2400 was good on BBS's that had 2400 BPS modems. The sysops were generally aware of the limitations of that speed, so built the menus and other parts of the system around it.
Where it began to be an issue was when some "clever" sysops got themselves 14.4 modems. A lot of them beefed up the ANSIs with a lot of colour changes and animations, and that wound up making some boards unbearably slow at 2400. There were a few smarter sysops that took the time to make speed-aware mods to their boards, so slower chumps like me wouldn't chew our own arms off trying to just log in, but most sysops didn't take the time to do so.
The few boards that supported Avatar, though, definitely helped in that aspect. Same look and feel as ANSI for the most part, but was quite a bit faster, just because it could accomplish in 2 characters what ANSI required over 5 to do.
Nightfox wrote to Rockapella <=-
Yeah, in the 90s I used to use RemoteAccess for my BBS, and in its menu creator, it offered criteria for different menu items & actions, and I think one was the user's connection speed. So you could have it
display one ANSI for a range of connection speeds and a different ANSI
for a different range of connection speeds.
I thought it would be interesting if Synchronet supported Avatar, but I don't think it does.
I thought it would be interesting if Synchronet supported Avatar,
but I don't think it does.
Definitely wouldn't be that useful nowadays, but as I said, for the few (very very few) boards that supported it back in the day when I was on 2400, it was quite a speed difference from ANSI.
I thought it would be interesting if Synchronet supported Avatar, but I don't think it does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Video_Attribute_Terminal_Assembler_ and_Recreator Avatar was a pretty bad terminal control protocol as I recall and really offers very little advantage over the standard terminal control protocols (e.g. "ANSI") and adds a lot of CGA-centric limitations and other problems. So, no Synchronet does not support Avatar. I think there's are a lot of good reasons that no terminals really support Avatar, but if you use a terminal that does, I'd be curious to know. --
In the 90s, my favorite BBS terminal program ended up being Telemate, and I seem to remember it supporting Avatar. Honestly though I still just used ANSI and haven't bothered to look for other terminal prgrams that support Avatar.
In the 90s, my favorite BBS terminal program ended up being Telemate, and I seem to remember it supporting Avatar. Honestly though I still just used ANSI and haven't bothered to look for other terminal prgrams that support Avatar.
Nightfox
In the 90s, my favorite BBS terminal program ended up being
Telemate, and I seem to remember it supporting Avatar. Honestly
though I still just used ANSI and haven't bothered to look for other
terminal prgrams that support Avatar.
I never knew any BBS with Avatars. Are they still around? Can someone recommend a BBS that uses avatars?
i am using avatar and i have mechwars loaded up and it looks the same
but worse than ansi. there are justification problems with the screens.
i chose avatar in the game login too.
https://i.imgur.com/IYweb98.png
https://i.imgur.com/A4oR1nt.png
https://i.imgur.com/H2AaZBZ.png
i am using avatar and i have mechwars loaded up and it looks the same but worse than ansi. there are justification problems with the screens. i chose avatar in the game login too.
AVATAR isn't going to increase any sort of image quality. It simply uses fewer bytes to convey the same information.
I set up Mechwars 1.9G and tried it out through a serial port to various communication programs. Telix 3.51 and Terminate 5 (if you can stomach it)
https://i.imgur.com/A4oR1nt.png
https://i.imgur.com/H2AaZBZ.png
I see nothing wrong with the rendering on these two, except the second has scrolled due to you having only 23 lines on the terminal.
Nightfox wrote to Digital Man <=-
In the 90s, my favorite BBS terminal program ended up being Telemate,
and I seem to remember it supporting Avatar. Honestly though I still
just used ANSI and haven't bothered to look for other terminal prgrams that support Avatar.
Telix, Telemate, and Terminate were the three I remember most, and I know that at least the first two supported Avatar (like you, Telemate was the one I used most). I'd be surprised if Terminate didn't support it, since it seemed to support pretty much everything under the sun.
Nightfox wrote to Rockapella <=-
I thought Telix was really good too, even though I didn't use it very much. And I remember Telix having a sort of advanced host mode that behaved similar to a BBS if someone called you via modem, but it wasn't
a full-blown BBS package.
Telix was a great overall package with a good scripting language, Telemate was nice to be able to multitask by opening up a notepad window, and Procomm Plus I had to keep around for work, because its VT100/VT102/VT220 emulation was required for the phone systems I dialed into.
There was a whole "warez" scene trading Procomm Plus scripts for managing Nortel phone systems.
Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
Telix was a great overall package with a good scripting language, Telemate was nice to be able to multitask by opening up a notepad window, and Procomm Plus I had to keep around for work, because its VT100/VT102/VT220 emulation was required for the phone systems I dialed into.
There was a whole "warez" scene trading Procomm Plus scripts for managing Nortel phone systems.
Interesting.. I didn't see the warez scene with Procomm Plus.
But I never did anything with Nortel either.
A while ago, I had tried to use Telix in DOSBox to access telnet
BBSes but I remember having some trouble with it. It seemed
Telemate ran fairly well in DOSBox though. I'd like to give
Telix another try at some point. Even though I only occasionally
used Telix, I still have fond memories of it.
| Sysop: | deepend |
|---|---|
| Location: | Calgary, Alberta |
| Users: | 240 |
| Nodes: | 10 (0 / 10) |
| Uptime: | 106:42:24 |
| Calls: | 1,446 |
| Files: | 3,343 |
| Messages: | 358,292 |
