OBBS (without needing Pace Modem)

[vela025]

Afternoon all,

I spent some time yesterday faffing with the copy of OBBS on the forum removing the dependency on the PACE hardware and getting it to answer calls via TcpSer, shockingly (for my limited knowledge) I've had some success...but for some reason OBBS isn't sending the Mode 7 graphics codes to the connected client.

How it looks locally

How it looks remotely via Commstar

Initially when connecting there is also corruption on this screen overwriting the pervious screens text (without first clearning it) as well as not completing the input line of text for "First name?":

Overwriting previous screen

Obbs Login

Any thoughts welcome.

[brianmartin_2001]

As far as i know Ed, OBBS doesn't operate with Viewdata, it is text only.
Even though the Host menus show as such. The client won't.
Rob O'Donnell can confirm , or the manual will , but I am sure that was the case with it.

If you PM me I can send you his contact details.

Congrats on doing that, that sounds like a breakthrough..

[brianmartin_2001]

Night Owl is up atm if you want to chat about it.

Would be interested to know more on what you've managed to do.

[vela025]

Yeah that would explain it! It's displaying ok using Termulator set to BBC VDU (option 6), but there seems to be a problem with the characters on the client not all appearing, but will appear as you type. On the example below the client only loaded up to "Util" and then a bit futher when I pressed enter and so on, until getting to "Main Command ?"

As you chat to the sysop more of the previous unloaded characters appear in order with each keypress.

What the client sees

What the client should see

I'll get there...hopefully!

EDIT

Works perfectly with Syncterm...no missing characters.

Anyone know of a windows/linux client that would support Mode 7 colour commands?

[marrold]

Anyone know of a windows/linux client that would support Mode 7 colour commands?

The TELSTAR client can connect to TCP Viewdata services or indeed via Modem - https://glasstty.com/telstar-viewdata-client/. For reasons unknown it doesn't work on my Windows 11 Machine but I haven't had chance to debug it yet.

Failing that, I tend to use BeebEm + Commstar II

P.S This has piqued my interest, especially the option there to Download files. Do you know if it's an XMODEM type thing?

[vela025]

The TELSTAR client can connect to TCP Viewdata services or indeed via Modem

Like all other viewdata clients (including Commstar) Telstar Client just displays the ASCII for OBBS.

Termulator seems the only client that can also display the Mode 7 colour codes in Terminal mode (as OBBS is not a viewdata bbs). So I was looking for a Win/linux terminal emulator that can interpret Mode 7 colour codes (but I don't think there is one). I thought that there was a possiblity Hearsay II in Risc OS might work with it, but that too is just ASCII. I also tried IcyTerm with a combo of VideoTex/Viewdata/Ascii...but no luck.

[marrold]

Strange. What does the data look like on "the wire" ?

Perhaps the client that works is sending something to indicate support?

[vela025]

Strange. What does the data look like on "the wire" ?

This I'm not sure on, and wouldn't know how to check. This is what the manual says about colour (which is how I've set up the user):

In other news...

P.S This has piqued my interest, especially the option there to Download files. Do you know if it's an XMODEM type thing?

From the manual

[marrold]

Right I think I'm following along now.

Page 9 of the Commstar II manual talks about filtering Control Codes by default. It might be worth setting it to DEF and seeing what happens?

Would you mind sharing how you got it working with TCPSer so I can try it out?

Cheers

[vela025]

Would you mind sharing how you got it working with TCPSer so I can try it out?

Yes of course, happy to. It's all a bit of a hack shop at the minute , so forgive me for not sharing the floppy image until I've got it tidy.

I've removed the routines that are looking for PACE hardware in the OBBSM/C file on the obbs disk, I have then used the Hayes routine from the Startup file that is on the EBBS disk to initilise TcpSer with the Hayes modem codes (AT, ATZ, ATX1 and ATS=0). Then within the OBBS file I can't figure out how to get the Beeb to check to see if a client has connected the propper way, so I've just flushed the buffers and then it waits until it recieves ANY data on the serial input, which it interprets as a caller (which I'm 100% sure is not the correct way to do it, and probably opens it all up to a world of problems). A work around I can think of for this would be to store the initial serial input from TcpSer in a string and then use IF statements to check the contents of the string (CONNECT, BAUD <rate>)...but I'm also pretty sure this isn't the correct way to do it either so have left it as is for now, as I cannot write interupts (which I'm pretty confident is what I need).

The major problem I have at the moment is I cannot figure out how to automatically end a session once a user logs off (all I can do is disable input for the user, wait for a while, flush the buffers, preform a soft reset and then wait for a connection again).

Page 9 of the Commstar II manual talks about filtering Control Codes by default. It might be worth setting it to DEF and seeing what happens?

Commstar II just need to be set to Mode 7 in terminal view and works well (well, as well as the others, but it missing the last few characters which only happens in Mode 7 not in vt100 terminals).

Commstar 2 Mode 7

Thanks for your interest, I'd love to get this up and running as a BBS that people can connect to via both normal telnet clients and BBC specific.

[brianmartin_2001]

Hi Ed,

couldn't send this through PM obviously so posting here instead.
Hopefully you can get the remaining issues sorted soon but hopefully not long before
another BBS is out there... great stuff. Well done so far.

Brian