Sinclair Retro BBS online!

[Outsoft]

Hi,

Why do you not put Qbox onto a QL and connect the QL serial port to a Linux box with port forwarding to allow anyone to connect to a real QL BBS.

All that would be required is the QBOX initialisation without a modem and the Linux box to forward internet users through its serial port(s) to the QBOX.

Because I'm just on some months in the Mystic BBS group and we want to implement the experience of QL LING

Like a textual browsing, send and receive e-mail, IRC chat, Newsgroups, etc.

But from now we are just updating the feeds and test FTP features.

My QL need to be used for preservation

But It will be nice to try what you suggest Derek.

Did you do it with your QL too? And it's on internet via Telnet?

[Outsoft]

Hi,

Why do you not put Qbox onto a QL and connect the QL serial port to a Linux box with port forwarding to allow anyone to connect to a real QL BBS.

All that would be required is the QBOX initialisation without a modem and the Linux box to forward internet users through its serial port(s) to the QBOX.

Are you also able to make QPC2/Black Phoenix able to connect it via QTPI on telnet bbs too?

Giorgio ask this thingsmany times to me.

[janbredenbeek]

Hi,

Why do you not put Qbox onto a QL and connect the QL serial port to a Linux box with port forwarding to allow anyone to connect to a real QL BBS.
All that would be required is the QBOX initialisation without a modem and the Linux box to forward internet users through its serial port(s) to the QBOX.

Well the Linux box would also have to emulate a Hayes-compatible modem at least for the signalling, but I guess there might be Linux software around which caters for this...
I do have 'real' QL's but unfortunately no QL hard disk anymore, so I have to run it on an emulated QL anyway.
As QBOX has no support for ANSI colour and Zmodem (only Xmodem/SEAlink) it will be quite challenging to use for those who haven't been familiar with it!
What happened to PBOX (I believe Phil Borman wrote it to fill in the gaps left behind by QBOX), is it still available somewhere?
I still have the source code of QBOX which hasn't been touched since 1994, but it's written in ASM and the project became too big to handle in ASM. I had plans to rewrite it in C using c68, but by then I became occupied with other activities...

cheers, Jan.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi Jan,

I started out with a BBS with Qbox on a Trump Card QL then progressed to Supergold card and Super Hermes. But started to use Remote Access BBS system on a PC, because of Zmodem, ANSI graphics and more flexibility.

I thought your software was excellent, Phil Borman expanded the functionality into Pbox, I constantly asked him for extra functions the same as Remote Access and Maximus. The Pbox system brought me back to use QL BBS software using a Q40. The sources to Pbox are on Dilwyn's web site.

Linux can emulate a Hayes modem using TCPSER package, which could connect to Qbox or Pbox via another modem or direct null modem connection.

But I keep on thinking that QPC2 or UQLX has TCP port handling, could the QL BBS software connect using the TCP port and have a textual web site on a real QL connected the the Internet or gateway. This is only thoughts, I am not sure about implementation.

[janbredenbeek]

Hi Jan,

I started out with a BBS with Qbox on a Trump Card QL then progressed to Supergold card and Super Hermes. But started to use Remote Access BBS system on a PC, because of Zmodem, ANSI graphics and more flexibility.

I thought your software was excellent, Phil Borman expanded the functionality into Pbox, I constantly asked him for extra functions the same as Remote Access and Maximus. The Pbox system brought me back to use QL BBS software using a Q40. The sources to Pbox are on Dilwyn's web site.

Linux can emulate a Hayes modem using TCPSER package, which could connect to Qbox or Pbox via another modem or direct null modem connection.

But I keep on thinking that QPC2 or UQLX has TCP port handling, could the QL BBS software connect using the TCP port and have a textual web site on a real QL connected the the Internet or gateway. This is only thoughts, I am not sure about implementation.

Hi Derek,

For QBOX, this would be possible as it has QSPIL (Qbox Serial Port Interface Layer, I somewhat stole it from Fido's FOSSIL ). This is a set of routines which QBOX uses as intermediate code for driving the modem. I wrote it because not all modems were Hayes-compatible at that time (remember native Astracom which used CTRL-P commands?). Later on most modems were Hayes-compatible so QSPHAYES was written which is configurable, but in theory it's possible to drive all sorts of communication devices. You only need to write the QSPIL driver code (which is quite extensively documented)...

Apart from this, I have a lot of message and file areas from the QBOX BBS archived but they are scattered around several directories and need to be put together. It would be much easier to put the OS/2 BBS back online when I get the TCP/IP <-> serial link right. (I could as well run it on DOS as it is based on Maximus, and with VirtualBox doing the TCP/IP to serial conversion I won't have to care about running TCP/IP in DOS ).

