Hey all,

Now that our niece and nephew are staying with us more frequently, I've been letting them have the "modern" PC while I stay in my man-cave fiddling with
my Apple IIe.

Are there any fsxNet systems that are particularly friendly to ASCII/Text/whatever this ancient thing can actually display without issue? My first love is Black Flag (even have a t-shirt) but all that glorious ANSI
turns into a glorious mess in ProTerm.

Just need a site to be able to catch up on my fsxNet when the main computer's occupied really.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Black Flag <ACiD Telnet HQ> blackflagbbs.com (21:1/112)

Hello deepthaw,

Just need a site to be able to catch up on my fsxNet when the main computer's occupied really.

My BBS is as far as I know. I log in myself simply with plain old telnet or ssh
and have no trouble here. There might be the odd ansi message and some door games (Operation Overkill) require a terminal of some sort to work as expected.

But aside from that there are only basic ansi menus here.

trmb.ca, telnet on 2023 and ssh on 2024.

I'd be interested in hearing how that works for you.

Ttyl :-),
Al

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: The Rusty MailBox - Penticton, BC Canada (21:4/106)

On 10 Feb 20 10:00:42, Deepthaw said the following to All:

Are there any fsxNet systems that are particularly friendly to ASCII/Text/whatever this ancient thing can actually display without issue? M first love is Black Flag (even have a t-shirt) but all that glorious ANSI turns into a glorious mess in ProTerm.

My system supports raw Ascii.

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)

On 10 Feb 2020, deepthaw said the following...

Just need a site to be able to catch up on my fsxNet when the main computer's occupied really.

I know xqtr has an ascii only theme on his board. andr01d.zapto.org:9999 I believe off the top of my head.

Was going to put it up here and edit it so I could log in from my phone, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

-=>Richard Miles<=-
-=>Captain Obvious<=-
-=>bbs.shadowscope.com<=-

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/09 (Windows/32)
* Origin: * Shadowscope BBS * (21:1/157)

On 02-10-20 10:00, deepthaw wrote to All <=-

Hey all,

Now that our niece and nephew are staying with us more frequently, I've been letting them have the "modern" PC while I stay in my man-cave fiddling with my Apple IIe.

Are there any fsxNet systems that are particularly friendly to ASCII/Text/whatever this ancient thing can actually display without
issue? My first love is Black Flag (even have a t-shirt) but all that glorious ANSI turns into a glorious mess in ProTerm.

Just need a site to be able to catch up on my fsxNet when the main computer's occupied really.

I only have basic ANSI, and should work on ASCII as well, but I haven't tested with a non ANSI terminal program.


... NO CARRIER? How are we gonna land this modem?
=== MultiMail/Win v0.51
--- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
* Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)

Are there any fsxNet systems that are particularly friendly to ASCII/Text/whatever this ancient thing can actually display without issue? My first love is Black Flag (even have a t-shirt) but all that
glorious ANSI turns into a glorious mess in ProTerm.

You might get a better looking result in Agate than ProTerm.. Off hand I can't remember what it does with blocks though. Only issue will be speed on a stock IIe because its all driven in DHGR, you won't get more than about 9600 out of it without losing characters.

TLP has a set of purely ASCII menus. You'll lose a lot of "mod cons" by using ASCII only though. Ahh there's also QWK readers for the IIe if thats of any interest to you.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

You might get a better looking result in Agate than ProTerm.. Off hand I can't remember what it does with blocks though. Only issue will be speed on a stock IIe because its all driven in DHGR, you won't get more than about 9600 out of it without losing characters.

I've heard of Agate, but I've not tried it yet. Speed is a major part of it,
my WiModem232 is running at 9600 right now, and when I have the time I might see if I can get stuff running at 19200. But all the extra data getting sent for color I can't see is slowing things down.

I've tracked down 2qwk!, I just need to find the time to set things up. Once
my Uthernet II comes in I'll be able to setup a virtual drive through ADTPro and can mount a ProDOS drive with a term program, 2qwk, etc. and stop running everything off floppies.

I'm legitimately enjoying tinkering with the Apple IIe though - it was
somewhat before my time as a kid (the computers in my grade schools had C64s and later IBM PCs), but I think I legitimately enjoy it more than the C64.

I'm also keeping an eye out for the bits and bobs to assemble an accurate MS-DOS BBSing machine, but that's for another day.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Black Flag <ACiD Telnet HQ> blackflagbbs.com (21:1/112)

I've heard of Agate, but I've not tried it yet. Speed is a major part
of it, my WiModem232 is running at 9600 right now, and when

Agate gets 100% for prettiness, but it takes a lot of grunt to render the
text in graphics mode, so its not that the serial hardware can't manage it,
but that the IIe can't render it fast enough, and can't buffer it on busy display screens.

