How does one get colour ANSI using an Amiga connected to a BBS ?

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dougal

dougal

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On the PC side I use Windows 7 and Internet Modem and a USB to Serial port thingy.

On the Amiga side i've tried different versions and setups of Jr-Comm and N-Comm. Played with settings galore. I tried my A500+ and Gotek, I tried it with the hard drive too. I also tried my A1200 030 with OS3.9.

I've sorted the echoing but not the ANSI or the swapped upper and lowercase letters. I either get ANSI not detected or else if I select ANSI on the BBS I get nothing, just the text trying to come up on screen taking its time but blank. Once I select ASCII again the menus come properly.

I've tried IBM.FONT, I've tried in Terminal Options AMIGA, IBM, IBM Color, VT100, VT102 etc... etc... But nothing works.

Its not the BBS's I tried as i've tried them on my PC and they are fine.

Settings on both Device Manager(PC), Internet Modem (PC) and Amiga side i've tried are 9600 8N1, 19200 8N1 and XON/XOFF and NONE.

I'm almost starting to think the problem may be related with the USB to SERIAL Cable or something.
 
Ok well on the Amiga side i'm 100% cert everything is fine as one kind Amibayer even sent me an ADF of his exact setup which works fine for him, ANSI colour and all.

I think it has to do with the chipset or quality of my USB/Serial converter. So i've just ordered x2 (to make sure) usb serial converters with the exact chipset that DanWood uses in his YT video tutorial.

This had better work or else I honestly give up.

Just a quick question: Could it be a fault in the Null Modem cable ? Or is this a case of it either works or it does not ?
 
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Ok, did a test using an old P3 with XP and builtin com ports. Same issue. It must be the NULL MODEM cable no ?

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I'm trying out AMIGA EXPLORER. It connected fine and works but i'm trying a copy of KICK.ROM from Amiga to PC to test and it is SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER Slow until after a minute or two and the Amiga rebooted itself and Amiga Explorer said ERROR Reading COM PORT.

It must be the Null Modem cable. I've tried two cables both exactly same problems.

Problem list:

Unreliable(ish) connection
Slow
No ANSI color
Upper/Lower case (in BBS's) switched

I've heard there are different types of NULL MODEM cables. Maybe my two cables are crap ?

Back in the day about 15 years ago I used to connect successfully and fast ANSI and all to a 1mb A500. I no longer have that NULL modem cable :(
 
dougal said:
I've heard there are different types of NULL MODEM cables. Maybe my two cables are crap ?
Click to expand...

Some cables support hardware flow control (RTS/CTS), some do not. If in doubt use software flow control (Xon/Xoff) in your comms settings.
 
Your problems seem strange. The last time I used BBS's it was through 2400bps, so I'm not even sure how they work now. Can you elaborate a bit how it works?
I gather that the Amiga is connected to the PC using an USB serial adapter. I don't think there are very many things that can go wrong here. If you're getting anything sensible through, this link is probably working fine.

But then what happens? Is there some software on the PC that talks back to the Amiga? How does it present itself to the Amiga end, is it like a command line? How do you connect to the BBS from there?
 
On the PC side i'm running Windows 7 (though i've tried XP using another PC with real COM ports - Same result) and have a USB to Serial converter. The software I use on the PC is called Internet Modem by Boycot Software. It emulates a Hayes Modem. The USB to Serial is connected to the Amiga using a NULL modem cable. I've tried two cables, one I bought and one I had. Same result.

Using the same settings as the Internet Modem software (19200 8N1 etc..) on the Amiga terminal to connect.

It connects but its slow even though the BBS's I tried say I've connected even at 115000 (its not even set like that). Besides slow the upper & lower case are mixed for example uPPER aND lOWER cASE. Upon connecting I get things like ANSI not detected.

If I do get it to detect ANSI by playing with the settings it just slows everything down and displays bits of the text, still in black and white and mostly missing stuff.

I've tried on the Amiga two different versions of JRComm and two different versions of Ncomm, one of which was kindly set up for me and tried before putting it in ADF and sent to me by an Amibay user.
 
Dougal, excuse me for asking the obvious, but is your Amiga display set to mono or something?

Also, I used Ncomm years ago and seem to remember it having a setting for colours.
 
Nah its colour connected by RGB cable to my 1084S.

I've tried two Amigas, my A500+ and my A1200 '030

Ed.D said:
Dougal, excuse me for asking the obvious, but is your Amiga display set to mono or something?

Also, I used Ncomm years ago and seem to remember it having a setting for colours.
Click to expand...
 
What Ed.D means is that is your NComm set to a screenmode that has more than 2 colors. Check the "Screen Mode" under the "Screen" menu.
I think the problem may be with Internet Modem. Can you try to use it with the XP PC instead of the Amiga and see if that also has the problem?
 
No it's set at 8 colors. I've tried 4 and 16 too.

I've also tried a pentium 3 running xp which has real (not usb) com ports. Same result.
 
Yes, you said you have used the pentium 3 as the server running Internet Modem. But I was hoping that you would keep running Internet Modem in your Windows 7 and instead of connecting to it from the Amiga, connect to it from the pentium. This would be to determine if Internet Modem is the problem.

Actually I just saw this: http://184.167.1.78:6502/InternetModem/Translations.txt
Are you by any chance using that?
Because it looks like something that could switch upper/lowercase letters, screw up file transfers, as well as break colors - all of which sounds pretty much like the problems you are having.
 
Rixa said:
Yes, you said you have used the pentium 3 as the server running Internet Modem. But I was hoping that you would keep running Internet Modem in your Windows 7 and instead of connecting to it from the Amiga, connect to it from the pentium. This would be to determine if Internet Modem is the problem.

Actually I just saw this: http://184.167.1.78:6502/InternetModem/Translations.txt
Are you by any chance using that?
Because it looks like something that could switch upper/lowercase letters, screw up file transfers, as well as break colors - all of which sounds pretty much like the problems you are having.
Click to expand...

It would be a bit of a pain to run both the Win7 machine and the P3 at the same time cause of space, wires and one monitor issue.

I saw the translations file but I dont understand what the numbers mean :(

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That was it!! I renamed translations.txt to _translations.txt so that internet modem doesnt find the file and now its working... Perfect!!

Wow cant believe it. It was that, after I hassled to install XP on the old P3 and also ordered another 2 usb to serial cables. :picard

Rixa said:
Yes, you said you have used the pentium 3 as the server running Internet Modem. But I was hoping that you would keep running Internet Modem in your Windows 7 and instead of connecting to it from the Amiga, connect to it from the pentium. This would be to determine if Internet Modem is the problem.

Actually I just saw this: http://184.167.1.78:6502/InternetModem/Translations.txt
Are you by any chance using that?
Because it looks like something that could switch upper/lowercase letters, screw up file transfers, as well as break colors - all of which sounds pretty much like the problems you are having.
Click to expand...

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Now I need to see why the speed is a little slow. But still this is awesome
 
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