What are modem users using for BBS terminal applications in 2021? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-22 14:11 I have a few 486 and early Pentium systems running DOS and Windows 95 that work flawlessly using old terminal software like Telemate and Terminate with my External USR Courier X2/V90. That being said, I've been trying to get the USR Courier working with Windows 10 on a modern system using a USB/25-pin serial interface. I've tried both Qodem and SyncTerm with varying levels of success. I can configure the modem and connect without issue, however ANSI emulation seems hit or miss and the apps appear to be unstable with my setup. What is everyone else using for modern OS, BBSing these days? Are there specific tweaks that need to be done with the ports, etc as well? My Google-Fu isn't getting much of an answer. Thanks in advance! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nevarro · 2021-06-22 14:41 Windows 10 and an old Vista laptop and use only Syncterm these days for my daily driver. I run DOSBOX for older terminal emulation (RIPterm and Telemate). I like experimenting with and trying out other terminal programs (Etherterm, Magiterm, Hyperterminal, mTelnet, netrunner and others. Of all these, Syncterm has been the best for me. It renders ANSI perfectly, is in active development and has customization and options that exceed all of the other terminals in my opinion. One thing I'm really excited about with Syncterm is RIP graphic rendering support is being developed for the next version! I've been testing it out and it runs great even now on the nightly build. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- euphraties247 · 2021-06-22 14:55 RS232 modems are SERIAL, not Parallel. that said people do use this stuff from to time but many interlinks are VOIP. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-22 15:48 Sorry, that was a typo. Yes, I'm using serial. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- euphraties247 · 2021-06-22 15:56 ok cool, glad you didn't fry it! need to make sure you have a good terminal program (the same pain like back in the day), along with correct settings. There is nothing where I ilve, and I find that international dialing is stuffed over voip or fax over ip at best so Im lucky to get 300 baud. Its so bad I didnt bother moving my land line ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-22 16:09 Thanks. I'll keep tweaking with settings and init strings using Syncterm. I suspect my issue might be with UART settings and Port speeds across the USB to Serial 25-pin/USR Courier modem. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-22 16:17 My local telco is using VOIP over fiber instead of copper pairs beyond the home these days. That said, I'm still able to connect up to 33.6 from my 486 running DOS/Terminate using the same USR Courier X2/v90 modem. Perhaps my attempts to try to make legacy hardware work in Window 10 without a standard having built-in serial interface is futile. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- orion3311 · 2021-06-22 16:31 I use Putty - while its known for telnet/ssh, there is a serial option there as well. It amazes me that having a serial terminal software has always been a pain point with Windows, with that weird one (Hyperterm - that I think is STILL licensed!) in XP. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opicron · 2021-06-22 17:11 Netrunner is by far my favorite 🤩. fTelnet has a browser version too which works well. Example: bbs.opicron.eu Edit: clearly i need to read better :(. Op asked for modem support. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- auric0m · 2021-06-22 17:27 Netrunner ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-22 17:33 Thanks and so true. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SirAirWalker · 2021-06-22 20:42 I some how came across a registered version of Qmodem Pro on a disc! Works great. I'm forget which version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhotoJim99 · 2021-06-22 22:33 Minicom under Linux for me. Windows can be very fussy about USB-serial adapters, particularly with the Prolific chipset (some are unauthorized clones and Prolific's drivers look very aggressively for these clones). If you have a real serial port and use that instead, you can avoid the problems. Linux drivers don't check for this; they just support the hardware. I don't think Prolific has anything to do with them. So they tend to just work. Note that some USB adapters support CTS/RTS (hardware buffer pausing) and some don't. You want one that does, otherwise you can get some byte loss here and there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-23 00:27 Thanks, what distro do you use? I'll give it a try as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-23 00:28 I haven't found modem support in Netrunner. Looks to be an IP client only. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhotoJim99 · 2021-06-23 00:30 I use several, mostly Ubuntu and Debian (plus Linux Mint, Pi OS/Raspbian, Arch and Manjaro). Ubuntu is a good place to start on 64-bit Intel/AMD systems where you want a graphical desktop. