Hearsay

Connecting to raspian on a pi sudo raspi-config looks like this for me – do you have chars missing? What are you connecting from?

removed Picture of connector window

³    1 Expand Filesystem              Ensures that all of the SD card s        ³
³    2 Change User Password           Change password for the default u        ³
³    3 Boot Options                   Choose whether to boot into a des        ³

Iyonix, have the latest from XAT installed already.
This older version of Raspbian has a different menu list for raspi-config
Seems to be cropping after 66 or 70 counting the 4 spaces at left.

By doing TERM=ansi on the raspbian, you get the full colour version in Connector, but still my text is cropped. It may be just a fault in that version Raspbian.
I cant see any width settings anywhere

Are there any phone BBS left

I’d imagine most BBSs these days work on telnet. It gives global access without call costs. Plus, with more and more services switching to VoIP, that’s going to be a problem for modems. I managed to get my Minitel working over VoIP, but that’s 1200/75. I rather doubt 14k4 (or better) would be happy…

There were four primary BBS servers for RISC OS:

• ARCbbs (Hugo Fiennes) – one of the originals, commercial, expensive.

• Archiboard (Keith Marlow) – never had much experience with this. Commercial.

• ArmBBS (Keith Hall) – designed to be better than ARCbbs and it is… Commercial, but runs restricted without registration, and it’s not expensive. http://www.halium.plus.com/armbbs/index.html

• ?? I think this was called FlashBBS or something. Looked as if it was written in assembler, and had a mechanism where it ‘compiled’ menus and stuff to make it faster. An interesting design.

Unfortunately, all are still stuck in the 26 bit era. In theory ARCbbs and ArmBBS could be ported as they’re mostly written in C, but attempts to obtain sources have led to the usual destination…nowhere.

As for a 32 bit native system, well, there is one. It’s a “work in progress” that has been rumbling around for, well, something like five-odd years. It may be ‘finished’ one day. ;-)

Arcade ?

Arcade is out of service. Disc failure for the filebase, plus the fact that maintaining an ancient system on ancient hardware is probably not worth the while for the four or five users that still connected in.

What is the last version of ArcBBS – is it downloadable?

1.64ß32c (1995/04/19) is the one I have here. It’s not freely available.

Does using a USBSerial lead help isolate your computer from the phone line?

Your modem should be doing that. It’s not the job of the serial lead.

But these days, serial connections are usually for other devices. Usually logging into a console. Because modems? Who uses those these days?

it looks like the it’s just being cropped. I presume the small 3’s are vertical lines? If you spool the output – drag menu→spool to the ram disc issue sudo armbian-config so that it shows your cropped text, stop the recording (under the status bar). Now if you look at the spool file does it show any text not displayed?

On the plus side I’ve just discovered that I can set function keys from the Special option on the status bar so can ignore the phone book.

Yes it displays the same as yours, there is positional differences in the text blocks.
The cropped text is missing from the spool file as well.
There is no width settings in Connector so it must be coming from Raspbian like it.
Hearsay is doing the same thing even if I set it to 132 columns.
Found this by google
stty rows 50 cols 132
It puts all the text out on Hearsays 132 column display,
It doesn’t page properly though.
Edit:
stty rows 24 cols 132
is the sweet spot, looks like that is what my raspbian raspi-config was built for.

By doing TERM=ansi on the raspbian, you get the full colour version in Connector

I’ve been looking for a way to do that but it’s not working correctly in htop – so more work needed. It does work if I connect to my orangepipc, which defaults to ansi, and ssh to the pi.

There’s something weird going on when you set TERM=ansi. alsamixer is sending C4 in Unicode for a horizontal line. &2500 is Unicode for horizontal line C4 is horizontal line in the ansi character set.

Sorry I’m lost, alsamixer, audio?
Edit: Oh I get it, the alsamixer settings, it’s getting late :-)
At the raspi prompt (after login)
TERM=ansi then sudo raspi-config does a perfect colour display here. excepting it needing 132 cols. But yours should be fine.

raspi-confi works fine.

alsamixer at the command prompt shows no lines only characters – it won’t in your version anyway – but for example the pi is sending &C4 as 2 Unicode bytes. &C4 isn’t a Unicode horizontal line &2500 is. &C4 is a horizontal line in Connectors ANSI character set so setting TERM=ansi appears to have upset the character encoding. htop also has problems. Neither have problems if you don’t use TERM=ansi

You can make custom terminal data files for Linux to suit I think.
I noticed one line on your raspi-config has been cropped, They have obviously improved things as much as possible for remote logins.

