Fun with shifting bytes / Python translation

ruby-talk
1

Well, it’s kind of, both.

I have been working on a Telnet BBS in Ruby, which started out as an effort
in retro-computing. It was supposed to be a museum peice for my Retro-BBS
website.

Then I discovered Synchro-net. A suprising number of people are still using
this BBS software, as it is telnet ready. It does everything but slice
bread, but it is SLOW. Then I discovered Dove-net, which is run by the guy
who wrote Synchro-net and is a QWK/REP network. Then I noticed that there
was actually a fair amount of traffic on it.

I just have to make my system talk to this thing. The QWK/REP routines are
being much more of a pain than I thought it would be. For one thing, the
format sucks. I’ve never used FTSC-1 Netmail, but I did try to set up
Fidonet a few times (or are they the same thing?) and never got it to work.

Hey, if you’re intereted, the Ruby BBS is running at

TELNET tardisbbs.ath.cx 2323

future plans include a Tradewars clone. If you are really interested, I’d
love some help with this sucker!

Enjoy!

Mark Firestone

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-----Original Message-----
From: Mathieu Bouchard [mailto:matju@sympatico.ca]
Sent: 12 August 2002 16:30
To: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org
Subject: RE: Fun with shifting bytes / Python translation

On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, Firestone, Mark - Technical Support wrote:

Thanks for your help! That fixed it. The rest of the math was
straight-forward to port. Now back to the QWK/REP import routine…

Wow. Some people are actually still using QWK, or is that an effort in
retrocomputing? Have you also considered FTSC-1 NetMail? :wink: (my address
was 1:243/53 back then)

Mathieu Bouchard http://artengine.ca/matju

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2

I have been working on a Telnet BBS in Ruby, which started out as an
effort in retro-computing. It was supposed to be a museum peice for
my Retro-BBS website. Then I discovered Synchro-net. A suprising
number of people are still using this BBS software, as it is telnet
ready. It does everything but slice bread, but it is SLOW. Then I
discovered Dove-net, which is run by the guy who wrote Synchro-net and
is a QWK/REP network. Then I noticed that there was actually a fair
amount of traffic on it.

I have written only a very small BBS software, no colours, in QuickBASIC.
Apart from that I used Maximus-CBCS for a long time, along with SquishMail
and FrontDoor for the FidoNet connections. Maximus had this unix
look-and-feel. I mean, you had a lot of text-based config files divided in
lots of sections; overall it is pretty much like configuring Apache or
XF86 or Postfix.

I’ve never used FTSC-1 Netmail, but I did try to set up Fidonet a few
times (or are they the same thing?) and never got it to work.

FTSC-1 is the FidoNet equivalent of RFC-822. FidoNet is, just like
InterNet, both a standard and a network.

The difference is that with InterNet standards, people tend to connect
only to the big network or else they build a small private network. With
FidoNet standards, at one time, over 500 independent public free-of-charge
networks existed at once, though FidoNet itself was much bigger than any
of those.

Hey, if you’re intereted, the Ruby BBS is running at
TELNET tardisbbs.ath.cx 2323
future plans include a Tradewars clone. If you are really interested, I’d
love some help with this sucker!

certainly ruby would be an interesting language to write those things in,
but i’m not into retrocomputing anymore =)

btw I’m off this list. With over 600 messages a week, it has become a bit
too distracting for my taste.

···

On Tue, 13 Aug 2002, Firestone, Mark - Technical Support wrote:

Mathieu Bouchard http://artengine.ca/matju