Hello all,

And I do hope this is correct place for such a question?

I am after some advise / guidance / suggestions for the best BBS option to
run on an Amiga and / or for Amiga Based clients.

While loving "Mystic" and we shall be keeping this system regardless we have had great issue with client compatibility when connecting from Amiga based clients.

Seeing that our club / group is predominantly Amiga based I have been asked
the question about our Amiga BBS options.

I never ran a BBS on an Amiga - evn=en though it was always my system of
choice - I have only ever had experience running on CP/M, DOS and Unix.

All input greatly appreciated!

Intangybles (Mark, Sysop ARBBS)

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Amiga Retro Brisbane BBS (21:4/170)

Intangybles wrote (2022-01-05):

Hello all,

And I do hope this is correct place for such a question?

I am after some advise / guidance / suggestions for the best BBS option to run on an Amiga and / or for Amiga Based clients.

I never tried it, but there is https://github.com/dmcoles/AmiExpress

"Welcome to the AmiExpress repository. AmiExpress was a BBS System that ran on the Commodore Amiga series of computers and was developed by Lightspeed Technologies in the 1990s. Joe Hodge from Lightspeed technologies has given full approval of this project to resurrect the Ami-Express product and has given me permission to continue to use the Ami-Express name.

This is a rewrite of that system written in Amiga E. It is open source and has new features and bug fixes in addition to most of the functionality of the previous version being implemented.

I have also updated the documentation for AmiExpress as many existing features were not properly documented."

---
* Origin: Birds aren’t real (21:3/102)

Intangybles wrote to All <=-

I am after some advise / guidance / suggestions for the best BBS option
to run on an Amiga and / or for Amiga Based clients.

If you don't receive (m)any answers here, you might also try the FSX Retro message area, or ask around on Fido. There are some folks still running
BBSes on Amigas, real or virtual.




... DalekDOS v(overflow): (I)Obey (V)ision impaired (E)xterminate
--- MultiMail
* Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)

On 05 Jan 2022, Intangybles said the following...

Hello all,
And I do hope this is correct place for such a question?

I am after some advise / guidance / suggestions for the best BBS option
to run on an Amiga and / or for Amiga Based clients.

While loving "Mystic" and we shall be keeping this system regardless we have had great issue with client compatibility when connecting from
Amiga based clients.

Seeing that our club / group is predominantly Amiga based I have been asked the question about our Amiga BBS options.

I never ran a BBS on an Amiga - evn=en though it was always my system of

There are a few Amiga BBS' available, AmiXpress, Excelsior!, and CNet. AmiXpress and CNet are being updated. E! is not, and has issues with Y2K. I personally run a CNet have been since 2018, runs very well with little to no upkeep. I can let the thing run for weeks without any issues, in fact it has been up now for 432 straight hours with no issues.. My go to though is Mystic, you can customize the menus to act like any other BBS via the theme section. Although I haven't updated it in months I have a theme for the Image BBS for the C64 on my board, and was going to do one for the CNet Amiga but just don't have the time right now.. If you want run to run on the Amiga though I recommend the Cnet as it will run flawlessly in Emulation (how I run it)..

AL

... I think I am, therefore, I am... I think.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: The Wrong Number Family Of BBS' - Wrong Number ][ (21:4/131)

Hello Intangybles!

05 Jan 22 14:50, you wrote to all:

While loving "Mystic" and we shall be keeping this system regardless
we have had great issue with client compatibility when connecting from Amiga based clients.

The best Amiga telnet client is DCTelnet (On aminet).

BBS Software wise there is very little that is still in active development. The bbs software on the Amiga has gone
very much down hill.

Two that are still developed are: CNet, and AmiX (as has been posted by another).

I've still got Zeus running on a Amithlon system, but it's got bugs (That can be worked around), but the author
has given up on doing any fixes etc.

It was what I was running before converting to Mystic and bringing across the look from Zeus to the mystic system.

If you want to have a look: dragon.vk3heg.net port 6800




Vorlon


--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: \/orlon Empire: Sector 550 (21:1/195.1)

On 05 Jan 2022, Oli said the following...

I never tried it, but there is https://github.com/dmcoles/AmiExpress

"Welcome to the AmiExpress repository. AmiExpress was a BBS System that

Thanks for that Oli! I was not aware of that one!

Will look into it!

Thanks again!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Amiga Retro Brisbane BBS (21:4/170)

On 05 Jan 2022, Blue White said the following...

If you don't receive (m)any answers here, you might also try the FSX
Retro message area, or ask around on Fido. There are some folks still running BBSes on Amigas, real or virtual.

