ud040164@ndsuvm1.bitnet.UUCP (03/29/87)
Hello;
On a usual boring North Dakota evening (although we won the NCAA Hockey
Championship tonight!), I was thinking about some of the things that I
had planned long ago. One of them was starting an ST BBS. Purusing the
latest literature (and my memory), I came up with ZIP in the way of P-D
BBS ware, so I resigned myself to writing my own.
Well, that's not really a problem, although the language of choice is.
Personal Pascal would be nice, although I have yet to get a GEM program
running with any regularity, so I figured I might as well give ST BASIC
a shot (call me a sadist). Guess what? Absolutely _no_ way to read the
serial port! Questions:
1) In the "New" ST Basic, will such support be made available?
2) When (if ever) will such a "New" Basic be forthcoming?
3) *the clincher* At what price?
4) What bright guy wrote the manual? I love the commands which are in-
cluded in the list of commands, but which are left out of the lang-
uage :-)
5) (As an aside, what happened to Alex? Shin surgery? ;-)
-------
a.d. jensen "Forty below keeps out
Department of Geography the riff-raff."
University of North Dakota -- North Dakota State Motto
Grand Forks, ND
<UD040164%NDSUVM1.BITNET@WISneil@atari.UUCP (04/07/87)
In article <101UD040164@NDSUVM1>, UD040164@NDSUVM1.BITNET writes: > I came up with ZIP in the way of P-D > BBS ware, so I resigned myself to writing my own. Actually, Citadel-ST is available in the public domain. It is on GEnie and on many BBS's, including the Atari Base Annex (see below for more on the Annex). Citadel-ST files include executables in CITADEL1.ARC, utilities in CITADEL2.ARC, and C source code in CITADEL3.ARC. There are some other files for help and such floating around, too. > Well, that's not really a problem, although the language of choice is. > Personal Pascal would be nice Something you may be interested in is NiteLite ST, which is *not* public domain but which does include Personal Pascal source code. This BBS software has a very good message base and lots of customizability. It is available from Paul Swanson, whose voice # is 617-663-4463, or call his BBS at 617-663-4221. > 1) In the "New" ST Basic, will such support be made available? > 2) When (if ever) will such a "New" Basic be forthcoming? > 3) *the clincher* At what price? The new ST BASIC is currently in production and should get off the boat here within the next few weeks. Which means we'd better set a price soon! The new BASIC does indeed support the serial port, in fact it now has functions for making direct calls to BIOS, XBIOS, and GEMDOS. It also runs a lot faster. If you are interested in BASIC for the ST, you should also look at GFA BASIC, which also offers a compiler option. It runs fast, uses structured code, and in general has been receiving rave reviews from users. Michtron also offers quite a bit of support, including their very own area online on GEnie. > 5) (As an aside, what happened to Alex? Shin surgery? ;-) Funniest line I've seen on the net in ages! -- --->Neil Harris, Director of Marketing Communications, Atari Corporation UUCP: ...{hoptoad, lll-lcc, pyramid, imagen, sun}!atari!neil BIX: neilharris / CIS: 70007,1135 / Delphi: NEILHARRIS / GENIE: NHARRIS WELL: neil / Atari Corp. BBS 408-745-5308 / Usually the OFFICIAL Atari opinion
john@viper.UUCP (04/07/87)
In article <101UD040164@NDSUVM1> UD040164@NDSUVM1.BITNET writes: >Hello; > > On a usual boring North Dakota evening (although we won the NCAA Hockey > Championship tonight!), I was thinking about some of the things that I > had planned long ago. One of them was starting an ST BBS. Purusing the > latest literature (and my memory), I came up with ZIP in the way of P-D > BBS ware, so I resigned myself to writing my own. Hmm, guess you haven't heard of Citadel... Citadel is a PD BBS system written in C which has been ported to a large number of micros including the IBM-PC, C-64/128, Apple //, Amiga, -And- to the Atari ST... It is (in my opinion) -The- best general-discussion-BBS system available PD or otherwise. It is not as powerful or as flexable as FIDO as far as a file-server BBS goes, but