.

 

I used it as my primary program for dial-up to the 80 column and Unix BBS's.

890967[/snapback]

 

I tried Omnicom. Aside from the 80-column support (which artifacted like hell on a TV set) the only reason I ever used it was because it had the cool feature of being able to display RLE pictures online in GR.8 artifact mode.

[Retro Rogue]

Not to splinter the thread, but

 

cyber1.org is running a backend simulation of the old CDC Plato Network, if you have a copy of the Atari Homelink Plato software, you can sign up and dial into it and experience what Plato was like,

 

Well, what the scaled down home interfaces pimped out to home computers in the early 80's was like. Plato was designed with a certain interface in mind (touchscreen plasma), and a goal of a high response time, something 300 baud dialup on a limited graphics home pc just doesn't cut.

 

Check out this article for more info.

 

basically it was the features of todays Internet and Instant Messaging in the 70's and 80's

 

Instant messages, online multiplayer graphical games, etc. And in the 60's, 70's and 80's.

Edited July 15, 2005 by wgungfu

[mos6507]

One of the last cool things to happen in the Atari 8-bit BBS scene was the creation of Atari-specific downloadable graphics. Tom Hunt wrote the Color Graphics System in the early 90s. Basically it was like a vector display language that allowed you to plot and fill to the client display to draw very low-bandwidth images, but better stuff than ATASCII images.

 

I tried beta testing this with him a few times and was very impressed to watch it draw trees and stuff.

 

When I was testing it with him it was still kinda buggy and when you combine that with a dwindling Atari8 userbase, he lost interest and abandoned it.

[+DarkLord]

One of the last cool things to happen in the Atari 8-bit BBS scene was the creation of Atari-specific downloadable graphics.  Tom Hunt wrote the Color Graphics System in the early 90s.  Basically it was like a vector display language that allowed you to plot and fill to the client display to draw very low-bandwidth images, but better stuff than ATASCII images.

 

I tried beta testing this with him a few times and was very impressed to watch it draw trees and stuff.

 

When I was testing it with him it was still kinda buggy and when you combine that with a dwindling Atari8 userbase, he lost interest and abandoned it.

892681[/snapback]

 

I've not seen this, but it makes me thing of IG for the ST line. IG, "Instant Graphics" was a super cool mode, kinda like a super VT52 subset. Even did sounds.

 

I actually beta-tested it on my BBS once, way back in 95/96 or so. I had an animated graphic of a dinosaur stomping his way across the screen from one side to the other, complete with footstep sounds, followed by some text, "DarkForce! - The Monster BBS!" or something like that. A few BBSs used it, one pretty big one in England, but it was a little buggy and never really caught on. I wish it had - done right it rocked hard.

 

See ya.

[doctorclu]

One of the last cool things to happen in the Atari 8-bit BBS scene was the creation of Atari-specific downloadable graphics.  Tom Hunt wrote the Color Graphics System in the early 90s.  Basically it was like a vector display language that allowed you to plot and fill to the client display to draw very low-bandwidth images, but better stuff than ATASCII images.

 

I tried beta testing this with him a few times and was very impressed to watch it draw trees and stuff.

 

When I was testing it with him it was still kinda buggy and when you combine that with a dwindling Atari8 userbase, he lost interest and abandoned it.

892681[/snapback]

 

I've not seen this, but it makes me thing of IG for the ST line. IG, "Instant Graphics" was a super cool mode, kinda like a super VT52 subset. Even did sounds.

 

I actually beta-tested it on my BBS once, way back in 95/96 or so. I had an animated graphic of a dinosaur stomping his way across the screen from one side to the other, complete with footstep sounds, followed by some text, "DarkForce! - The Monster BBS!" or something like that. A few BBSs used it, one pretty big one in England, but it was a little buggy and never really caught on. I wish it had - done right it rocked hard.

 

See ya.

898574[/snapback]

 

 

Do you still have that? I would fire up my TT030 to log onto your BBS if you were to have more specialized features like that!

 

I've seen that you have "Modem music" on Dark Forces. Was going to ask you what they was all about, and what I would need on a ST/TT to run those?