Thanks yes was thinking about FSXRetro, but thought I would ask here first!

Really must get us connected to Fido as well!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Amiga Retro Brisbane BBS (21:4/170)

On 05 Jan 2022, Bucko said the following...

There are a few Amiga BBS' available, AmiXpress, Excelsior!, and CNet. AmiXpress and CNet are being updated. E! is not, and has issues with
Y2K. I personally run a CNet have been since 2018, runs very well with

Thanks for the reply! I have joined the CNet BBS and am awaiting a reply.

On the Mystic front - what platform do you run it on? and do you have issues with connected Amiga users?

Mark.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Amiga Retro Brisbane BBS (21:4/170)

On 06 Jan 2022, Vorlon said the following...

The best Amiga telnet client is DCTelnet (On aminet).

Thanks for that yes, the users I have currently connect from Amiga are using that but still report "font' loading issues of some kind! Sadly I still don't have an Amiga of my own net setup yet to test it myself - must do this too!

Two that are still developed are: CNet, and AmiX (as has been posted by another).

Yes I am looking into those as well - my wish is whatever I run to get it running "headless" on a virtual server - "Mystic" is running well on my web hosting server under a user account so far!

It was what I was running before converting to Mystic and bringing
across the look from Zeus to the mystic system.

If you want to have a look: dragon.vk3heg.net port 6800

Thank you, I will be visiting you soon!

Mark.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Amiga Retro Brisbane BBS (21:4/170)

Intangybles wrote to Blue White <=-

On 05 Jan 2022, Blue White said the following...

If you don't receive (m)any answers here, you might also try the FSX
Retro message area, or ask around on Fido. There are some folks still running BBSes on Amigas, real or virtual.

Thanks yes was thinking about FSXRetro, but thought I would ask here first!

Really must get us connected to Fido as well!

If you do Facebook, there is a sysop, Gary McCulloch, who has a group
called the Reign of Fire BBS Group. I think all of his systems run on Commodore systems, and I am pretty sure that one is on an Amiga.

You can reach his BBS at rof.cnetbbs.net on port 2300.



... Computer Hacker wanted. Must have own axe.
--- MultiMail
* Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)

On 06 Jan 2022, Intangybles said the following...

Thanks for the reply! I have joined the CNet BBS and am awaiting a reply.

On the Mystic front - what platform do you run it on? and do you have issues with connected Amiga users?

Mark.

I run my Mystic in a Windows 10 Virtual Machine.. No issues at all with Amiga users, JR Comm, Terminus, (both of which I used to use when I owned an Amiga) work fine with it as I have used them to connect. Any term program that supports ANSI will work fine. So no issues.. :)

Al

... "No comment" is a comment.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: The Wrong Number Family Of BBS' - Wrong Number ][ (21:4/131)

On 06 Jan 2022, Blue White said the following...

If you do Facebook, there is a sysop, Gary McCulloch, who has a group called the Reign of Fire BBS Group. I think all of his systems run on Commodore systems, and I am pretty sure that one is on an Amiga.

You're right. All C-Net. Some on real hardware and some in emulation. Not sure which.

Mick Manning
-(< BluesNET - The Musician's Network >)-

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Central Ontario BluesNET (21:1/156)

Hello Intangybles!

06 Jan 22 17:05, you wrote to me:

The best Amiga telnet client is DCTelnet (On aminet).

Thanks for that yes, the users I have currently connect from Amiga are using that but still report "font' loading issues of some kind! Sadly
I still don't have an Amiga of my own net setup yet to test it myself
- must do this too!

It boils down to the screen display mode used, and IBM ansi font.

Both of my systems look the same in both netrunner on linux, and dctelnet.

Yes I am looking into those as well - my wish is whatever I run to get
it running "headless" on a virtual server - "Mystic" is running well
on my web hosting server under a user account so far!

There you will run into into issues. I've tried a number of times to do remote headless on Amiga systems and the
mouse movement has always been a very frustrating time.

Vorlon


--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: \/orlon Empire: Sector 550 (21:1/195.1)

On 08 Jan 2022, Vorlon said the following...

Yes I am looking into those as well - my wish is whatever I run to ge it running "headless" on a virtual server - "Mystic" is running well on my web hosting server under a user account so far!

There you will run into into issues. I've tried a number of times to do remote headless on Amiga systems and the
mouse movement has always been a very frustrating time.

