13 replies to this topic

[bf2k+]

I started playing with Bobterm a few minutes ago and it is dropping characters something terrible. I setup v 1.23 and am comparing with the Orion Express Cart which drops no chars at all.

Even when I connect to the APE Outgoing Terminal, it seems like every other character or so gets dropped. Zero dropped chars with Express Cart on the identical hardware. I've never used BobTerm until today.

• Is 1.23 the best version to be using?

[Fres]

bf2k+, on Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:52 PM, said:

I started playing with Bobterm a few minutes ago and it is dropping characters something terrible. I setup v 1.23 and am comparing with the Orion Express Cart which drops no chars at all.

Even when I connect to the APE Outgoing Terminal, it seems like every other character or so gets dropped. Zero dropped chars with Express Cart on the identical hardware. I've never used BobTerm until today.

• Is 1.23 the best version to be using?

I'm not dropping characters at all. What BPS, which BBS, etc. I'd be happy to compare results.

[svenski]

I used it when we had one of the Atari chat nights - I couldn't get telnet or securecrt to display the screen properly - kept losing about half of people's responses and in the end connected with an 800XL using Bobterm and APE. Display wasn't very pretty but at least I could see pretty much everything people were typing.

[bf2k+]

Fres, on Sat Apr 16, 2011 6:16 PM, said:

I'm not dropping characters at all. What BPS, which BBS, etc. I'd be happy to compare results.

Any BPS - doesn't matter. The APE outbound client sends chars FAST - 9600 or 19.2. It really doesn't matter because the Express cart receives them at the same speed as Bobterm but doesn't drop a single char. It's weird.

[Marius1976]

How do you get RS232 driver in the Atari? Do you boot an external RS232.COM file or do you let Bobterm itself download the RS232 driver?

The last is the best.

What DOS are you using for Bobterm?

What do you mean by dropping characters? That you can't read anything right? This is probably not a problem of bobterm, but sooner a problem with the driver / flowcontrol.

Are there any other things running? Like a ramdiskdriver or RTC driver? Perhaps interference with High Speed Sio?

BobTerm is one of the Best atari 8bit terminals, so I don't think it is an issue of the program. I also use 1.23.

Perhaps you could try reset settings.

One more thing that crosses my mind:
A while ago I read on Fox-1 BBS someone also having (big) trouble with Bobterm. I'm not sure, but I believe his copy of Bobterm was bad. Perhaps you got your Bobterm from the same source?

Greetz
M.

[bf2k+]

Marius1976, on Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:19 AM, said:

How do you get RS232 driver in the Atari? Do you boot an external RS232.COM file or do you let Bobterm itself download the RS232 driver?

The last is the best.

Downloading from APE, I guess. It beeps.

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What DOS are you using for Bobterm?

Sparta X32G

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What do you mean by dropping characters? That you can't read anything right? This is probably not a problem of bobterm, but sooner a problem with the driver / flowcontrol.

Exactly that. APE Proxy menu might look like this: PE Prxy MNU ):
or some such garbage - it is REALLY BAD

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Are there any other things running? Like a ramdiskdriver or RTC driver? Perhaps interference with High Speed Sio?

NOPE - nothing else.

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BobTerm is one of the Best atari 8bit terminals, so I don't think it is an issue of the program. I also use 1.23.

Well, that's what I have always heard which is why I wanted to try it out. I was out of Atari 8bits from 1987 to 1999 so I missed BobTerm originally.

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Perhaps you could try reset settings.

I think I did that but I am open to suggestions...

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One more thing that crosses my mind:
A while ago I read on Fox-1 BBS someone also having (big) trouble with Bobterm. I'm not sure, but I believe his copy of Bobterm was bad. Perhaps you got your Bobterm from the same source?

Mine came from the Holmes CD. Perhaps you could send me a known working one?

Its really strange because the Express Cart works FLAWLESSLY on the exact same system - booting the same DOS from the same HD - no AUTOEXEC, CONFIG or STARTUP.BAT.

Weird...

[Fox-1 / mnx]

bf2k+, on Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:33 AM, said:

Mine came from the Holmes CD. Perhaps you could send me a known working one?

http://mixinc.net/at..._a8/datacom.htm

bf2k+, on Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:33 AM, said:

Its really strange because the Express Cart works FLAWLESSLY on the exact same system - booting the same DOS from the same HD - no AUTOEXEC, CONFIG or STARTUP.BAT.

