Subj : Re: New terminal program
To   : boraxman
From : Omnibrain
Date : Tue Dec 06 2022 06:56:59

 bo> ZModem is quite good, I even use it time to time when I SSH into another
 bo> computer.  An easy way to do a quick file send from one machine to
 bo> another.  But I have to make sure to escape all control characters, as a
 bo> large transfer may fail.
 bo> 
At least it's not that bad as some people think. If we would be in 1992 I would vote to replace ZModem with something more efficient - as said YModem-1kG should beat ZModem. And ZModem has many flaws. Like a buggy crc16 implementation and the ability to execute arbitrary commands on the remote computer (didn't implement that for icy_term btw.) and a too complex communication system.

That leads to:
 bo> For BBS's, sometimes it just doesn't work.  IT may pause, give errors,
 bo> or fail completely, or not even start.

Implementing ZModem isn't easy - it's easy to break and as said it's too complex. That's why so many variants exists like 4k/8k, PDZModem, FastZModem or LeechZModem etc. a good protocol should be as simple as possible (but not simpler) IMO.
I don't think it's a suitable protocol for the 90' or now -
however it's working and it's not as bad as ppl think. However it's widespread and anyone can use that. The killer feature back in the days - for me - was that I could continue transfer with that.

I agree that these days the best way for BBS would be to allow http(s) downloads. However a good ZModem implementation can get ok speeds. 
But the benefit for the http downloads is that they're on a different channel and users can do BBSing and downloading at the same time. So it would be really nice to have that in these days.

But if there are BBSes out there that use for example the HYDRA file transfer protocol (FSC-0072) I would be tempted to implement that and try it out.
(I don't know much about that protocol - don't ask). Or JModem or one of the bi directional ones. Probably get some real world data.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Windows/64)
 * Origin: Altair IV BBS (21:2/147)

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