The good news is putty on windows displays the same

so setting TERM=ansi appears to have upset the character encoding.

With my (small) experience of Linux, that’s probably exactly what you’ve told it to do. You have specified the character set is ANSI, so it is using ANSI. Somewhere else you’ll have specified that the character encoding is UTF-8, so it is using UTF-8.
Even if this means the somewhat braindead behaviour of outputting eight bit ANSI codes in UTF-8 encoding. It’s…what it has been instructed to do…so it’s going to do it.

You are probably right. Anyway TERM=Linux works nicely.

Connector-1_09_02 fixes the remaining display issues I’ve seen. I’ve set the default config with the function keys for TERM=Linux.

TERM=Linux

That has to be linux not Linux unless things have changed.
The tidiest settings with Hearsay are just with the default vt102 on both Raspian and Hearsay.
Playing with ANSI gets colour but too many extra chars, it would need a similar treatment that you gave Connector.
The Hearsay 132 column display will be useful at times. Not to mention the option of Kermit.

Yes linux.

So basically you are saying If I’m going to improve one of these programs you would prefer it was hearsay?

I picked connector as it was easier to get into though I agree the lack of 132 column mode is a problem. Changing settings in hearsay is so awkward, I need to work out how to run 2 versions of hearsay on the same machine for example. I think David wrote it to stop kids from messing things up – certainly stopped me :-)

If I’m going to improve one of these programs you would prefer it was hearsay?

Not at all, in fact there seems to be endless settings in Linux that I would look at first. An expert could tell us, but things like tmux can be specified to ASCII and terminfo -a vt100-colour are things that I have only googled not investigated yet.
This is not mainstream, because generally clients are utf8 capable nowadays.
I thought I had two Hearsays on the iconbar, but one was dead in the water I think, Hearsay only uses local choices, so what be a natural for two copies running.
Edit: I guess all of the system variables would have to be made unique for each copy.
I assume blockdrivers is up to the task, There is a dual serial card supported. Previously I have used one blockdriver and one devices interface at the same time.
What is the status of SerialUSB, can it have USB0 and USB1 in use with the SerialUSB driver?

The 132col mode is nice – the 24 lines seems hard wired but may be changeable

What is the status of SerialUSB, can it have USB0 and USB1 in use with the SerialUSB driver?

If you look a *cat devices: SerialUSB devices are listed from SerialUSB to SerialUSBnnn where nnn is a number 1 for each device. As you plug devices in and out nnn changes.

I need to work out how to run 2 versions of hearsay on the same machine for example

Turned out to be easier than expected I’ve been able to modify the !Serialdev file to auto detect if a SerialUSB device is available and use that otherwise use the Internal32 driver.

I’d like to thank Rick Murray for scanning the manual but scold him for not typing it in so I could search it – well he does type fast :-)

the 24 lines seems hard wired but may be changeable

stty rows <number> cols <number>

At least, that’s what I think it was on my PVR.
There may or may not be a resize command (I think it’s often an add-on), that may or may not work (depends if terminal correctly replies to screen size query).

to modify the !Serialdev file to auto detect if a SerialUSB device is available and use that otherwise use the Internal32 driver.

Oh, do drop it somewhere, that sounds like a useful snippet to have.

I’d like to thank Rick Murray for scanning the manual

Thank David, he sent it to me. All I did was put each page on my printer scanner glass and poke the “Next” button. ;-)

but scold him for not typing it in so I could search it – well he does type fast :-)

Not that fast! It’s a shame the original documents (FrameMaker?) have been lost to time…

HsySerialDev.zip. It replaces SerialDev. It prefers SerialUSB devices so if you want Internal32 either start another instance of hearsay until you get the internal serial device or unplug the USB devices. You may as well have a copy in case I lose it trying to get Hearsay to compile.

the 24 lines seems hard wired but may be changeable

I mean’t hardwired in hearsay.

I mean’t hardwired in hearsay.

Yeah, it’s pretty much described as such on page 61, with the 132 column option appearing a few pages later.

I’m able to connect to my Cisco routers/switches with !Connector now. I can’t seem to get a serial session open with !Hearsay yet. SerialUSB drivers working well on my PandaBoard ES.

Figured out the !SerialDev file and !Hearsay is working for me now.

Rick was right about us telling linux to do two things. to turn off utf8 and use ansi:
TERM=ansi
LANG=en_GB
and select ANSI in hearsay iconbar menu.
I think 24 rows is the default in linux
So Hearsay being happy with 24, all is needed is
stty cols 132
and set the window menu option display to 132 in Hearsay