Telnet BBS woes

[Pinacolada]

Hey, all. I'm new at this, bitten by the telnet BBS bug ever since I saw Bo Zimmerman's article long ago. Never had the resources until now to set things up the way I wanted them to. Now I've got a cable connection and wireless Internet into my bedroom. ;D

I'm running Image BBS (tried both with stock BBS files and 19.2k mods) and had various trials and tribulations setting it up. This is a board I ran in a small town about 10 years ago, mostly intact except for the message bases and file transfer areas. Pretty heavily modified, actually, but that's half the fun... or maybe half the problem.

My problem is this: I was using a cobbled-together cable connection between my C128/T232 system, but switched yesterday to an actual factual 9-pin Radio Shack RS232 cable with null modem adapter setup. The board consistently drops characters, even at 300/1200 baud. Had it briefly working at 9600, but for the most part, using both Leif's BBS Server and Tommy Watt's BBSLink programs; so far, no joy. I've been in pretty constant contact with Tommy and we're really not sure where the fault lies.

I'm running Win ME on the "bridge" computer, have gone into COM port properties in the Device Manager, set the port to 9600 baud and hardware flow control. File transfers seem to work okay using NovaTerm's ZMODEM transfer, could it be the BBS software itself? More likely it's me just checking or unchecking boxes with no real clear concept of what's right and what's not...

I've tried to get other BBS's like C-Net 128 and Centipede to work, but they consistently crash or refuse to boot or all manner of strange things.

It seems I may have forgotten more than I ever knew about BBS'ing. I must say the BBS's I've visited in the past few weeks are great, and I'm really champing at the bit to get mine up. I've put lots of time and effort into modding Image and I do like it a lot.

Any brainiacs out there with a smidgen of help for a silly sysop?

- Ryan

[Dr. Video/ADDiXiON]

Make sure the com port is set at the same baud rate as your modem interface. Turn off hardware flow control unless you're going over 2400 - set it to none. Give that a try.

It's funny, everyone is having trouble right now - me, rick, and Mike (God blew his DSL modem up for being bad).

Just hang in there, please don't give up, and please tell Tommy not to give up.

I have some more tricks to try with my system, but life is really getting in the way right now, I've got to finish setting up some account software at home for my investments, but after that I should have some more time.

Jeff

[Pinacolada]

Okay, I'll try setting flow control to none (that's what you mean, right? If you're going over 2400 baud set it to none). I've also matched baud rates for the 128 and "bridge" computers -- if you don't, you get nothing but garbage on screen, so that was figured out pretty quickly.

Don't know whether you've ever run Image, so this may make no sense to you, but another thing Tommy said worked for him is to basically force a 14.4 connection by setting the variable QB to 14400 in lines 990-994, and issuing a &,41,5 command (this is apparently what sets the baud rate to 9600 instead of 14.4k... maybe I should try &,41,6 instead...)

I'll tinker with it some more later today. Thanks for your suggestion; I'm not giving up, and Tommy told me about his plans for BBSLink 2.0.0 -- sounds pretty nifty.

Yes, I've noticed a lot of people having trouble lately. Rather disheartening. Hope everyone gets their BBS's up and running and we can all be a big happy family. ;D

- Ryan

[Riktronics]

Pinacolada said:

Don't know whether you've ever run Image, so this may make no sense to you, but another thing Tommy said worked for him is to basically force a 14.4 connection by setting the variable QB to 14400 in lines 990-994, and issuing a &,41,5 command (this is apparently what sets the baud rate to 9600 instead of 14.4k... maybe I should try &,41,6 instead...)
- Ryan

Hey, if you get that to work let me know. So I guess you ended up with the 19.2 version of the +.modem? My version only has lines 990, 991, and 992. I forget what I modifed to make it work, but all I could get it to go is 2400. I tried Tommy's suggestion that you posted (changing 14400 to 9600) and it booted up and said 9600, but as soon as I connected went to 300. If you ever want to check out my +.modem file let me know. You can call the board (rkbbs, which you have already called once and I appreciate it) or email me at rnlucas at earthlink.net (taking out the spaces and substituting an @ for at of course)

I'm eager to see your board and what other mods you have done... My number one priority when I was setting up Image 1.2 was to get rid of that DARN third question (last name, first name, dialing prefix, etc) **that** drove me crazy.

[Pinacolada]

Riktronics said:

So I guess you ended up with the 19.2 version of the +.modem? My version only has lines 990, 991, and 992. I forget what I modifed to make it work, but all I could get it to go is 2400. I tried Tommy's suggestion that you posted (changing 14400 to 9600) and it booted up and said 9600, but as soon as I connected went to 300.

This was one of my initial problems, too. You have to make sure all the lines with &,41,x commands all have a matching x parameter, for some reason, or otherwise you'll have that happen.

I'm using the 19.2k mods, the ones that make use of the e.modrc file that has specific init strings set up in it. The +.modem file was modded by Future Systems and does have a couple extra lines. You can go to Tommy's web site and download the files from here:

www.warpzonebbs.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=getit&lid=9

Looking at VICE in another window, these lines look like this in my +.modem file:

990 QB=14400:&,41,5:GOTO945
991 QB=14400:&,41,5:GOTO945
992 QB=14400:&,41,5:GOTO945
993 QB=14400:&,41,5:GOTO945
994 QB=14400:&,41,5:GOTO945

If you ever want to check out my +.modem file let me know. You can call the board (rkbbs, which you have already called once and I appreciate it)...

Sure, I'll check it out, compare notes with you... I like your BBS. Nice, smooth, 2400 baud, no dropped characters. What kind of setup are you using on the PC side?

I'm eager to see your board and what other mods you have done... My number one priority when I was setting up Image 1.2 was to get rid of that DARN third question (last name, first name, dialing prefix, etc) **that** drove me crazy.

Well, I've rewritten a couple modules - combined +.CH and +.EP into one program (probably could expand it even more, make a "one stop shopping" spot for all your account parameters!), wrote a system I call OnConfigure that asks the user if s/he either a) wants to go through all the little +.on.* modules, b) pick and choose which, or c) select through a keypress menu. Pretty nice if I do say so myself.

Also in the process of testing/revisiting other things:

• The User Biographies always needed more than 78 characters I thought, so I changed it to a 20-line REL file. A couple bugs in it though, most notably in listing new users since your last call.
  
• Fixed a few errors in the NewsWriter module.
  
• Ported WarezProwler's BASIC game "Hotel Manager" over, a few cosmetic bugs but it plays okay. Would like to add a save game feature
  
• Worked briefly on translating Color64's ShadowRun game over, that's pretty buggy. Needs work.
  
• Working on a user manual for my BBS, like the third revision
  
• Fixed up Captain Keelhaul's Graphic Menu system to give it more of a "castle" theme (my BBS is called "The Dragon's Eye BBS"). Tried to add some online help, that's partially working. The logic that says whether the user is graphic menu capable is wonky though.
  
• Working on a text adventure game: home.comcast.net/~r.sherwood/tada.html
  
• And lots of other tweaks and fixes, so many I've forgotten them all

Unfortunately I'm one of those people who can be described by the phrase "never finishes what he starts"...

Okay, I think that's enough fun with all these nifty little features of the board... ;D

- Ryan