[Coco] NitrOS9 BBS

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 11:26 AM, Barry Nelson <
barry.nelson at amobiledevice.com> wrote:
>
> > Taylor, Phillip L CIV Phillip.L.Taylor at uscg.mil
> > Wed Jan 11 10:38:21 EST 2017
> >
> > What if you want to write a bbs system and make it listen to the
incoming ports. How can this be done please?
>
> For a serial line run:
>
> tsmon /n &
>
> Or for telnet/internet access run:
>
> inetd &
>
> More information on inetd can be found here:
https://sourceforge.net/p/drivewireserver/wiki/Using_DriveWire/#inetd <
https://sourceforge.net/p/drivewireserver/wiki/Using_DriveWire/#inetd>
>
> You can use an inetd.conf line like:
>
> 6809 telnet auth protect banner, login,
>
> Login will prompt for a user name configured in /etc/passwd

If you are writing a BBS, it would make sense to use the existing network
library if it is suitable, or maybe improve it if it is not.
The code used to be in the NitrOS9 repository under
3rdparty/packages/drivewire.  I just looked and seems it has been moved
or removed, not sure.  The inetd, telnet, and dw commands/utils are good
examples of how to use the library if you can find those.
The docs are here at least:


https://sourceforge.net/p/drivewireserver/wiki/Writing_Network_Capable_Software/

For existing BBS software you have two main options.  The first is to use
inetd as Barry described.  This works for most programs that use standard
I/O, for instance its an easy way to provide a remote shell.  If the BBS
software can be configured to run this way, it should work unmodified.

The other option is to tell the BBS software you have a regular Hayes
compatible modem on port /N.  This makes most of the OS9L2 BBS software
package work at least, that is the BBS disk that I believe can be found on
the NitrOS9 disk image site.  It also makes the terminal program Supercomm
work fine.    There are serious limitations however.  The lower level IO
calls like setting baud rate or parity are all NOPs in the Drivewire
virtual serial device as I recall, and I don't calls for things like
monitoring the DCD or the RING line would do anything meaningful.  That all
could be done if it mattered, really just figuring out what a real modem
would do and adding that behavior to the OS9 driver I think.

HTH
-Aaron