I had to change one line in the prompt below. Where it says @SMB_LAST_MSG@ that should read @SMB_TOTAL_MSGS@. The last message @-Code gives a total number of messages in the sub including deleted, dupes, etc…which may not match what the system actually shows. I found that out in some of the message bases that have a lot of posts, such as new file listings.

A while back I explained how to replace the message header (two ways, easy and hard) but now my prompt doesn’t match so I replaced my message reading prompt before work this morning. Here are the directions along with a couple of pics:

1. Create your ansi prompt. Here’s mine along with an explanation of the @-codes I used.

The @SMB_GROUP@ tells SBBS to list the current message group (Local, Fidonet, etc…) @SMB_SUB@ is the current sub, or message area, within that group. @SMB_CURMSG@ is the current message number in that group and last of all @SMB_LAST_MSG@ is the last message number available. You’ll see what they do a little later on.

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So the next thing I decided to tackle on the board was the default user settings screen on my board.

I initially attempted to change the text strings in my baja menu source by using the REPLACE_TEXT command in it. That apparently won’t work for whatever reason, so I had to edit the text.dat directly. Be very careful when you edit your text.dat file because you can royally screw things up here.

What I did was to create the entire screen in Ansi and then save each line as a separate file at which point I replaced the text like so:

Make sure to leave the line between prompt 493 and 494 as it is or you’ll mess things up.

This is what it looks like now.

I don’t have any plans to replace the header and footer strings at the moment although I might attempt to do that later. It was actually pretty easy, just a bit of copy and replace. Make sure to only use the string itself, don’t add the ending ESC[255D if your ansi editor inserts it at the end of the file.

So I’ve added a few more games and things to do on the BBS foryou to check out. I also managed to get Ftelnet working as well. Using that page (above) as my default log in now just because it’s much easier for this old man to see . Anyway, I am about 60% of the way through configuring everything the way I want. I still have a few menus to add and then it will be time to change most of the default strings. I’ve posted a few pics below of what it’s looking like now.

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Over at R&M Software Rick Parrish has several how-to’s posted I wanted to make sure and archive. This is one of them. You can visit the original here. All of this is from his site, I’ve just borrowed (stolen) it here.

This HOWTO is based on the following software:

RedHat 7.3
EleBBS 0.09g1

First, the steps involved in installing EleBBS

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Here’s another how-to from zharvek over at Archaic Binary. The original post can be found at the link. Tribbs was the second BBS software I ran way back in the early ’90s. I probably used it for about a year or so before moving on to something I could modify a bit more.

Ah what an adventure this is getting to be. As you may know I’m setting up my old Telnet BBS again, not just the door games, but the full system including File Areas, Message Bases, and yes the Door Games.

I have all the games working so far, and file transfers are fine when you use a good client (mTelnet or SyncTerm).

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Updated – I found an easier way to do this (knew I would…) and it’s at the bottom of the post

One of things I used in my Proboard and RG setups in the ’90s was custom message headers…i.e. OBV/2 style. I’m trying to get away from the stock setup and this is one of the things that bothered me most.

Here’s what I ended up with:

First off you need to find or create the header. Unfortunately even though I can come up with some decent stuff I completely SUCK at anything art related so I dug through several Ansi packs and BBS setups and found a few I wanted. This is the original I came up with:

Open your ansi in TheDraw or whatever program you’re using to edit them. Make sure to select your foreground and background colors so that they match what you want the end result to be. You can find the current list of @-codes over at the Synchronet Wiki. Here’s about what the file should look like when you’re finished editing it in TheDraw.

This is the part that had me stumped for more than an hour this afternoon trying to get to work correctly. The -L at the end of the code tells SBBS to align left and the #’s are how much padding you want. Otherwise you end up pushing the stuff to the right onto the next line and it looks like crap.

Once you’ve got your file saved in TheDraw you need to exit out and navigate the DOS prompt to your menu directory, usually sbbstextmenu. That’s where you need to copy your file. By default Synchronet loads .asc files so I named mine msghdr.asc

Type edit msghdr.asc so that you’ve got the ansi open in your DOS text editor.

