User port Internet

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eslapion
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Re: User port Internet

Post by eslapion »

Gyro Gearloose wrote:You do? Which one?
I have a Protecto 80 but AFAIK, these were relabeled Data20 80 column adapters.
How many different models existed?
I think that's in the Wiki.
I think I'm envious.
:lol:
Be normal.
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Bobbi »

Back to the WiModem - I found a post from Jim Drew on Lemon64 from last week, and it is good news!!
We have incoming data!

I released v1.5 which adds support for incoming connections. The connection port is 23. I don't see an easy way to change port numbers at the moment since the ESP8266 sets the incoming port number prior to the app actually running.

I was able to test this with PuttyTel (a telnet only version of Putty). I was able to use the IP for cbmstuff.ddns.net (with my router port forwarding to 198.162.0.104 - my WiModem's IP address) using port 23, and it connects perfectly. I can type back and forth between devices once connected.

If you type +++ and ATH, it hangs up the connection correctly. I have not implemented ATA. Right now auto-answer is always enabled (ATS0=1), and so it automatically connects.

I am not sure how many will use this feature. I am going to look at setting up a BBS now for some real testing.
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Bobbi »

I just came home from Europe and my WiModem was waiting for me! I have been testing it with MightyTerm (aka CraigTerm) and I am very pleased with it. I am able to connect to a BBS running on the C64 (thank you Alterus) and it works pretty well (although the colour codes cause some problems with MightyTerm, which can not support colour since it is doing 40 cols in software.) With any luck I will get some time over the holidays to write some RS232 code to download XML files for my RSS reader code.
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Re: User port Internet

Post by tonyrocks »

Can you a post a link to that lemon64 article?
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Bobbi »

Bobbi
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Bobbi »

I have been hacking away integrating my RSS parser with some simple code to talk to the WiModem over RS232. My current implementation is very rough and ready, and has a few bugs I need to look at but I am glad to be able to report that I can actually connect to a web site, chat with it in HTTP to request an XML RSS feed, receive that data, parse it and display the news on the screen. For now I am just playing with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation RSS news feeds, but I will try some others once I have worked out some of the bugs in my code.

The ugly thing at the moment is there is no functioning flow control for the incoming data. I am connecting at 300 baud at the moment (approx 30 chars per sec) because I was unable to get things working reliably at 1200 baud (or even 600.) On the plus side, 300 baud is pretty comfortable for human reading speed (even if half the data is other fields and XML tags that end up being filtered out)! The RS232 code in the Kernal has an error in it which makes X-wire flow control not function. I am assuming that the cc65 library is using these same buggy routines. There are two approaches to 'fixing' this - provide our own working code and use it in place of the Kernal routines or make sure the RS232 receive buffer never fills up! My parser consumes bytes one at a time and I don't use any intermediate buffering, so perhaps I could be more aggressive at emptying the buffer. Anyone here have experience with VIC-20 RS232 and want to give me some advice? - save me some time! Another option is to buffer to SD2IEC - I would like to retain the ability to process streams larger than available RAM, so this is perhaps more attractive than buffering to RAM.

Once I have cleaned up the code and gotten it a little more reliable I will release it. (If you have a WiModem and are desperate to try this out, send me a PM and you can try the crappy prototype^w^w^w^w join our alpha test program!)
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ral-clan
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Re: User port Internet

Post by ral-clan »

My wife gave me a WiModem for Christmas and I just got it working with my VIC-20 today. Wow, surreal experience BBS'ing after all these years. Logged onto the Cottonwood BBS.

I made a few observations:

- With the WiModem plugged into the user port, sometimes the Mega-Cart would jump from the main menu to the cartridge games menu when I reset the VIC-20.

- When using the WiModem in 300 baud mode, it would sometimes say it was doing a soft reset, then reset itself back to saved default settings. This occurred a few times after I asked for a status report (ATI!) or a wifi network report (AT*N) but only when I was in 300 baud mode.

- Using VTE-40 (the 40 column terminal emulator on the Mega-Cart), the WiModem would only work properly in 1200 baud mode (or less). In 2400 baud mode, I could send commands (i.e. AT commands) to the WiModem, which it would understand, but any text it sent back (i.e. status messages) were garbled.

- VTE-40 seemed pretty slow on the Cottonwood BBS (i.e. very unresponsive to keypresses even at 1200 baud) but I'm not sure yet if this was my terminal program or the Cottonwood BBS.

I have a DATA-20 40/80 column board and am really looking forward to trying it with the WiModem.

I wonder it if would ever be possibly to have a Commodore PETSCII colour terminal program for the VIC-20 (i.e. 40 column software emulation and coloure PETSCII graphics) so we could visit those C64 boards.

