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

[Steve Stroh]

 Jay:

I enjoyed your story and will mention it in this week’s issue of Zero
Retries newsletter.

You said:

I still have the source code somewhere in my archives.
>

If you have any archival information on GLnet (or the organization, such as
newsletters), I can recommend donation of it to Digital Library of Amateur
Radio & Communications (DLARC) project of the Internet Archive -
https://archive.org/details/dlarc?tab=collection, to make it available for
posterity and your fellow Amateur Radio Operators worldwide, for free.

There is a lot of archival information on Amateur Radio Packet Radio
already there, but a quick search for GLnet didn’t get any hits, so
anything you can contribute would be new information.

The DLARC archivist, Kay Savetz K6KJN is very easy to work with -
kay at archive.org.

Thanks,

Steve N8GNJ

---

Steve Stroh N8GNJ (he / him / his)
Editor
Zero Retries Newsletter - https://www.zeroretries.org
Radios are Computers - With Antennas!


On Dec 31, 2024 at 20:22:33, Jay <jjn at nuge.com> wrote:

> 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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