Unfortunately all message areas were set to automatically delete messages after a certain amount of time so most message areas are empty, and the ones which still have messages mostly contain spam (INTL.QL was echoed to MAUSnet in Germany and from there to Usenet). The last messages in INTL.QL are from October 2002, most other areas like MINERVA and QUANTA dried up long before that.
Incidentally, the last message in SYSOP.QBOX is from you talking to Phil about running Pbox on the Q40 . It is dated 23 May 2001...

cheers, Jan.

[Outsoft]

Hi Jan,

I started out with a BBS with Qbox on a Trump Card QL then progressed to Supergold card and Super Hermes. But started to use Remote Access BBS system on a PC, because of Zmodem, ANSI graphics and more flexibility.

I thought your software was excellent, Phil Borman expanded the functionality into Pbox, I constantly asked him for extra functions the same as Remote Access and Maximus. The Pbox system brought me back to use QL BBS software using a Q40. The sources to Pbox are on Dilwyn's web site.

Linux can emulate a Hayes modem using TCPSER package, which could connect to Qbox or Pbox via another modem or direct null modem connection.

But I keep on thinking that QPC2 or UQLX has TCP port handling, could the QL BBS software connect using the TCP port and have a textual web site on a real QL connected the the Internet or gateway. This is only thoughts, I am not sure about implementation.

Hi Derek,

For QBOX, this would be possible as it has QSPIL (Qbox Serial Port Interface Layer, I somewhat stole it from Fido's FOSSIL ). This is a set of routines which QBOX uses as intermediate code for driving the modem. I wrote it because not all modems were Hayes-compatible at that time (remember native Astracom which used CTRL-P commands?). Later on most modems were Hayes-compatible so QSPHAYES was written which is configurable, but in theory it's possible to drive all sorts of communication devices. You only need to write the QSPIL driver code (which is quite extensively documented)...

Apart from this, I have a lot of message and file areas from the QBOX BBS archived but they are scattered around several directories and need to be put together. It would be much easier to put the OS/2 BBS back online when I get the TCP/IP <-> serial link right. (I could as well run it on DOS as it is based on Maximus, and with VirtualBox doing the TCP/IP to serial conversion I won't have to care about running TCP/IP in DOS ).

Unfortunately all message areas were set to automatically delete messages after a certain amount of time so most message areas are empty, and the ones which still have messages mostly contain spam (INTL.QL was echoed to MAUSnet in Germany and from there to Usenet). The last messages in INTL.QL are from October 2002, most other areas like MINERVA and QUANTA dried up long before that.
Incidentally, the last message in SYSOP.QBOX is from you talking to Phil about running Pbox on the Q40 . It is dated 23 May 2001...

cheers, Jan.

We can try to extract all you messages and put it on a modern Mystic BBS like ours

As I told you before

It will be very nice for us to do.

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi Jan,

I used the Q40 with Pbox, in 2001 onwards, it did work quite well. Its use was mainly for the 4 serial ports, so that I could have the BBS on a serial port and Mouse and SerNET on the other ports. I did have an idea of converting the BBS files to an Internet web site, but that seemed a hard task. Unlke now maybe easy, with ADSL speeds better than 15 years ago.

I stopped the BBS due to lack of interest and the Internet was starting to come more popular. Also I undertook the Q60 production, which took a little more spare time.

I might try and connect the old BBS system over a serial connection to my Intranet system, with a gateway, to the outside world.... This is more of a challenge than using existing Internet software and I am not interested in using non QL software for this application.

[janbredenbeek]

We can try to extract all you messages and put it on a modern Mystic BBS like ours

As I told you before

It will be very nice for us to do.

Well I guess there are some people who would be surprised to see their rants of 25 years ago re-published

However my first priority is to get the file areas back online. Does Mystic BBS support FILES.BBS style description files? Then it will be easy, just create the file areas and directories and upload them.

BTW, I just tried to connect to your BBS but got no connection via Telnet. Any idea?

cheers, Jan.

[Outsoft]

We can try to extract all you messages and put it on a modern Mystic BBS like ours

As I told you before

It will be very nice for us to do.

Well I guess there are some people who would be surprised to see their rants of 25 years ago re-published

However my first priority is to get the file areas back online. Does Mystic BBS support FILES.BBS style description files? Then it will be easy, just create the file areas and directories and upload them.

BTW, I just tried to connect to your BBS but got no connection via Telnet. Any idea?

cheers, Jan.

Yes Mystic can do it.

Well I think you find the BBS in maintenance, we are working on it all days.

Is absolutely online, please check it:

retrobbs.sinclair.homepc.it

telnet port 23.

[janbredenbeek]

I just discovered NetFoss which is a FOSSIL driver which emulates a Hayes-compatible modem in conjunction with a Telnet daemon under Windows. So I can run Maximus in a DOS box under Windows 7 with the setup from the old system. I'm now preparing a Windows 7 installation on a Pentium 4 of 2003 which works remarkably well considering the hardware's age! If all goes well you can expect an announcement in the next few days...
And then the trick is to make the QL connect via TCP/IP...

cheers, Jan.