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Ärende: FidoNews 33:13 [02/07]: General Articles
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                        GENERAL ARTICLES
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                    Technology... and the age

Technology ages faster than your body cells decay or a new car loses
its value. Most people would readily agree to that. At some point, one
starts searching in vain for allegedly new spare parts for the loved
vehicle, which has already reached its public drinking age. Regularly,
the bathroom mirror points out new spots, which haven't looked this
old earlier. In the same way, one could almost think that there would
be no new publications for old technology either.

But insiders in the retro scene know better already. Again and again,
and not just from fans, newly created sequels of former favorite games
appear, as well as new ideas and software approaches from ambitious
breadbox-lovers.

G64

The generation C64 turned partly into "generation Golf (VW Golf)" or
"generation Astra (Opel Astra)", has grown up and both feet on the
ground. As, for example, Lodger from Duesseldorf, Germany, who has
written a BBS software for the C64.

Since the BBS scene has mostly changed from dialup to telnet
connections, a discussion about the C64 and telnet BBSing started on
RetroHaCkRrS.com in 2009. Motivated by this fertile online
conversation, Lodger wrote the first version of his BBS software on
the basis of Contiki OS, aptly named Contiki BBS.

What is Contiki OS?

Contiki OS is an internet-capable operating system for 8-bit
computers. It contains a TCP/IP stack, a telnet server and other
features, which provide a perfect framework for a BBS software.

The interview

Location: Düsseldorf. Food: Tasty. Beer: Chilly. Setting: Top.
Interviewee: Lodger.

Through the skilled use of investigative journalism and, well... the
third drink certainly helped, too, we learn that Contiki BBS will be
published under a BSD license and can also be found on GitHub.

And just because the Q & A game works well, let's continue:

BBSindex.de: What hardware is required by your Contiki BBS?

Lodger: To run Contiki BBS, a normal Commodore 64 home computer with a
Commodore 1541/1570/1571 floppy drive and a TFE, RRnet or Lan64
compatible Ethernet interface is sufficient.

Of course, Contiki BBS can be used in a VICE emulator, but it is
necessary that Ethernet emulation is provided by the emulator. This is
not the case with the VICE packages provided by most Linux
distributions, so on Linux, the VICE emulator must be compiled
manually, which requires the libnet0 and libpcap libraries to be
installed. On Windows machines, the WinPCAP libraries must be
installed for this purpose.

BBSindex.de: Which common BBS features does Contiki BBS currently
provide?

Lodger: Well, at the moment only some rudimentary features are
available:

1.) single user mode (only one user at the time) 2.) login with
username and password 3.) creating of message boards (using the setup
program) 4.) reading and writing of messages 5.) paging the operator
6.) listing of available boards 7.) simple access control (ACLs decide
which user may access which boards) 8.) session timer (adjustable in
the setup program) 9.) display of banners at login, main menu and
logout 10) separate setup program

BBSindex.de: What does your roadmap look like? Which features are
planned for the future?

Lodger: Officially, there is no feature list, but over time (usually
once a year), new features get added. More information is available at
commfud.ufud.org, via Twitter (@Wintermute_BBS) and elsewhere.

BBSindex.de: Do you have an overview of how many systems are online
with your program?

Lodger: I know of one guy in New Zealand who has been tinkering with
Contiki BBS. But I can't tell you any numbers, because I really don't
know.

BBSindex.de: Does it make any sense to think about file transfer
protocols if the system runs from floppy only?

Lodger: Generally speaking: yes. Some of the BBS programs back in the
day offered file transfer and all you needed was another floppy disk
drive. Also, the amount of data that is transfered is rather small
compared to the file sizes of Amiga or modern PC systems. I'm
currently investigating if and how file transfer can be implemented
within Contiki OS, but there is no descision pro or contra file
transfer yet.

BBSindex.de: Did you often hit the old technology's limits with your
ideas or implementation?

Lodger: Well, it depends. Sometimes you experience limits like the one
that CBM floppies (the drives used for Commodore 8 bit machines) don't
support real stream IO. But it's not like you have a few lines of C
code eating up hundreds of blocks on the disk or in RAM. Today's
generation of coders using frameworks, libraries and complex object
models probably won't believe it, but you can pack quite a lot of
stuff into 64KB of RAM.
BBSindex.de: And now, the most important question: Why program a BBS
software for the C64? (Please do not answer "because I can"!)

Lodger: Well, because there was no Commodore 64 BBS program that came
with its own, native TCP/IP stack and telnet service. Also, I was
curious wether I could code something like Contiki BBS. Also, writing
the code helped me to understand Contiki OS better.

Contiki BBS

Those looking at Contiki BBS notice soon that it differs clearly from
many other BBS solutions, both old and new. In part, this is because
no ANSI is shown, but one does not want the typical C64 charm to
disappear. Just ASCII!

If you want to feel a bit like a breadbox-hacker, you should
absolutely take a look at Contiki BBS.

Something else, which Lodger consistently avoids to mention is the
fact that he is a BBS operator himself. Of course, all new releases of
Contiki BBS can be found there as well.

Digital accolades have been done in the past. The software is listed
in the Commodore Scene Database and was appreciated in issue 90 of the
Commodore Free magazine with a short text.

Try and see

Source and additional information:

Github: https://github.com/lodger-c64/Contiki-BBS
Wintermute BBS: telnet://wintermute.bbsindex.com

Screenshots:
http://commfud.ufud.org/projekte-2/contiki-bbs

A user manual is provided by Lodger on Github as well. If you are
looking for TFE compatible cartridges for your C64's network
interface, you can find them e.g. at Retro Innovation:
http://store.go4retro.com/64nic/

Video with english subtitles can be found also in the web here:
https://t.co/p8URDYyKRo

Interview for BBSindex.de was made by Vitus Zeel@2:240/8001 (BlackICE
BBS) Questions to Contiki BBS goes to Niels Haedecke@2:240/8002
(Wintermute BBS)


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