19 Jun
2009
19 Jun
'09
9:19 p.m.
It's running again! Please drop in and help me test it ...
For those of you who are new, it is a Telnet BBS that I am writing
running on an IBM PCjr. I have written all of the TCP/IP code and the
BBS code from scratch. The only thing I didn't write was the packet
driver for the Ethernet adapter and the version of DOS it is running.
The IP address is 96.42.239.42 . That goes to my cable modem - the
router port forwards telnet traffic directly to the PCjr. Pretty much
any telnet client will do including the one built into Windows.
Since the last round of testing I have added the following:
* A forum area with threads
* A private message area
* Bulletins (read only files that are longer in length)
* Basic user profile editing functions
* Better telnet protocol support with performance improvements
It is a pretty big set of changes. I am hoping there are no bugs, but
having a few people on at the same time will help flush them out and
give me an idea on if the machine is capable of servicing multiple users
doing real BBS functions. (My previous tests were pretty limited.) The
machine is setup to handle 6 online users at the same time.
I am also looking for feedback on the user interface .. if it is not
usable, then there isn't much point. I am limited with what I can do
given the hardware, but let me know what you think would be neat and
I'll add it to the todo list. (ANSI graphics isn't there, but I know how
to get it done.)
I will leave the machine running for about a week. If it falls over
before then I will fix the bug and restart it as quickly as I can. If it
makes it a week with no serious problems I'll be pretty happy.
Thanks,
Mike
19 Jun
19 Jun
9:41 p.m.
On 19 Jun 2009 at 23:19, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
I will leave the machine running for about a week. If
it falls over
before then I will fix the bug and restart it as quickly as I can. If
it makes it a week with no serious problems I'll be pretty happy.
Looks good, Mike!
But it lacks a certain realism--the screen paints too fast! Real
BBSes were never like this. I wonder if you could simulate 1200
bps... :)
Cheers,
Chuck
10:07 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 19 Jun 2009 at 23:19, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
I really did think about slowing down the '+++ATH' sequence that I put
out when people log off, just to make the gag more realistic ...
When you stop back in, try out the message/forum functions. That's what
I'm really looking to test. That involves some disk I/O, and should
prove more challenging for the machine.
Mike
I will leave the machine running for about a
week. If it falls over
before then I will fix the bug and restart it as quickly as I can. If
it makes it a week with no serious problems I'll be pretty happy.
Looks good, Mike!
But it lacks a certain realism--the screen paints too fast! Real
BBSes were never like this. I wonder if you could simulate 1200
bps... :)
Cheers,
Chuck
10:10 p.m.
It's a pretty cool system, but it doesn't seem to
support liquor-over-ip!! :^)
-----Original Message-----
From: cclist at sydex.com
Sent: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:41:41 -0700
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: PCjr Telnet BBS Test
On 19 Jun 2009 at 23:19, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
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I will leave the machine running for about a
week. If it falls over
before then I will fix the bug and restart it as quickly as I can. If
it makes it a week with no serious problems I'll be pretty happy.
Looks good, Mike!
But it lacks a certain realism--the screen paints too fast! Real
BBSes were never like this. I wonder if you could simulate 1200
bps... :)
Cheers,
Chuck 
20 Jun
20 Jun
3:05 a.m.
On Fri, 2009-06-19 at 21:41 -0700, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 19 Jun 2009 at 23:19, Michael B. Brutman wrote:
nice -n 19 telnet <host>
and then kick off a big compile.
Gordon
I will leave the machine running for about a
week. If it falls over
before then I will fix the bug and restart it as quickly as I can. If
it makes it a week with no serious problems I'll be pretty happy.
Looks good, Mike!
But it lacks a certain realism--the screen paints too fast! Real
BBSes were never like this. I wonder if you could simulate 1200
bps... :) 
19 Jun
19 Jun
10:55 p.m.
Michael B. Brutman wrote:
It's running again! Please drop in and help me
test it ...
Seemed pretty flawless operation to me. If there was disk accesses, I
didn't notice any.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
20 Jun
20 Jun
6:25 a.m.