What's the baudrate you are using with Express and what's the one with BobTerm?

[russg]

bf2k+, on Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:52 PM, said:

I started playing with Bobterm a few minutes ago and it is dropping characters something terrible. I setup v 1.23 and am comparing with the Orion Express Cart which drops no chars at all.

Even when I connect to the APE Outgoing Terminal, it seems like every other character or so gets dropped. Zero dropped chars with Express Cart on the identical hardware. I've never used BobTerm until today.

• Is 1.23 the best version to be using?

Suggest set baud rate at 4800. 19,200 is definitely going to drop characters.

[bf2k+]

russg, on Sun Apr 17, 2011 11:52 AM, said:

bf2k+, on Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:52 PM, said:

I started playing with Bobterm a few minutes ago and it is dropping characters something terrible. I setup v 1.23 and am comparing with the Orion Express Cart which drops no chars at all.

Even when I connect to the APE Outgoing Terminal, it seems like every other character or so gets dropped. Zero dropped chars with Express Cart on the identical hardware. I've never used BobTerm until today.

• Is 1.23 the best version to be using?

Suggest set baud rate at 4800. 19,200 is definitely going to drop characters.

300 drops characters.

Express Cart works fine at 19.2k

[bf2k+]

Fox-1 / mnx, on Sun Apr 17, 2011 9:28 AM, said:

What's the baudrate you are using with Express and what's the one with BobTerm?

All baudrates from 19.2k to 300 behave the same way.

[Mathy]

Hello guys

IIRC (it HAS been a while ago since I used dialup modems and spoke to Bob Puff) Bob told me 1.23 was for use with emulators, best version to use on the real thing is 1.22. (please don't ask for more details or reasons or whatever, this is all I remember)

sincerely

Mathy

Edited by Mathy, Sun Apr 17, 2011 3:47 PM.

[Stephen J. Carden]

bf2k+, on Sat Apr 16, 2011 5:52 PM, said:

I started playing with Bobterm a few minutes ago and it is dropping characters something terrible. I setup v 1.23 and am comparing with the Orion Express Cart which drops no chars at all.

Even when I connect to the APE Outgoing Terminal, it seems like every other character or so gets dropped. Zero dropped chars with Express Cart on the identical hardware. I've never used BobTerm until today.

• Is 1.23 the best version to be using?

When Keith and I wrote the Express Cart we were dropping chars the more we got above 4800 baud. At 19.k as long as we were taking to another Atari BBS with the screen on we were fine. Get ahold of a IBM BBS and we would start dropping chars. Keith wrote a High Speed screen routine that did not use graphics 0. He just kept up with the row/collum and offset and convert the byte being displayed into sbytes and put them directly into the screen memory. The high speed screen routine Keith wrote for the cart was added into BBS Express Professional. Since Keith's High Speed screen was out. Many programmers started to add their own screen it to their code. Tom Hunt wrote one that was a tad faster than Keiths. I still have a copy of the Express Cart Source code. I have though about putting it on a Tucker cart more than once. When I use an Atari term I use the disk based version of the Express Cart.

Take Care,
Stephen J. Carden

Edited by Stephen J. Carden, Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:41 PM.

[russg]

bf2k+, on Sun Apr 17, 2011 2:38 PM, said:

Fox-1 / mnx, on Sun Apr 17, 2011 9:28 AM, said:

What's the baudrate you are using with Express and what's the one with BobTerm?

All baudrates from 19.2k to 300 behave the same way.

How about version 1.21?
Unzip to a folder you make, it unzips to about 8 files you don't want on your desktop.

Attached Files

•  BOBTR121.ZIP   66.89K   16 downloads

Edited by russg, Sun Apr 17, 2011 8:54 PM.

[bf2k+]

Mathy, on Sun Apr 17, 2011 3:46 PM, said:

Hello guys

IIRC (it HAS been a while ago since I used dialup modems and spoke to Bob Puff) Bob told me 1.23 was for use with emulators, best version to use on the real thing is 1.22. (please don't ask for more details or reasons or whatever, this is all I remember)

sincerely

Mathy

Well... I don't know the reasoning behind this but it turned out to be true. I dropped back to a clean copy of 1.22 and it works perfectly... go figure.

Thanks for all the input.