Date   : Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:44:35 +0100
From   : mfirth@... (Michael Firth)
Subject: Plans for the Econet Island @,Acorn World 09?

Rob wrote:
> On 16/08/2009, Michael Firth <mfirth@...> wrote:
>   
>> If the total on the Econet island is only 8, then having 4 dedicated Cave
>> machines seems a bit much, given that there is also the Econet Atom which
>> will take one of the remaining 4 places due to being a curiosity.
>>     
>
> Well, at the end of the day, it IS tied to a Gaming show ... so we
> should be showing off some games, and what better than econetted
> games!
>
> What other networked games are there other than Cave and JGH's
> Muggins?  I did start a MUD, a long time ago, but it was never really
> got to a point where it was really worth playing, and while I think I
> can locate the discs, I thnk I remember that it needs another
> Beeb+6502 2P to act as sever.
>
>
>   
>> With only 3 spaces, there isn't likely to be much room for showing BeebEm
>> plus some traditional BBC Stations. Certainly the A3020s / A5000 are likely
>> to have to be relegated to an inaccessible location as 'server only'.
>>
>> I guess if we don't make the Cave network seperate then we could perhaps
>> have something along the lines of 2 permanent Cave clients, with some of the
>> other BBCs able to run as additional clients if they're not needed / wanted
>> for
>> something else.
>>     
>
> If we are that limited to space, then yep, that makes sense ...
>
> We'll need some notices I think ... *I AM 245 CAVE for cave, *I AM 240
> HOST for bbs, etc ..
>   
>> What does everyone else think?
>>
>>     
>
>
>   
>> If I can get BeebEm for Linux talking AUN in time*, I'll be able to have my
>> Netbook running BeebEm talking to my A3020, which could be a small
>> station in addition to the 8.
>> I guess the question then is whether we need to join the two AUN Ethernets
>> together.
>>     
>
> I don't see why not.  We'll have 'net access available, into which
> I'll plug my VoIP router to give us phone lines for the BBS.  The
> other side of that gives us a nice clean subnet to plug the AUN BBS
> machines into, rather than competing for IP addresses with whatever
> else the hotel has on their network, so you can link into that with no
> problem.
>
>
>   
>> I'll put as much stuff in as I can fit then, but all my bits are home-brew,
>> due
>> to never having had access to any 'official' Econet clocks / terminators /
>> cabling.
>>     
>
> Nor me - I only ever had my termintor-bodged-into-a-clock, everything
> else was home grown.  I now have a selection of Phil's nice new
> sockets, but still got my old ones too.
>
>
>   
>> * currently the code compiles, but the machine I was trying it on last week
>> was
>> failing with a "Can't find a free station ID" message. Hopefully that will
>> be easy
>> to fix, then it will be down to seeing if the Linux machine can see the
>> A3020.
>>     
>
> try adding a specific entry in Econet.cfg and requesting that one with -Ecostn
>
>   
I did think about doing that, and may well do next week to get me going, 
but I figured that if the support was going to be more generally useful 
then it would be good if it could 'just work'.

I have got PC BeebEms talking to my A3020 from the subnet the Linux 
machine is on (via a Cisco router), so I'm hopeful that it shouldn't be 
too hard to get the Linux version doing something now it compiles - the 
Windows sockets code is a b**tardisation of the Unix original, so 
conversion back is usually not too hard.

Regards

Michael