I agree with Vorlon, another way to look at what you are trying to do here,
is running a Emulator inside a Virtual Machine which is basically and emulator.. WinUAE has a switch for the mouse but to be honest, it is just not worth the aggravation of trying to get the mouse to work perfect. I run my
CNet Amiga on a dedicated machine, I picked it up for $30 on eBay as a lease turn in. You can get away with an Pentium 4 if needed, mine is an i3 with 4 gigs of ram 240 meg SSD.. I run WinUAE in Windows 10, and emulate a A4000
with maxed out peripherals (Memory, video etc.) It's super fast and runs real well. You might want to look at doing it that way, you can use the machine headless if you want, I dial into mine via RealVNC and have NO issues at all. RDP is another story, when you exit RDP it will reset WinUAE thus killing the BBS.. Hope that helps a little..

Al

... Kids: They're not sleeping, they're recharging!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: The Wrong Number Family Of BBS' - Wrong Number ][ (21:4/131)

Intangybles wrote (2022-01-06):

On 05 Jan 2022, Oli said the following...

I never tried it, but there is https://github.com/dmcoles/AmiExpress

"Welcome to the AmiExpress repository. AmiExpress was a BBS System
that

Thanks for that Oli! I was not aware of that one!

Will look into it!

There is also NiKom. Last version 2.6 is from 2021:

https://www.nikom.org/

---
* Origin: Birds aren’t real (21:3/102)

Hello Bucko!

07 Jan 22 19:22, you wrote to me:

on my web hosting server under a user account so far!

There you will run into into issues. I've tried a number of times
to do remote headless on Amiga systems and the mouse movement has
always been a very frustrating time.

I agree with Vorlon, another way to look at what you are trying to do here, is running a Emulator inside a Virtual Machine which is
basically and emulator.. WinUAE has a switch for the mouse but to be honest, it is just not worth the aggravation of trying to get the
mouse to work perfect. I run my CNet Amiga on a dedicated machine, I picked it up for $30 on eBay as a lease turn in. You can get away with
an Pentium 4 if needed, mine is an i3 with 4 gigs of ram 240 meg SSD..
I run WinUAE in Windows 10, and emulate a A4000 with maxed out
peripherals (Memory, video etc.) It's super fast and runs real well.
You might want to look at doing it that way, you can use the
machine headless if you want, I dial into mine via RealVNC and have NO issues at all. RDP is another story, when you exit RDP it will reset WinUAE thus killing the BBS.. Hope that helps a little..

Yeah. I just wish there was a *working* vnc etc, server for the Amiga. There are clients, but I don't want a client on the Amiga. I
want to control the Amiga from another machine. I have used KVM's before, but the Amiga keyboard isn't like a PC keyboard, so the only
thing that gets switched is the Display.

Speaking of Winuae and BBS's. How does the networking to the BBS work? I use/used a real TCP/IP stack on the Amiga (Easynet [Amitcp],
Miami, Genesis. Do they work under the *uae's or is it just the bsd.socket option used? How does the server side get it's ip address,
and accept connections etc?



Vorlon


--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: \/orlon Empire: Sector 550 (21:1/195.1)

Vorlon wrote (2022-01-26):

on my web hosting server under a user account so far!

There you will run into into issues. I've tried a number of times
to do remote headless on Amiga systems and the mouse movement has
always been a very frustrating time.

I guess this is normal, if there is no dedicated support for the handling of the mouse cursor. In a proper VNC setup you would see a local mouse cursor and the remote one is hidden.

How remote is remote in your case? Samebuilding remote or in the cloud remote? Real Amiga or emulated? If it is a real Amiga, how fast is the network connection?

(The local VNC connection from PC to raspberry over LAN still has a very noticeable delay / drag).

Yeah. I just wish there was a *working* vnc etc, server for the Amiga. There are clients, but I don't want a client on the Amiga. I want to control the Amiga from another machine. I have used KVM's before, but the Amiga keyboard isn't like a PC keyboard, so the only thing that gets switched is the Display.

There are PS/2 to Amiga keyboard adapters.

Another solution could be the PiStorm, which has keyboard and mouse "passthrough".

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/pistorm-keeping-the-amiga-alive/ https://github.com/captain-amygdala/pistorm/wiki/FAQs

(I don't own an Amiga, so I haven't tested any of this, just thinking out loud).

---
* Origin: Birds aren't real (21:3/102)

On 26 Jan 2022, Vorlon said the following...

Hello Bucko!

Speaking of Winuae and BBS's. How does the networking to the BBS work? I use/used a real TCP/IP stack on the Amiga (Easynet [Amitcp],
Miami, Genesis. Do they work under the *uae's or is it just the
bsd.socket option used? How does the server side get it's ip address,
and accept connections etc?

