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Telnet BBS for CP/M?

I haven't seen one yet. Most BBSs want to re-create the heyday of BBSing, so they focus on a time after CP/M.

If you do find one, let us know.
 
I haven't seen one yet. Most BBSs want to re-create the heyday of BBSing, so they focus on a time after CP/M.

If you do find one, let us know.
I used to hangout on the BBS's prior to the net, but never ran across anything dedicated to CP/M. There were times that I had to use CP/M on the job and I never really cared for it. I think it's fine that there are those who want to keep it alive but what can you do with it other that 'show & tell'? Oops - standby for an avalanche of info and situations here about that.
 
I used to hangout on the BBS's prior to the net, but never ran across anything dedicated to CP/M. There were times that I had to use CP/M on the job and I never really cared for it. I think it's fine that there are those who want to keep it alive but what can you do with it other that 'show & tell'? Oops - standby for an avalanche of info and situations here about that.

For years I ran my business on CP/M and until Windows 95 came out I wasn't interested in switching over to DOS. As far as I was concerned DOS was just CP/M on a different processor. Since I had Wordstar, Supercalc and dBase II and lots of other software I didn't see the need to switch. In fact, my first laptop was a CP/M in ROM on a LCD screen NEC Starlet with a coin cell battery backed up 256K static RAM module that I took in my car and had a database of customers that I could look up if I had free time during my day. I still miss a couple of features of that old beast. First off it used "C" cells for power and a dead battery could be replaced with fresh cells from the nearest store. Secondly, the CPU was a static Z80 and when turned off and rebooted it came up exactly where it was when shutdown. No need for a long boot process.

But since we're here talking (writing) about retro computers older than the first Pentium CPU's that means that the OS used by many of these old retro things was either CP/M or optionally CP/M. Heck, I've got a lot of near retro computers I've stashed away including a dual PIII Xeon server that's silly old but still useful. Maybe I'll start a telnet BBS dedicated to CP/M running on it.
 
I used to hangout on the BBS's prior to the net, but never ran across anything dedicated to CP/M. There were times that I had to use CP/M on the job and I never really cared for it. I think it's fine that there are those who want to keep it alive but what can you do with it other that 'show & tell'? Oops - standby for an avalanche of info and situations here about that.

Way back when I was in college, there was a guy who ran an RCP/M BBS in his dorm room. Based on what I read, when CP/M was big, there were many RCP/M systems set up for people to access.
 
There were quite a few CP/M boards out there - not all were RCP/Ms though. For example the classic room system "Citadel" was written in BDS-C on a Heathkit H-89 and run that way for years on a number of different CP/M machines. (a bbs named Cafe Dionysus ran for a while on stand-alone Kaypro board (no case or display, just the board & drives))

g.
 
Any telnet BBS's out there that are devoted to just CP/M 2.2 & 3.0? Most BBS's seem to be either game or computer brand related.

So, by "Telnet BBS" I assume you mean a BBS that you Telnet too (vs a web forum)?

Is the intent that this be accessed via, well, Telnet on a host computer but not the actual CP/M machine?
 
So, by "Telnet BBS" I assume you mean a BBS that you Telnet too (vs a web forum)?

Is the intent that this be accessed via, well, Telnet on a host computer but not the actual CP/M machine?


Yes, a BBS that isn't a dial up, but uses the internet and Telnet and is a gathering place for CP/M related programs, info on computers running CP/M, tips and techniques. Uploads/downloads of program & utilities etc.
 
Definitely let us know if you find one! It'd be nice to have a BBS people could connect to, not just to talk about CP/M and get help, but also with a good selection of essential programs in the files section! A lot of the CP/M utilities I use the most were found on random old diskettes, I just stumbled across them. Some of them were things I'd posted about and ended up having someone email me a file, as it wasn't on Walnut Creek, SIG/M, etc.
 