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Mike
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Mike »

ral-clan wrote:I wonder it if would ever be possible to have a Commodore PETSCII colour terminal program for the VIC-20 (i.e. 40 column software emulation and colour PETSCII graphics) so we could visit those C64 boards.
See here: http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bul ... 10&start=3
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ral-clan
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Re: User port Internet

Post by ral-clan »

Anyone know of a terminal program made for the DATA-20 40/80 column board?
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Bobbi
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Bobbi »

Not really possible to have 40 columns and colour at the same time unfortunately because the colour RAM is 22 column.

I find MightyTerm (aka CraigTerm) is pretty decent at 1200 baud using the WiModem.

By the way, have you given my RSS Reader (CBC News App) a try? It is still a work-in-progress and I am trying to solve some problems with the WiModem itself dropping data, but it works reasonably well.
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Mike
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Mike »

I'm taking your post in the other thread to here as quotation, as I don't think it is sensible to handle that topic at two places (and I referred to the other thread only in passing):
In another thread, ral-clan wrote:What about a 40 column PETSCII terminal program without colour (monochrome), or with a reduced colour palette. Would that be possible?

I do like the idea that it could go into full colour 22-column mode for VIC-20 compatible colour PETSCII BBS's.
Monochrome shouldn't be any problem, but even a "reduced" colour palette doesn't make it any more "possible" to avoid colour-clash. If one would go with the "standard" method of employing a bitmap with 160x192 pixels, or the like.

Actually, I had a PM exchange with tokra shortly after the postings in the other thread, discussing yet another way to give characters individual colours in a 40 column scheme: that method would employ something of a "column interlaced" text mode - 1/60 of a second shows the even text columns, the other 1/60 of a second the odd text columns.

[Original paragraph about the RAM constraints removed] ... that method employs a single full 2K character set, which only places the characters in the left half of each character definition. Two text screens in 20x25 character layout, set 512 bytes apart, contain the even and odd columns, respectively. That makes near complete use of the colour RAM. For the even columns, the horizontal positioning register in the VIC chip is used to move the characters into the gaps between the odd columns.

It would flicker horribly. But you'd have individual colours for each character, indeed.

...

That makes your question (or request) to something, that easily can be asked for - but ultimately is bound to be (at least) infeasible to implement - not because the programmers here wouldn't possibly know how to do it, but because there are hard limits in the hardware, which simply can't be circumvented by whatever amounts of clever programming. In that sense, the coders might spend a little bit of time to think about, whether something like this works out, and then can only tell you: no - it is not possible.

Those hardware limits were set in stone in 1980, they were there in my reply from July, 21st this year, and they haven't somehow disappeared in-between (save for the thought-out "joke" hack with above mentioned column-interlaced text screen. A display method which would make you switch off any program that makes use of it within one minute is no good idea to be employed by something like a terminal program, which you'd surely would want to use for more than one minute).

Anyone know of a terminal program made for the DATA-20 40/80 column board?
Ideally those two hardware expansions (userport modem and display adapter at the cartridge port) shouldn't influence each other. Any terminal program, that doesn't do any tricky things like circumventing KERNAL I/O should also work with the 40/80 column cartridges.

...

Sorry Bobbi, for slightly derailing this thread - I just felt it was necessary to clear this up for ral-clan with more than a one-line reply. :)
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Re: User port Internet

Post by groepaz »

ugh - those flicker solutions have been used for c64 80cols stuff.... terrible :=)

in practise its not that much of a problem anyway, of course you couldnt watch 40cols petscii pics in full glory - but besides that a solution that just uses the last color and applies them to both columns (odd/even) works OK
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Bobbi »

I wonder ... are there any 22 column PETSCII BBSs out there?
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Re: User port Internet

Post by Mike »

groepaz wrote:[...] a solution that just uses the last color and applies them to both columns (odd/even) works OK
Unfortunately, if one uses a 160x192 bitmap on the VIC-I to implement a 40 column scheme, the attribute cells are 8x16 pixels - so you'd not have just shared colours for two characters in a row, but for two by two characters. :(

... well, that assumes 4x8 pixel glyphs. With 4x7 pixel glyphs - on a 160x176 bitmap, and doing 40x25 characters there, all bets are off anyway. Neither 8 nor 16 are divisible by 7, and all the programs I know using that glyph size (like FAT-40) don't even try to display more than one foreground colour.

MG Text Edit allows for different foreground colours (with 4x8 pixel glyphs) and can be used to get an impression how the colour resolution of 2x2 characters works out in practice.
Bobbi wrote:I wonder ... are there any 22 column PETSCII BBSs out there?
Not any I know of. However, alterus wanted to start one up:
alterus wrote:I've been meaning to start up a VIC 20 specific BBS with 22 column PETSCII screens. If I knew people would use it, I'd have more incentive!
Chicken and Egg? ;)
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Re: User port Internet

Post by groepaz »

now you mention it.... that was probably also the reason for why my own soft40 implementation was b/w only :)
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