it does have Xmodem (CHK + CRC) and will soon have Ymodem support. If you're interested, there is a thriving Citadel community of 15-20 systems in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area. The system run by the person who ported Citadel to the ST is called "Pell" at (612)-377-9239. The BBS system itself is available there. I would -strongly- advise that you take the time to use the system two or three times before you download it. It's a very powerful, very friendly system, but it is -very- different in feel from 90%+ of all the bbs systems you've probably used before. Digression-Warning: If you are familiar with the RPN style calculators put out by HP, there is a similarity the differences between algebraic .vs. RPN and most-bbs's .vs. Citadel... No, it' not an "RPN BBS" by any stretch of the imagination, but it's "different" in a way that encourages you to break some of the assumptions about how BBS's "should" work... When I first used an RPN calculator, I had a similar experience with having to rethink what calculators are and how they work... Nowdays, I'm hooked on RPN calculators as my calculator-of-choice and Citadel is my BBS of choice. Hope you like it. If you have further questions, feel free to ask away. (If I get a great deal of interest, I'll consider sending a copy of the system to Turner for posting to the net...) --- John Stanley (john@viper.UUCP) Software Consultant - DynaSoft Systems UUCP: ...{amdahl,ihnp4,rutgers}!{meccts,dayton}!viper!john
neil@atari.UUCP (04/08/87)
In article <697@atari.UUCP>, neil@atari.UUCP (Neil Harris) writes: > Actually, Citadel-ST is available in the public domain. It is on GEnie and > on many BBS's, including the Atari Base Annex (see below for more on the > Annex). Well, after that long posting, I forgot to talk about the Annex. Atari Base Annex was set up to experiment with new BBS software as a possibility to use on Atari Base. With a volume of 12,000 calls per month on the 5 main lines, it is highly impractical to fool around there. So I got a friend to volunteer to set up a separate line in his home. We've tried out the aforementioned Citadel ST and are currently running BB/ST, the new BBS from QMI. Next in the queue is NiteLite ST, as soon as we get the menus in shape. Please give us a call. It is only through caller interaction that we can fairly evaluate the various programs. Call *** 408-227-3502 *** to reach Atari Base Annex. 300/1200 baud service, 24 hours a day (although sometimes we busy up the lines in the late evenings for maintenance). -- --->Neil Harris, Director of Marketing Communications, Atari Corporation UUCP: ...{hoptoad, lll-lcc, pyramid, imagen, sun}!atari!neil BIX: neilharris / CIS: 70007,1135 / Delphi: NEILHARRIS / GENIE: NHARRIS WELL: neil / Atari Corp. BBS 408-745-5308 / Usually the OFFICIAL Atari opinion
jtr485@umich.UUCP (Johnathan Tainter) (04/15/87)
In article <787@viper.UUCP>, john@viper.UUCP writes: > Citadel is a PD BBS system written in C which has been ported to a large > number of micros including the IBM-PC, C-64/128, Apple //, Amiga, -And- to > the Atari ST... It is (in my opinion) -The- best general-discussion-BBS > system available PD or otherwise. It is not as powerful or as flexable as > FIDO as far as a file-server BBS goes, but it does have Xmodem (CHK + CRC) > and will soon have Ymodem support. > If you're interested, there is a thriving Citadel community of 15-20 > systems in the Minneapolis/St.Paul area. The system run by the person > who ported Citadel to the ST is called "Pell" at (612)-377-9239. His name is Orc, (legally David Parsons). He does incredible work and only had 512K and 1 floppy drive. (Neil@Atari snatch this man up if you can!) > I would -strongly- advise that you take the time to use the system two > or three times before you download it. It's a very powerful, very friendly > system, but it is -very- different in feel from 90%+ of all the bbs systems > you've probably used before. If you think the feel is different you SHOULD look at the code. This thing started out as a game program, ala Dungeon or Adventure. --j.a.tainter > John Stanley (john@viper.UUCP)