They all work fine, there are some using Miami and some using Genesis, I took the easy way out with my BBS and am using AmiTCP with TelnetD using the bsd.socket of WinUAE.. As for connetions, TelnetD handles it all, it answers sets up the port that is accepting calls and answers like a modem would.. HOpe that helps a bit...

Al

... A book misplaced is a book lost

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: The Wrong Number Family Of BBS' - Wrong Number ][ (21:4/131)

Hello Oli!

26 Jan 22 11:55, you wrote to me:

There you will run into into issues. I've tried a number of
times to do remote headless on Amiga systems and the mouse
movement has always been a very frustrating time.

I guess this is normal, if there is no dedicated support for the
handling of the mouse cursor. In a proper VNC setup you would see a
local mouse cursor and the remote one is hidden.

How remote is remote in your case? Samebuilding remote or in the cloud remote? Real Amiga or emulated? If it is a real Amiga, how fast is the network connection?

The machine was sitting on the same lan. I have tried the vnc server software for the Amiga it's self and it didn't work.
I have also tried with emulation, both on winx with winuae, and most recently using Amilator (A stripped down linux
install, and nothing but FS-Uae running). The mouse movement in all cases was very frustrating. On the Amilator setup, vnc
was installed on the host. (Didn't try directly on the Emulated enviroment)

I want to control the Amiga from another machine. I have used
KVM's before, but the Amiga keyboard isn't like a PC keyboard, so
the only thing that gets switched is the Display.

There are PS/2 to Amiga keyboard adapters.

Yes there are, but they introduce there own issues. (I have PS/2 adapters for both Keyboard & Mouse for the A4000)

Another solution could be the PiStorm, which has keyboard and mouse "passthrough".

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/pistorm-keeping-the-amiga-alive/ https://github.com/captain-amygdala/pistorm/wiki/FAQs

(I don't own an Amiga, so I haven't tested any of this, just thinking
out loud).

A Pistorm isn't an option in this case, as the two machines were an Amiga 3000, and Amiga 4000 with Accelartor cards,
128Mb of ram (Large for an Amiga), Cybervision 64 Graphics card (What's known as RTG on the Amiga), a X-Surf 10mb network
card, os 3.1/3.9.



Vorlon


--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: \/orlon Empire: Sector 550 (21:1/195.1)

Hello Bucko!

26 Jan 22 18:03, you wrote to me:

Speaking of Winuae and BBS's. How does the networking to the BBS
work? I use/used a real TCP/IP stack on the Amiga (Easynet
[Amitcp], Miami, Genesis. Do they work under the *uae's or is it
just the bsd.socket option used? How does the server side get
it's ip address, and accept connections etc?

They all work fine, there are some using Miami and some using Genesis,
I took the easy way out with my BBS and am using AmiTCP with TelnetD
using the bsd.socket of WinUAE.. As for connetions, TelnetD handles it all, it answers sets up the port that is accepting calls and answers
like a modem would.. HOpe that helps a bit...

Does Binkd work under the emulation? I've tried it under my Amilithon setup with Genesis/Miami and it don't like
something (It reports a host function can't be found)... So I'm looking at other options (See my message to Oli).

I still do own real Amiga hardware, but things are getting harder to keep running. My A3000 works like a champ, and runs
stable with 3.2, The A4000 is driving me nuts though, and even after re-capping, is only starting to display a image 50%
of the time. (No drive click and a black screen). ^-(




Vorlon


--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: \/orlon Empire: Sector 550 (21:1/195.1)

On 27 Jan 2022, Vorlon said the following...

Hello Bucko!

Does Binkd work under the emulation? I've tried it under my Amilithon setup with Genesis/Miami and it don't like
something (It reports a host function can't be found)... So I'm looking
at other options (See my message to Oli).

I run my CNet in WinUAE, BinkD is run in a 32 bit version of Windows 10, it runs fine, no issues at all.. In fact there is even a BinkD 64 bit version which is running with Second Coming BBS in Win10 64bit. What I do is use the DOS version of BinkD and run it in Windows, then a couple of scripts to copy and import the files that are received and exported to BinkD into and out of CNet.. I do have a doc file I wrote up a few years ago on how to setup CNet Amiga in WinUAE Emulation with BinkD. I know it is on my Facebook Group (Wrong Number Family Of BBS') not sure where else it is, I can email you it if you want it. A good resource to getting CNet setup right in WinUAE is K-Guide owner of CNet, he has a file on the CNet website which explains step by step how to install in a setup which makes it extremely simple. After that, use my doc file for BinkD and FTN networks and you will be up in no time. Let me know if you need me ot email you the doc file I have..

Al

... I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: The Wrong Number Family Of BBS' - Wrong Number ][ (21:4/131)