Jim Leonard wrote:
Michael B. Brutman wrote:
Single user shouldn't be a problem. I'm concerned about 5 or 6 on at a
time doing things that hit the disk:
Leaving a reply or starting a new message: Around 7 disk I/Os, some of
which are to the same part of the file so it might be more equivalent to
5 disk I/Os.
Listing private messages: painful .. private messages were implemented
using the same code as the public forums, so the messages for a user are
interspersed with other users. (Privately, of course.) I have pointers
to know where things are, but there can be a lot of head skipping to
move around.)
Reading bulletins - all disk I/O.
Mike
It's running again! Please drop in and help
me test it ...
Seemed pretty flawless operation to me. If there was disk accesses, I
didn't notice any.
22 Jun
22 Jun
6:01 a.m.
Hi everybody,
The Jr is still running. I've had 50 people register and play over the
last two days. There are just under 50 test messages in the forum area.
So far I'm found one bug that is affecting my TCP/IP code a little
bit, but not enough to stop and fix it. (I am retransmitting after too
short of a period due to a configuration issue in the code.)
My warning messages for the BBS application and the TCP/IP code are
going to a log file, so I won't see the real dirt until I shut down and
start looking at the log file.
If you haven't stopped in yet, I'm still looking for a lot more
activity. The machine is configured to take five users at a time, but
it is usually only being used by one person. The extra activity helps
me find timing windows in the code. I'm also logging extra diagnostic
information on Telnet connections so I can see what telnet options I'm
not handling. And lastly (but pretty important) I'm still looking for
feedback on what people like and don't like.
The IP address is 96.42.239.42 .. If you've already checked in, it's
time to check back!
The good news is that I've pretty much proven that not only is it
possible, but it seems to work pretty well. I've been working on the
TCP/IP code for 4 years so this almost feels like a victory lap. :-)
Mike
26 Jun
26 Jun
9:18 a.m.
Still going! (But not for much longer ...)
Main menu -> stats
Server started: Fri Jun 19 23:58:37 2009
Session start: Fri Jun 26 10:53:28 2009
Current time: Fri Jun 26 11:08:24 2009
Active sessions 1, Max Active sessions 5, Total Sessions: 249
Registered users: 74
Tcp Pkts Sent 129078 Rcvd 108740 Retrans 4407 Seq/Ack errs 2873
Dropped 0
Pkt stats: Incoming pkts: 113570 Dropped: 0 Sent: 133875
From the 'info' command:
Bios date: 06/01/83 Dos version 5.02 Type: (fd) PCjr 4860
Free memory: 248016 bytes, Local heap: Ok, Far heap: Ok
248K free, even with DOS 5, a bunch of device drivers, the packet
driver, and a 80KB RAM disk. (It's been like that since it started so I
know that I'm not leaking memory.)
Thanks to all of you who have signed in and played around! It's going to
be up for a little while longer. When I finally do shut it down I'll be
looking through the error logs to see what strange things I might need
to deal with.
Mike
27 Jun
27 Jun
7:43 a.m.
Testing is done!
I had to shut it down around 3:30 in the morning .. it had been up for a
week and we had some major thunderstorms coming in. I was copying down
statistics while the lightning was illuminating the room.
Total uptime was around one week, 3 hours. In that time the machine sent
132067 TCP/IP packets and received 111346. 72 users registers and left
around 70 messages.
The most visible bug was my retransmit timer. Due to a misconfiguration
it was timing out on packets 10x faster than it should, so there were a
lot more retransmitted packets than normal. This lead to some dropped
connections - if a packet has to be retransmitted more than 6 times I
assume the connection is dead.
There are some telnet options that I received and did not answer - I'm
going to dig into those to see if that is something I should fix. There
are also some warning from my TCP stack I'd like to look into deeper.
Overall, it was a great test. I think the machine is more than capable
of handling a multi-user telnet BBS with reasonable responsiveness.
I'd like to thank everybody who signed in and poked around. I had
connections from New Zealand, the UK, Canada, Brazil, and many points in
the US. The oldest machine that connected was a Mac SE - most others
seemed to be using Windows or Linux.
Mike
5974
days inactive
5981
days old
9 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
cclist＠sydex.com -
gordonjcp＠gjcp.net -
mbbrutman-cctalk＠brutman.com -
n0body.h0me＠inbox.com -
trixter＠oldskool.org