[FADCA] New BBS program wants

[Bill Sinbine]

At 10:42 PM 1/10/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Hi Bill
>    This is great!! Are you going to put this on the rebbs list, some of 
> the guys there might have some good input.

Right now it is too soon to put it out for the world to see. First Jeff 
needs to see if it is something that he can work with. Once things really 
start to move then I'll put it out to the world...

>    AA4RE bbs software has some powerful emergency tools - we need to 
> understand them better and maybe enhance them, at least make them easier 
> to use.

This is one of the reasons that I wanted to start with this software. He 
said that it is very well written  and documented. This should make it 
easier to work with. Hi said it would take over a week before he was able 
to start to see how and what the code does and if he could work it.




>Maybe after Jeff has gotten a feel for what the bbs is we could get 
>together and discuss things over coffee.. I would suggest in front of a 
>working bbs.


This will be hard to do as he is in a different time zone.

I think I might get the source code for wfbb16 and maybe 32. If this does 
happen and Jeff can work through the fbb code he should be able to maybe 
combine the parts and pieces together....We will have to wait and see.

Below is a snip it of what I got for wants so far on the list.
Now is your chance to have your input for new or improvements. Please put 
your wants out on the list and I'll combine them and make a list.
One thing that I just put on the new list was from a article in QST about a 
program that when you install it you can select your type of computer and 
it will compile it's self for optimized performance.

Send anything you want out for wants and I'll send them along...

***************

I didn't think about stuff from the user side and John reminded me of them.

Word wrap is needed to make things easier.
Also have replying with the old text is needed. To make it a user option 
would be nice but I don't know if that could be  done or not.

As stated below, drivers for tnc's being native in the program would keep 
from having to run outboard programs to do simple interfaces like a simple 
kiss interface.


Here are a few of the replies that I got so far:


1. could  it possibly add support for aea tnc in kiss mode and support for
kantronics  kp-3s  there are hundreds of these in use and to make the
program used wide spread it need to be  simple to install easy to run ,not
crash
and support the hardware that's all ready in use .
  I personally don't like to run another program to load my tnc's in my world
I was told to keep it simple as possible.

2. The PacTOR Level mode is a function of the Data Controller, not the
software.  At this time the SCS PTC Data controllers are the only ones that
use PacTOR 2 or 3.  Therefore to use PacTOR 2, 3 the series of SCS PTS
controllers needs to be supported.


Any dual port TNC (KAM, KPC9612, PTC, DRSI, etc,) should be supported for
both ports to be used independently.(DRSI boards are ISA)


Hi Bill
    This is great!! Are you going to put this on the rebbs list, some of 
the guys there might have some good input.
I'm surprised you don't have word wrap in your list :-) , if i remember 
this was one of your biggest issues with 4re..


Things to think about:
    move the *.cc and *.dis files out of the msgs directory. If there are a 
lot of messages in the msgs dir then it is slow when editing these files.
    someone mentioned XP, XP, XP - Rick, I think. We want to be careful 
here - some of us use isa cards, It might be pretty hard to find a pc with 
isa slots that will run 2000 or XP and not be a dog. Three of my 4 ports 
are using  DRSI cards, one at 9600b.
    I, myself, would not consider using 98 or ME, they are just too 
unstable for this, at least in my experience.
    Although it might be difficult I would like to see a linux version. As 
we move FPAC to Linux it would be nice to put the bbs in the same pc. I was 
planning to try linux fbb after I got fpac running in linux.
    in the info (enter i) from the sysop console add held and verify 
counts. Now one has to enter lh and lv to see if any messages are held.
    When messages are being forwarded allow a higher priority message to be 
inserted in the que that is being sent. Now it has to wait till all in the 
que are send and the action file fires off another batch of messages.
    AA4RE bbs software has some powerful emergency tools - we need to 
understand them better and maybe enhance them, at least make them easier to 
use.
Maybe after Jeff has gotten a feel for what the bbs is we could get 
together and discuss things over coffee.. I would suggest in front of a 
working bbs.


73  John

If it can talk KISS, then you link it directly to a
switch give it a dedicated address and now you have
a nice stack of switch and bbs in two machines that
can talk at a nice rate without having to have things
like bpq or other stuff between the BBS and the serial
port.


This is it so far. I figured I'd send it back out to get all of you 
thinking about it...

73, Bill N4XEO