You see that line that ends with 255D? If you leave it there you’ll have several line feeds and you’ll never see your header or maybe just the bottom two lines. So what we need to do is move it up several lines as so…

Do an alt-f s and save your file now. That should be all you need to do here. Now it’s on to the text.dat which is located in sbbsctrl

Here’s what it looks like before making changes.

The top few lines are the only ones we are concerned with. At first I thought I needed to replace all of the first 9 or so but once I started editing and playing around I realized I could just replace prompt #1.

Here’s what I have after editing:

The line that say TYPE tells SBBS to display a text file for that prompt. Save your text.dat and reload your configuration and you should be ready to go.

There’s bound to be an easier method to do this but it’s working on my system. If you have any questions or better ideas please let me know.

Updated. As I mentioned in the paragraph above, there IS an easier way to do this (duh). You can find it at http://wiki.synchro.net/custom:messageheader If you are using a custom you’ll still probably need to pad some of the strings as I mentioned above.

I finally managed to get Lunatix running on my SBBS system tonight. Originally I was trying to use it with Synchronet’s built-in fossil support but it was so fucking slow as to be unusable so I set it up with Netfoss and kept getting errors that netfoss.dll couldn’t be found. As with anything one I walked away from it for a day I was able to figure out what the configuration needed to be so here’s my setup:

The first one’s just a screenshot of the games I currently have running.

Make sure that you set “Native Executable” to yes so that Synchronet doesn’t attempt to use it’s fossil driver.

The /N%# tells both Netfoss and Lunatix what node number it’s being run from and the /H tells Netfoss the socket handle.

Set up Lunatix to use whatever drop file you are most comfortable with that both support. I’m using Dorinfo1.def in the example above.

Now it’s running MUCH more smoothly than before.

This is about 10 years old but it's still valid information.

DOSEMU Synchronet DOORS HOWTO

Author: Michael Capp <laffer(at)exeonline(dot)com>

07 February 2003

Complete installation guide on configuring DOSEMU and Synchronet
to run DOS doors under Linux utilizing DOSEMU.

Copyright (c) 2003 Michael Capp

Permission  is  granted  to copy, distribute  and/or  modify  this
document  under  the terms of the GNU Free Documentation  License,
Version  1.2  or any later version published by the Free  Software
Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts,  and
no  Back-Cover  Texts.  A copy of the license is included  in  the
section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

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Ok, so as I ended up sticking with the Synchronet setup due to the fact network and internet integration is so much better/easier to set up than using EleBBS. It does have a greater learning curve as far as configuring and modding so for a while the menus will probably look entirely fucked up as I make changes.

I’ve added several new door games and a bunch of message areas. I still intend on linking the games so that we can play interBBS games as well.

As always, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to shoot me an email/netmail, note to sysop or leave a message in one of the local bases.

Don’t forget, you can access the BBS from my website here without any type of special client.

This article was originally written by Nick in 2009 and in keeping with what I wanted to do in archiving all of these difficult to find how-to’s I figured I would post it here. If you find it helpful please go visit him and let him know!

Setting up Renegade with

NetFoss for Telnet under

XP

     [Settings]
     Command=c:rgnetfossnf.bat /n*N /h*H c:rgrenegade -n*N -Q -B115200
     StartPath=c:rg
     Port=23
     Nodes=256
     StartNode=1
     Debug=1
     View=Normal
     Log=net2bbs.log
     Semaphore=wait.sem
     KillList=kill.txt
     KillMsg=You are not welcome here.
     KillMsgFile=goaway.ans
     Editor=notepad.exe
     Resolve=1
     ResolveMsg=Resolving your IP Address, One moment...

@echo off
c:rgnetfossnetfoss.com %1
rem ** If running a non-door32.sys system, add a " %1" to end of above line **
if errorlevel 1 goto end
c:rgnetfossnetcom.exe %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9
c:rgnetfossnetfoss.com /u
:end