[nos-bbs] The ptcpro interface to jnos

[maiko at pcs.mb.ca]

Finally ! Some time to catch up with all my outstanding emails ...

I'll answer Skip's latest one first, and then deal with the others.

> Is a ptcpro port available to BBS users for connect purposes ?

The ptcpro stuff is still very experimental. You can in theory
do a 'c ptcpro remotecall', but it's not user friendly. If you
read the past notes and stuff, you'll probably notice that.

The safest way to use the ptcpro interface at this time is
to simply setup a forward.bbs entry and kick the particular
remote bbs to start a forward session.

Again, it's experimental. Expect hickups, sometimes you will
have to switch the PTCPRO off and on, sometimes you may have
to do a 'mbox reset remotecall', etc. Why is it like this ?

Cause I've more or less been my own customer, so the demand
has not been there for me to really look into the particulars
of all the glitches associated with the ptcpro code. What makes
things worse at this time is that i DONT have a ptcpro anymore,
so any tweaking has been more with the DXP38 interface (which
I use on a regular basis to forward HF pactor 1).

> The "c ptcpro k8xyz" command was accepted and responded ... The
> radio went into a 50-second broadcast of the pactor connect ...
> After 45min, the BBS did not respond to "+++cr" ... it was locked
> up.

Man I wish I had a ptcpro to play with again :-) Sorry Skip, that's
one of the unfortunate things about uncompleted software. It works
in some cases, and not in others. Did you try to switch off the
modem ? The unfortunate problem then is that you have to run
the JHOST1 command again through minicom before you can use it
again with JNOS.

The bottom line is that perhaps the forward.bbs is the best
solution at this time. JNOS will be the client and connect to
a W2LK or AirMail system. W2LK works alot better with JNOS.

> After an hour (as I write this) the status display still
> shows k8rra connected as BBS=1 client.

Try a 'mbox reset k8rra'. It might work.

> The above suggests the ptcpro interface will not process
> ax.25 material thus should be "banned" from "connect" ?

AX.25 has nothing to do with this. I use 'connect' since it's
a standard command. Whether it's HF Pactor or AX.25 packet, it
should be transparent to the BBS forwarding operation. If you
check the code, you will see that the 'connect' command directed
to any ptcpro or dxp38 port is automatically diverted to the
code meant for those devices. It never gets to the ax25 stuff.

> The bothersome factor is that the ptcpro port shows up in "ports" and
> "jh" and so forth demonstrating the existence of the port on the BBS and
> (in my case) there are zero heard stations (zero is a correct number).

I never got to adding the appropriate code to the JH functions. Like I
said, this stuff is far from complete. I just got it working at the very
basic level.

> Is my installation broken or wrong ?

Nope. The software is simply not complete (ie, not the most user friendly
depending on what you want to do). The latest documentation I have for the
ptcpro stuff is at this URL (probably you know already) :

  http://www.langelaar.net/projects/jnos2/documents/hfdd4.txt

> The last question is will someone with propagation to west Michigan and
> with an SCS tnc hook up with me for the purpose of completing the HF
> testing phase for my installation?  Yes - I'm going to make this thing

I should have no trouble getting into that area from Winnipeg during most
evenings. We can try on 7077.10 (my dial frequency) LSB, which means you
will be using 7069.00 (your dial frequency) LSB. If you are using a PTC
PRO that is verses my DXP 38. The frequency gap accounts for the tone
differences, etc. I use that frequency to talk with Jim (WU3V) who
has a PTCPRO on 7069.00 (his dial frequency).

But we should coordinate that of course (off list, and some time when
I have a free evening).

Now to deal with all my other pending emails ... :-(

73 de Maiko Langelaar / VE4KLM