Tag: retro

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Telnet BBSes and other online things

I’ve been playing with the wifi AT modem on my VT132 and have been dialing up a few BBSes to test it out. Interesting ones I’ve looked at so far:

I’ll share others that are worth a look as I come across them.

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New BBS documentary: Back to the BBS part 1

There is a new documentary about BBSes posted to YouTube this week, ‘Back to the BBS’. Rather than focusing on the history of the BBS such as Jason Scott’s awesome ‘BBS The Documentary’, this one looks at using BBSes in the current time, and why there is an increasing interest in using BBSes today.

Part 1 is 43 minutes and walks through using telnet based BBSes today, and includes a number of interviews with people looking back at when BBSes were in their height of popularity, and also interviews a number of Sysops of current day active BBSes and their users.

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VT132 Using the AT Modem over WiFi

The VT132 includes a telnet/WiFi modem that supports AT commands to ‘dial’ online sites, such as BBSes that are accessible using telnet.

To connect to the modem, use the Alt-F1 menu and enable the ‘Enable modem locally’ option:

Useful commands:

AT$ – lists commands and help:

AT+W? – displays current WiFi status

AT+W=ssid,password : connect to WiFi ssid with password

AT+W$ – shows IP address when connected to WiFi:

AT+W+ : reconnects to WiFi using params last used and stored

AT+W- : disconnects from WiFi

Testing dialing up Retro Battlestations BBS: ATDbbs.fozztexx.com

Since VT132 also supports ANSI escape sequences, dialing up Blackflag BBS has some awesome ANSI graphics: ATDblackflag.acid.org :

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VT132 kit assembly – step by step

I’ve just finished assembling my VT132 standalone kit from The High Nibble. It was an enjoyable build and pushed my soldering skills with soldering the tiny pins on the ESP32 chip. Initially I had issues getting solder to flow onto the tiny pins and pads, but I changed to a thinner tip which worked well.

Here’s a look at the board as it comes in the kit. I chose the option USB keyboard option instead of the default PS/2 keyboard connector:

Starting with the ESP32 first, here’s a look at my soldering on those tiny pins. I used the liquid flux, and the ‘drag’ method to pull the solder from the pads up to the exposed connector on the chip board:

Row of resistors for the VGA connector completed, and a few of the caps:

Almost done, just need to attach the DB9 and DB25 connectors:

First power on and looking at the settings. To access the ‘Set-up’ from a regular keyboard, press Alt PrtScrn. To view the onscreen menu help press F1:

More details on using the VT132 coming up in following posts.

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