Live Wire VIC-20 BBS

[Orangeman96]

Greetings! Be sure to check out the Live Wire VIC-20 BBS, ideally from real hardware and terminal software! -OGM

[Schema]

That's really cool, will try it out when I get a chance.

It wasn't clear from the page, is this running a real VIC or emulated in VICE? Both are cool, just curious!

[pixel]

What's that difference between a real machine and VICE about? A bug in VICE?

Extra-cool. But how does one connect to the BBS with VICE?

[groepaz]

What difference?

The page describes the setup for VICE quite detailed - it works pretty much the same if you want to use a terminal program

[Orangeman96]

What's that difference between a real machine and VICE about? A bug in VICE?

Extra-cool. But how does one connect to the BBS with VICE?

Pixel,

If you want to simply check it out, try this: CCGMSx.

If, thereafter, you are interested in setting up VICE to use Npcap, tcpser, etc. to enable ip232 connection, please let me know, and I can walk you through doing so.

Prost!

OGM

[Orangeman96]

That's really cool, will try it out when I get a chance.

It wasn't clear from the page, is this running a real VIC or emulated in VICE? Both are cool, just curious!

Schema,

The Live Wire SysOp, RICK-T137, actually lives in your neighborhood, but here's the SysInfo:

Cheers!

OGM

[pixel]

If, thereafter, you are interested in setting up VICE to use Npcap, tcpser, etc. to enable ip232 connection, please let me know, and I can walk you through doing so.

Prost!

No, thanks! I'm in the knurd Unix department anyway. Perhaps that'd be something for the README.

[Orangeman96]

If, thereafter, you are interested in setting up VICE to use Npcap, tcpser, etc. to enable ip232 connection, please let me know, and I can walk you through doing so.

Prost!

No, thanks! I'm in the knurd Unix department anyway. Perhaps that'd be something for the README.

U so funny, Pixel! -OGM

[ral-clan]

I like it! Finally a BBS formatted to 22 characters wide so it will look good on our VIC-20s!

[javierglez]

This association of the VIC with 22 columns makes me recall a few months ago I read someone had published here a patch for the kernal to work with an arbitrary number of columns (up to 25-26, as usual for PAL/NTSC). I can't find the thread now.
(OK I found it, it's here https://sleepingelephant.com/~sleeping/ ... 294#p92294 )

[Schema]

FInally got to connect! (From a C64 with Wifi modem, but still). Very cool!

[VA3DSO]

Hey OGM! Thank you so much for the shout out!

Yes! The board runs on a real-live VIC-20 that was made in 1982. I've got some kind of clone of a VIC-1011A RS-232 board that connects it via a null modem cable to my Linux server. That server runs tcpser and acts like the "modem" to the BBS.

It's a really rudimentary system - pretty much just messages and bulletins. I have the code figured out to add Xmodem file transfers, but I haven't actually added to the program yet. The software is 90% BASIC and 10% ML - just used ML for the file and modem I/O routines.

If any of you are interested in the guts of it, I have the source code on Github - https://github.com/Rick-T137/vic-bbs

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has called it so far. I actually have more registered users on my VIC-BBS than I do on my C64 BBS (bbs.deepskies.com:6400).

Thanks again!

Rick

[Orangeman96]

Pleasure for me to do so, Rick-T137! -OGM

[Orangeman96]

FInally got to connect! (From a C64 with Wifi modem, but still). Very cool!

Schema: If it is a User Port WiFi modem, you should be able to connect via the type-in VICMODEM program. -OGM

Page 7, VICMODEM literature

[VA3DSO]

Hey OGM! I bet there's a bunch of us that started out with that VICMODEM BASIC terminal program! But it is designed to allow a Commodore to call out to an IBM BBS and do ASCII translation. For calling Commodore boards from my VIC in the early days, I just used a 4-line terminal program:

Code: Select all

10 OPEN 5,2,0,CHR$(6):REM 6=300 baud, 8=1200 baud
20 GET#5,A$:GETB$
30 PRINTA$;:PRINT#5,B$;
40 GOTO 20

That's it! Mind you, this only works for terminal programs connected to a "modem" that supports Hayes commands.