With ProTerm you can certainly do 19.2k but all you ever get is vt100 cursor positioning no colour.

Unfortunately its the nature of ANSI to be slower than two wet weeks compared to straight ascii. There's a handful of boards out there running on Apple II's I haven't found anything that will gateway for the bulk of them though, so no FSXnet out there.

Spec

--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

Unfortunately its the nature of ANSI to be slower than two wet weeks compared to straight ascii. There's a handful of boards out there
running on Apple II's I haven't found anything that will gateway for the bulk of them though, so no FSXnet out there.

I've been idly considering using this as an excuse to throw up a BBS that carries fsxNet and the rest and is geared towards being as light-weight as possible for people BBSing from vintage hardware. All three of us, anyways.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Black Flag <ACiD Telnet HQ> blackflagbbs.com (21:1/112)

I've been idly considering using this as an excuse to throw up a BBS that carries fsxNet and the rest and is geared towards being as light-weight as possible for people BBSing from vintage hardware. All three of us, anyways.

ProTERM has a pretty nice menuable unattended mode. Off hand I can't recall if
it will manage user accounts though, its been a looooong time. I played with it briefly before I decided to PC the BBS instead.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

On 10 Feb 2020 at 10:00a, deepthaw pondered and said...

Are there any fsxNet systems that are particularly friendly to ASCII/Text/whatever this ancient thing can actually display without

Good question... It's got me thinking about basic text only option here.

I also wondered if there was a News reading tool for the Apple then you could pull from a NNTP source if someone is running a NNTP on their Mystic systems (or other BBS platform).

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

I also wondered if there was a News reading tool for the Apple then you could pull from a NNTP source if someone is running a NNTP on their
Mystic systems (or other BBS platform).

Not that I'm aware of, the IIe doesn't really have a TCP stack. It's more just a dumb terminal. There are odd applications for and daemons the IIe but most are more proof of concept than real workhorses.

The IIgs does have a real TCP stack and a raft of software to go with it, but thats in different territory.. its a little like comparing a backwardly compatible Amiga with a C64...

spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

On 12 Feb 2020 at 06:43p, Spectre pondered and said...

Not that I'm aware of, the IIe doesn't really have a TCP stack. It's
more just a dumb terminal. There are odd applications for and daemons
the IIe but most are more proof of concept than real workhorses.

ah OK thanks Spec, good to know.

Hope the smokes starting to clear and the rain helped...

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Avon wrote to deepthaw <=-

On 10 Feb 2020 at 10:00a, deepthaw pondered and said...

Are there any fsxNet systems that are particularly friendly to ASCII/Text/whatever this ancient thing can actually display without

Good question... It's got me thinking about basic text only option
here.

I don't know about Mystic, but Synchronet and other systems I've looked at have the ability to support ASCII only or ANSI; most people neglect to
create or update the menus needed to support ASCII terminals.

And, by "Most People", I mean "Me".


... Discover your formulas and abandon them
--- MultiMail/XT v0.52
* Origin: http://realitycheckbbs.org (21:4/122)

Not that I'm aware of, the IIe doesn't really have a TCP stack. It's
more just a dumb terminal. There are odd applications for and daemons
the IIe but most are more proof of concept than real workhorses.

I have an Uthernet II card coming in soon which I believe has a TCP/IP stack built in. It's far more practical on a IIgs however, because it actually has the application support.

I've been using my RPi as a telnet server and could access the newsgroups
that way, but I'd prefer to stick to the Apple II itself as much as possible. That's why I've been toying with ProTerm mainly.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Black Flag <ACiD Telnet HQ> blackflagbbs.com (21:1/112)

On 12 Feb 2020, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...

I don't know about Mystic, but Synchronet and other systems I've looked
at have the ability to support ASCII only or ANSI; most people neglect
to create or update the menus needed to support ASCII terminals.

Mystic supports ascii only just fine.

And, by "Most People", I mean "Me".

And me. I don't generally even give folks an option although that may change soon.

-=>Richard Miles<=-
-=>Captain Obvious<=-
-=>bbs.shadowscope.com<=-

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/09 (Windows/32)
* Origin: * Shadowscope BBS * (21:1/157)

Are there any fsxNet systems that are particularly friendly to ASCII/Text/whatever this ancient thing can actually display without

Good question... It's got me thinking about basic text only option here.

have the ability to support ASCII only or ANSI; most people neglect to create or update the menus needed to support ASCII terminals.
And, by "Most People", I mean "Me".