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-23 00:30 Would be nice to see the old classics get re-released as abandonware; Telix, Telemate and Terminate as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-23 00:35 I believe I've played around with all of those but Arch and Manjaro. Mint was an old standby to keep the aging netbooks or anything with a Celeron, etc. going as Windows "outgrew" them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhotoJim99 · 2021-06-23 00:45 I do Debian on really old laptops/netbooks now - Ubuntu's retiring their 32-bit distro. (Not sure if Mint is, to be honest, but expect so too.) Minicom's on all the distros. It's on all the BSDs too. I just compiled it from source on NetBSD's pkgsrc tree on a 20-year-old SPARCstation 10. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ehdrian · 2021-06-23 00:51 I see you have your black belt. Well done. Edit: Is that the one they called the "pizza box"? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhotoJim99 · 2021-06-23 01:25 One of them. There are a few! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sgemma · 2021-06-23 02:28 Telix was my favorite! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Practical_Cartoonist · 2021-06-23 03:08 I use Syncterm on Linux. Good zmodem and IBM437 support. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opicron · 2021-06-23 06:14 Ah im sorry, I overlooked that part. You are correct. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dmine45 · 2021-06-23 08:42 mTelnet most of the time, though I use SyncTerm more and more. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- scrutinizer80 · 2021-06-23 12:46 Terminate within Dosbox. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tallship · 2021-06-23 16:35 I think you may discover that the main issue is somewhere in the USB to DB25. I gave up trying to use USB to HDMI a couple of years back, same sort of headaches you're describing with inconsistent buginess... Only different, of course. I really like Qodem too, or rather, I wanted to. It works flawlessly on Win10 until it proves to be rather unstable for me. It might go ten minutes or it might go two before crashing. I definitely recommend, no matter what you think is kewl, using Syncterm as your go-to reference terminal implementation, working out all the kinks you can there, and then try the others afterward when it comes to testing. And this is the first I've heard of RIP support, which is great! I actually use RipTerm now whenever I want to visit the two extant Searchlight BBSes that I know of. Sadly, I can't take it seriously since it's Telnet only, so I'm hoping that SyncTerm supports RIP over SSH. Neptrunner is another I like, but again, even though Paul told me some time back that there was a newer version that supported SSH I was unable to find it, so I pretty much only use SyncTerm when I must have stability since I rarely will use Telnet - even though I support Telnet connections on Vger. So.... The next issue, I think, is the source, as I understand it, is non-existent for Searchlight (irretrievably lost), but of all the BBS software I ran back in the era of dialups and zonehour, my two favs were Searchlight and UltraBBS, which didn't have RIP support, but was the cleanest otherwise for ANSI BBSes for my purposes. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tallship · 2021-06-23 16:49 That's because there's FXS/FXO ports where everything terminates so the signaling is available. ATAs (Sipura's), connected to the Asterisk are converted back to POTS from VoIP and vice versa that way. I used to do this with my Cyclades Cyclom-Y cards - one of them had a snake of DB-25 connectors that I plugged into USR externals which connected to the PSTN from there and the other one just had the ports to plug into from the Sipura ATAs. It worked great for everything except faxing, but there's always been issues with fax over VoIP I guess lolz ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tallship · 2021-06-23 17:09 Wait! I'm not familiar with fTelnet. So... There's a browser version you say. I can't really check now while I'm using my phone, but do you install this on a webserver on your LAN so a remote browser can connect via TLS (https)? I'm thinking the way say, KiwiIRC does for an IRCd? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opicron · 2021-06-23 18:13 Its a javascript socket telnet client. Go to bbs.opicron.eu on your browser and see :). It works on any server, doesnt need to be on samen lan or server. Fot example I just feed the connection details to the publicly hosted fTelnet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- opicron · 2021-06-23 18:14 Even works on mobile browsers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- euphraties247 · 2021-06-24 00:03 The joke being is that I can connect to my cisco fine at 9600, and I've setup SLIP to another machine at 115k baud. So I know the USB worked fine. so much of the 80's/90's stuff was lost regarding BBS stuff so it's kind of inevitable I suppose. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DosGamerMan · 2021-07-23 12:37 I did a search for "ripterm" before I made a post to this subreddit. It turned up nothing. Glad to see I am not the only one who remembers it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SkybuckFlying · 2023-02-19 21:15 Syncterm uses SDL2 on windows, doesn't work if GPU damaged or broken...