Yes, a BBS that isn't a dial up, but uses the internet and Telnet and is a gathering place for CP/M related programs, info on computers running CP/M, tips and techniques. Uploads/downloads of program & utilities etc.

But wouldn't you need custom telnet clients to transfer software? Heck, you don't even need anything like X/Y/ZMODEM, TCP is reliable, but you still need something to capture the stream in to a file and know when to start and stop (notably binaries).

How does that part work?
 
I don't understand how it's hooked up.

So, you just have your serial port connected to your "main" machine, connect to it (say, through getty if you're on a unix box), then telnet to the BBS, and I guess it's no different than if you connecter with ATDT5551234, at least to the CP/M terminal software.

Is that it?
 
Yep, that's it. As long as it's not doing 7 bit ASCII, Xmodem and friends all work fine. Kermit should work even on 7-bit since it only uses printable characters for the transfer.
 
Hello,

How far have you looked. You may heve dug quite a bit, just not found EXACTLY what you were looking for. But there seem to be LOTS of BBS active, just are any what you're looking for?

Just did a search for BBS TELNET and there's a listing to look at of 950 sites. A long job to search through them all. I started at the top of the list and I guess that most are NOT what you're looking for. Although I did get to one that was specifically Amstrad (incl for the PCW which would interest me).

Back when I started access to PCs (i.e. before the web existed) I was using a stack of BBS systems. I started off with email then, both within the bounds of the BBS (Fido ?) and things with the pre-web Usenet stuff which some of the BBS systems supplied access to. This was all dialup of course. I used to use an email reader called Blue Wave, the email download came as a packet which you had to unpack beforw you could access the indiv messages. Still got BW installed on an old PC here. Downloaded a fair bit of software such systems.

But cannot remember anything specifically CP/M.

No problem to use Telnet/W-XP to get the benefits of the PC, then anything that needs transferring between the PC and the CP/M computer I can move happily using slipper-net, floppy disks, 22DISK etc.

Did you start at the top of the 950+ list? I could easily start from the bottom and work up.

Later.. Just connected to the Amstrad BBS, worked fine. Not a lot there, but need to explore further. Were some others there with PCWs, but much more activity regarding the various games machines. Interesting.

Geoff
 
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Hello,

How far have you looked. You may heve dug quite a bit, just not found EXACTLY what you were looking for. But there seem to be LOTS of BBS active, just are any what you're looking for?

Just did a search for BBS TELNET and there's a listing to look at of 950 sites. A long job to search through them all. I started at the top of the list and I guess that most are NOT what you're looking for. Although I did get to one that was specifically Amstrad (incl for the PCW which would interest me).

Back when I started access to PCs (i.e. before the web existed) I was using a stack of BBS systems. I started off with email then, both within the bounds of the BBS (Fido ?) and things with the pre-web Usenet stuff which some of the BBS systems supplied access to. This was all dialup of course. I used to use an email reader called Blue Wave, the email download came as a packet which you had to unpack beforw you could access the indiv messages. Still got BW installed on an old PC here. Downloaded a fair bit of software such systems.

But cannot remember anything specifically CP/M.

No problem to use Telnet/W-XP to get the benefits of the PC, then anything that needs transferring between the PC and the CP/M computer I can move happily using slipper-net, floppy disks, 22DISK etc.

Did you start at the top of the 950+ list? I could easily start from the bottom and work up.

Later.. Just connected to the Amstrad BBS, worked fine. Not a lot there, but need to explore further. Were some others there with PCWs, but much more activity regarding the various games machines. Interesting.

Geoff

I'm the OP and yes I know there's many many telnet bbs systems out there. I log into some now. I don't know of any that are CP/M supporting sites with all or even most of the CP/M 2.2 utilities, language and other programs ready for D/L. There's a few site that do support a brand of computer that may sometimes run CP/M and may have specail programs that work only on that brand computer. But that's not a generic CP/M BBS, IMHO.
 
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