See it depends on your target audience... If you're expecting PC age tech most will do ANSI or something close with a minimum of fuss. With my target audience being Apple II, I need to make sure there is something that is ANSI free.

In fact know the ANSI limitations I went so far as to have 2 different sets of
ANSI menus as well. BANSI and FANSI, Basic and Fancy, because the II emulations for ANSI are often speed limited and will choke on busy menu screens. Not that my FANSI ANSI is particularly fancy these days.

Anyone that has to live with 40cols and yes there are some of those still out there too, need to be using ASCII for the most part I believe too. But while I
have some awareness there, and my ASCII menus would probably still be ok, the whole BBS package is geared to 80's so its not going to work really well, you'd
need more era genuine software.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

I have an Uthernet II card coming in soon which I believe has a TCP/IP stack built in. It's far more practical on a IIgs however, because
it actually has the application support.

Nice, I couldn't afford to spill that much for an Uther. I'm been going the other way, I have the OPi hitched up with a serial console to ProTerm on the IIe, on the GS I've been playing with the same OPi but using it for PPP to establish TCP/IP. Of course its on the slow side... but it does work once you get PPP sorted out, it was a bit of a pain. You need pretty basic PPP for the GS to talk to.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

FWIW, I think my moetiki.ddns.net:27 system should be pretty ASCII
friendly. I do use some "high ascii" characters in the menus, though. I
would be curious to know if this causes problems for some callers. May be something I need to address.



... "Mmmmmmmm.....bacon..."
--- MultiMail
* Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)

friendly. I do use some "high ascii" characters in the menus, though. I would be curious to know if this causes problems for some callers. May be something I need to address.

Well it could, but its going to depend on your target audience. There are a couple of related but different problems. The "extended" ascii will be a problem on any non-native system. Ergo Apple II, possibly TRS80.. off hand not sure what else, but I'm sure there are more. You just get whatever garbage the
receiving end perceives it to be, usually just stripping the high bit.

A lot of people mix ANSI and EXTEND-ascii together.. but ANSI really only describes colour and cursor placement, so some will cope with basic ascii with ansi codes.. this is what most Apple II software tries to do.

At the end of the day, who is your target audience, will they be affected by the choices you make? If you want to appeal to absolutely everybody possible then you'd have to has basic ASCII menuing only as an option. The middle ground will be, basic ASCII with ANSI colour sequences, and the high ground will be traditional PC extended chr-set with ANSI sequences. My end is really scraping the bottom of the barrel, in order for it to work with any apple II I have to have ASCII only. An early II is limited in what it can display, but if
I wanted to be even friendlier, I'd have to use 40Col not 80Col as well. Off hand I think c64's have weird screen width also..

All food for thought.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)

with ANSI sequences. My end is really scraping the bottom of the
barrel, in order for it to work with any apple II I have to have ASCII only. An early II is limited in what it can display, but if I wanted to be even friendlier, I'd have to use 40Col not 80Col as well. Off hand I think c64's have weird screen width also..

The "plus" side is that ProTerm won't even run on anything less than a IIe enhanced, which means the users should definitely at least have 80 column
text. Can't speak for C64/etc. though.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A43 2019/03/03 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Black Flag <ACiD Telnet HQ> blackflagbbs.com (21:1/112)

The "plus" side is that ProTerm won't even run on anything less than a
IIe enhanced, which means the users should definitely at least have 80 column text. Can't speak for C64/etc. though.

40 col for the C64, unless you have a C128 running in 128 mode then you can
do 80.

|15frank |08// |15netsurge
|07disksh0p|08!|07bbs |08% |07bbs.diskshop.ca |08% |07mystic goodness |11SciNet |03ftn hq |08% |07https://scinet-ftn.org

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/12 (Linux/64)
* Origin: % disksh0p!bbs % bbs.diskshop.ca % SciNet ftn hq % (21:4/154)

The "plus" side is that ProTerm won't even run on anything less than
a IIe enhanced, which means the users should definitely at least
have 80 column text. Can't speak for C64/etc. though.

The only thing the that ProTerm checks for is a 65c02 processor so if you drop one into an otherwise unenhanced IIe she's goot to go, and I'm going to get to
check this in a II+ as soon as I can get its power supply tickiing over.


--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: < Scrawled in blood at The Lower Planes > (21:3/101)

The "plus" side is that ProTerm won't even run on anything less than a IIe enhanced, which means the users should definitely at least have 80 column text. Can't speak for C64/etc. though.

Take II

Ahh there's plenty of antique software to do comms in 40 cols. Have to admit I've not used it... tended to see it occasionally and just put it aside, most of it was dos3.3 stuff.

*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Scrawled in haste at The Lower Planes (21:3/101)