[nos-bbs] Now that TEX NET has come up :]

[Jay]

Greetings,
    I was a (distant) member of the Texas Packet Radio Society TPRS, living 
in Michigan but commuting each year to their annual meeting in Texas.  It 
was always the weekend before or the weekend after the TAPR meeting in 
Tucson, so it was a fun WEEK for me hitting each organizations annual 
meeting!

    Along with several others, we ran the "GLnet" (Great Lakes Net) network 
of TexNet nodes throughout Michigan, Indiana, a bit of Ohio and a bit of 
Illinois.  They were linked together at 9600 baud using old UHF RCA 
radios, and one 6-meter link (that was always so-so depending upon the 
time of day).

    I still have *several* TexNet nodes stacked up in my basement.  They 
were Z80 based with one 9800 modem and two 1200 baud modems on a single PC 
board.  It was designed and coded by the "Tom Tom" team.  One "Tom" 
designed the hardware and the other "Tom" coded ALL of the AX.25, memory 
management, timing, and PMS (Packet Mail Server) code in Z80 Assembly! 
The code was burned onto an EPROM, including any configuration information 
- so it wasn't for the faint of heart.  I still have the source code 
somewhere in my archives.

    The user interface was SO incredibly easy for the users to connect to 
any station at any node with a single command.   There were also Sysop 
commands (password protected) that allowed for diagnostics and remote 
reboots, and PMS message management.

    The 'networking' code was build around a MESH model where they 
automatically detected one another and set up Primary, Secondary, and 
Tertiary route tables.  So should a link go down or become congested, 
packets would take alternate routes to their destinations.  This was FAR 
more efficient and much faster than anything Software-2000 put out with 
their NetROM offering.

    Any node could have a hard drive attached and serve as a "PMS" packet 
mail server.  There was NO NEED to do Heirarchical mail forwarding as you 
simply used the network to get to the PMS, wherever it was, and read/post 
email and bulletins.

    One serial port on a TexNet board could be assigned to watch the NWS 
weather teletype wire.  It would store select, pre-determined, weather 
PRODUCTS to SPECIFIC message numbers on the PMS hard disk.

    The Tom-Tom team knew what they were doing and were FAR ahead of their 
time!  Makes me want to fire up a couple of those nodes and refresh a few 
crusty brain cells remebering the past :)

    --- Jay Nugent  WB8TKL



On Tue, 31 Dec 2024, maiko at pcsinternet.ca wrote:

>
> Here is a link that mentions the LINK TO 'message' - wow 1987 era !
>
>    http://www.tapr.net/meetings/CNC_1987/CNC1987-TEXNET-Overview-N5EG.pdf
>
> I quote :
>
>   TEXNET utilizes the *** LINKED message to cause bulletin boards
>   to work properly.
>
> And how funny is this, ZERO RETRIES (newsletter by Steve Stroh N8GNJ) :
>
>     https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0116
>
> There is a link to a PDF in there about the old TEXNET system, lots of info !
>
>     https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0116 \
>       ?open=false#%C2%A7the-texnet-packet-switching-network
>
> Some holiday reading perhaps, had no idea about this, I was still midway
> through university and it would be years later before I got into amateur
> radio. I'm into my 60th year of living now, whew, long ago I suppose :(
>
> Maiko / VE4KLM
>
> On 2024-12-31 19:53, maiko at pcsinternet.ca wrote:
>
>> If you google "texnet wb5bbw" early 1990s Tex Net packet networks,
>> never heard of that before, before 'my time' in any amateur radio
>> packet networking. The "*** LINKED" handled by the dostars() func
>> in mailbox.c was written for that.
>
>
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