 

To me, what makes Atari BBS'ing both past and CURRENT awesome is the special things that you can do in Atari mode.

 

ATASCII graphics and art, Breaktype movies, and other features to me are what make a Atari BBS unique and worth running.

 

My goal is to make Atari BBS's such a unique experience that you want to see them in their native modes.

[+DarkLord]

  Do you still have that?  I would fire up my TT030 to log onto your BBS if you were to have more specialized features like that! 

 

    I've seen that you have "Modem music" on Dark Forces.  Was going to ask you what they was all about, and what I would need on a ST/TT to run those?

 

    To me, what makes Atari BBS'ing both past and CURRENT awesome is the special things that you can do in Atari mode.

 

    ATASCII graphics and art, Breaktype movies, and other features to me are what make a Atari BBS unique and worth running.

 

      My goal is to make Atari BBS's such a unique experience that you want to see them in their native modes. 

898856[/snapback]

 

I don't have it setup on my BBS right now. It was buggy and interest in it died away pretty fast when there was no updates/bug fixes. I'm not sure if I actually have it archived in the file section or not. I'll have to take a look.

 

Modem Music was pretty cool too. It had a small ACC that the caller used to access the various songs listed on DarkForce. Pick a song, and the ACC would play it through the speaker on your modem. Thats the key though, it requires a modem with a speaker. Telnet access kinda rules that out. I left that section up for historical sake... That ACC has never been updated as far as I know. I guess I could take a look at the docs and see if we could contact the original author? I dunno, he'd have to rewrite it for telnet access and then have it play the song through the STs speaker. Seems more trouble than its worth. It was a very cool oddity, when it worked through the modems speaker.

 

See ya! :-)

[doctorclu]

  Do you still have that?  I would fire up my TT030 to log onto your BBS if you were to have more specialized features like that! 

 

    I've seen that you have "Modem music" on Dark Forces.  Was going to ask you what they was all about, and what I would need on a ST/TT to run those?

 

    To me, what makes Atari BBS'ing both past and CURRENT awesome is the special things that you can do in Atari mode.

 

    ATASCII graphics and art, Breaktype movies, and other features to me are what make a Atari BBS unique and worth running.

 

      My goal is to make Atari BBS's such a unique experience that you want to see them in their native modes. 

898856[/snapback]

 

I don't have it setup on my BBS right now. It was buggy and interest in it died away pretty fast when there was no updates/bug fixes. I'm not sure if I actually have it archived in the file section or not. I'll have to take a look.

 

Modem Music was pretty cool too. It had a small ACC that the caller used to access the various songs listed on DarkForce. Pick a song, and the ACC would play it through the speaker on your modem. Thats the key though, it requires a modem with a speaker. Telnet access kinda rules that out. I left that section up for historical sake... That ACC has never been updated as far as I know. I guess I could take a look at the docs and see if we could contact the original author? I dunno, he'd have to rewrite it for telnet access and then have it play the song through the STs speaker. Seems more trouble than its worth. It was a very cool oddity, when it worked through the modems speaker.

 

See ya! :-)

898895[/snapback]

 

Used the modem speakers? Truily "modem music".

 

That reminds me of the Atari 400/800 and how you would have "stereo" playing the internal speaker and monitor speaker.

 

Or on the C=64 when they had the floppy drive rev to different speeds to play music. Many C=64 users were scarred by the noises their 1541 floppy was making and promptly stopped this program, but it was there non the less.

 

Hey, let's get back to what Curt was talking about...

 

"cyber1.org is running a backend simulation of the old CDC Plato Network, if you have a copy of the Atari Homelink Plato software, you can sign up and dial into it and experience what Plato was like, basically it was the features of todays Internet and Instant Messaging in the 70's and 80's

 

 

Curt"

 

Hey Curt, sorry I did not notice this the first time around. But this really exciting.

 

I would love current Atari users to have a serive like this, and would love to see what it is like. Where can you get a copy of the Plato software?

[Jeff Lodoen]

I would love current Atari users to have a serive like this, and would love to see what it is like.  Where can you get a copy of the Plato software?

 

You don't need the Atari software. The site offers terminal simulators for several platforms. (Win, OSX, Linux and Java)