Date : Mon, 13 Mar 2006 23:53:47 +0000
From : Rob <robert@...>
Subject: Re: 6502s and SASI/SCSI.
At 23:01 13/03/2006, Fragula wrote:
>Hi Rob!
>
>Rob wrote:
>
> >> Two discs and one manual of the "Pace OBBS BBS System" for the BBC
> > ...by me ... :-)
>Ohhh! And how would you feel about this getting imaged and distributed
>to the 20 or so hard core Beeb nutters left in the world? :-D
Well I wouldn't mind.. Can't speak for Pace.
> > I was paid the princely sum of 1 VHS video recorder (rrp £360)
>You did well! Some folk I know got paid with 10 year old unMOTable
>Citroen 2CV with a door missing,
>[snip]
Well that's an interesting collection!! I think
on reflection I did well! I heard of plenty of
people never got paid, or had their
software/hardware turned down, only for the
company to come out with their own version shortly afterwards..
>IIRC that was when I actually learned 6502 (my 2nd
>not-typed-from-listing 6502 program ever, the first being a swipecard
>reader/writer. Don't remember if I ever got payed for that.
>
>Actually I might have got the prom blower the same way on another occasion.
>
>According to my ladyfriend I was babbling menmonics and complaining
>about my ROM being full, through what little sleep I managed to get. Fun
>times.. :-/
lol.. I used to be a dab hand at 6502 .. It's
still on my CV, but's probably 20 years since I
last actually wrote anything in it. But I certainly used to dream in code..
>Ohhh! That's the reason I didn't run it. No auto answer!
The version I actually ran would cope quite
happily with the "standard" way of modems
signalling via the RS423 handshake lines. But
Pace wanted it working with their modem, of course.
> >
> > I'm not sure I ever saw an "original" pace manual for it - I've got the
> > proofs, though.
>Its a small thin thing. Should I scan it for the documentation project?
I guess if it's not a trouble.. ISTR it wasn't
very good.. The loose proofs I have are on A4
sheets, but not got a scanner hooked up to anything at the moment.
> > I think it was the first (of very many!) BBS softwares for the Beeb,
>Only one I ever saw.
Well.. at the time I was friends with, um, Jon
Freeman, Marcus Anselm, Paul Sengupta, all of
whom had softwares; I /may/ have copies of some
of them. I've also got a copy of "Bloxham BBS"
but unfortunately I can't remember the lad's name
who did it. There were certainly others, too!
> > a couple of months... I first ran it on an old 300bps GPO Modem
>LOL.. I used to have one of those.. Well mine was "multi standard", did
>V23 as well, but no dialling or answer. Big tan box with a cardframe
>inside.. power supply module. Modulator, Demodulatorr and something
>else..(?)
That certainly sounds familier!
>Does anyone else remember Spitting Image? Well I didn't have a cable, so
>I just scratched up some connectors and wire, and sat down with the
>soldering iron about 5Pm. My mate Ian turned up, and we had to figure
>out how the thing went together with the beeb, armed with a scope and
>tracing the tracks. We got it working properly by about 10PM (tested by
>surreptitiously linking the wire from our house, to the neighbours (I
>didn't have a phone, coulnd't afford one!) who had the old GPO "box" on
>the window still..
lol.. naughty.
>and just tapping (with my mate holding the wires in
>place) on to that. IIRC the number for either Telecom Gold or Prestel
>was 444444, and you had to crawl in (username 4444444444 and password
>4444 = on all fours) That was the start.. Names like "Gnome at Home" and
>"Owl BBS" spring to mind.
Ah, Prestel. Dial-up telephone number in the 0x1
area codes (me in Manchester & later London) was
a nice short "618". I was unusual in being
assigned the London computers from Manchester
originally, they were the only ones with a 300
baud access number, on a full 01-nnn-nnnn
number. I eventualy got accounts on all the
local computers, and on one memorable occasion,
accidentally found my normal personal account
worked quite well thank you on "Duke", the
ISP-only update computer... (I worked for 18
months at Micronet, in Technical Help, so had
legit access, but not on my own account!)
All 4's was I think the Prestel education demo
account. There was also an all-8's
account/password. Plus of course anybody running
a BBS soon found a selection of user accounts
where people with prestel terminals/emulators
whom had auto-signin enabled dialed us up....
I had various paid-for accounts with them myself,
bur my favorite mailbox number was "011111111"
... Interesting factlet .. they didn't actually
begin billing rental for accounts until first
time you logged in... I had that account for
about a year for free before I first logged in,
and found loads of mails waiting for it!! lol.
Gosh, you've got me into remembering all the
Prestel hacking & cracking we had fun with now...
:-) [ Esc-K 9001 Esc-J from inside a gateway :-) ]
>We gpt into the living room for some couch time, and to get the flux
>fumes out of the nostrils, at around 10 or 10:30pm, just in time to see
>the start of Spitting Image (around 1984 i guess) and well. either we
>had been working too hard, or some demented latex muppet creature with a
>passing resemblance to someone from "Micro Live" or somesuch, was
>running back and forth the screen between sketches waving a coiled up
>wire with a D25 on one end and domino DIN on the other yelling something
>each time about it being an "RS232C Connector". Ian and I looked
><expletive deleted> speechless@... other.. it must have been that
>same look on my face... Then i thought.. Well a country of 50-odd (at
>that time) million people, somebody had to be doing it.. it just..
>
>Does anybody else remember that sketch? Did I dream it???
Doesn't ring bells with me. So how much were you drinking that night?
> > was so huge that the beeb sat on top of it!
>Must be around the same size as mine.. Big brown diecast sides, sheet
>metal top and bottom, weight about 30 kilos. Large black and chrome
>"GPO" badge, and "property of H.M. Government" on the back? Brown line
>cable with spade connectors?
yeps... :-) No idea what I did with it in the
end - I built the Maplin 300 baud modem kit to
replace it, simply because it was smaller. I
remember I then had a succession of modems after
that. I had four phone lines of my own at one
point, in my parents house.. was writing a (text
based) multi user adventure game - three dialup
users, plus me and a server, all connected via
econet. Now I do have the source for that, coz
I've got the discs on the shelf above me now. I
never managed to flesh out the very small world, though I got it all working...
> I've still got all my
> > original and backup working discs, plus I'm sure I'll have the source
> > code (i.e. the uncompressed Basic!) somewhere too..
>Grrrrrinnnn! :-D
they might be isolated on a set of fileserver
backup discs that I'm waiting to get a network up
for so I can restore them. But i need to get my
GoMC updated so I can put it in a Master to run as fileserver..
> > When I finally get
> > my econet all set back up, I'll try and find it and release a clean
> > copy. Maybe get an emulated beeb up on a server somewhere running the
> > BBS again...
>Hmm. Don't fancy building in a telnet-over-econet server do ya? ;->
well I've got the iolan if I want to connect up real hardware..
I wonder if the unix port of beebem can be
persuaded to run as a background daemon, with
econet and the aforementioned telnet support added..
Rob.