Blizzard of Zeros:

Tools required:

• Altirra Atari 8 bit emulator [Official Download Site] [Local Mirror]
• Atari kernel ROM images [Source at atari.vjetnam.cz]

A terminal program. Your choice of:

• 850 Express! 1.1 - a terminal program from 1986 for ATASCII/40 column BBSes running on old emulated or actual Atari hardware [Local Mirror]
• Bob Term v1.21 - a later terminal program from 1990, also ATASCII/40 columns. Similar experience as 850 Express! [Local Mirror]
• ICT-T XE v2.8.0 (alpha 7) - 80 columns with ANSI support for more DOS/Windows/Linux-based BBS systems. ANSI support is imperfect. There is no ATASCII support in this one. [Local Mirror]

Important Notes:

• This is cribbed and modified from Jeff Piepmeier's blog post of 2017-April-28 on his blog, Technically Distracted.
• tcpser is not required. Altirra supports telnet natively using an ATDI command in the terminal.
• There is a list of Atari-based BBSes at Starfleet HQ BBS.
• Altirra requires you to execute the ATDI dial command in ASCII mode. Be sure to be in ASCII mode initially, and then switch to ATASCII, if desired, only after executing the dial command.

Install software:

Notes:

• Altirra: Just unzip it into a convenient directory. Follow the first time setup dialog which can be manually run from Tools -> First Time Setup. Use the XL/XE Home Computer option when prompted. I used NTSC and the Streamlined option.
• You may receive a query from Windows about whether to allow Altirra Internet access. You will need to grant this for telnet to work.

Set up devices to enable modem support

From the System menu, select Devices.

Click Add and select 850 Interface Module from the Serial I/O bus devices section. Click OK.

For 850 Options, I accepted the defaults which on my system were:

• Enable extended baud rate support (57600, 115K, 230Kbaud): Checked
• Disable serial port rate throttling: Unchecked
• SIO emulation: None - Emulated R: handler only

Click OK. This will return you to the Devices window.

In the Devices window, select 850 Interface Module and click Add again. Select Modem and click OK.

The following options should be set:

• Emulate Telnet protocol - Checked
• Allow outbound connections - Checked
• Negotiate terminal type: - None
• Accept incoming connections on port (1024-65535) - Up to you. If you want to experiment with running Atari BBS software to accept incoming connections, turn it on.
• Port - Whatever you want, if you're using the Accept incoming connections option
• Accept IPv6 connections - Up to you. Again, this is for incoming connections only
• Reported connection speed - I set this to 2400, but it may be able to go faster
• Require DTE baud rate to match connection speed - Unchecked
• Dial proxy address - empty
• Service - empty

Press OK once you have finished Modem setup Press OK again to get out of the menu

Telnetting to a BBS:

You can drag a disk image into the Altirra window to boot it. For this example, we'll use 850 Express! to connect to an Atari-based board running ATASCII.

You will be presented with a DOS II screen. Select L for BINARY LOAD and enter EXPRS850.COM as the filename. You can also just get a directory using the A command here if you forget the filename. Press Enter to load 850 Express.

If you chose to enable incoming connections, you will see a Waiting for connection on port message at the bottom left of the screen.

To set the Baud rate to 2400 (if you set things up to use that speed in the Modem setup screen) use the B key. Because the ATDI sequence to telnet must be in ASCII, we're going to set the mode to ASCII for now using the A key, and will switch to PETSCII once we have executed the connect command.

Press ! to Force Term Mode which will bring you to the terminal screen. F2 will bring you back to the setup screen at any time.

EnterAT and return to ensure that the virtual modem is responding. If so, it should respond OK.

For modems, the most common dial command was ATDT - ATtention Dial Tone. In the early days, there was also ATDP to dial using Pulse. For the purpose of Altirra you want to use ATDI, presumably for Internet. ATDT will not work for telnet.

For this example, we're going to be connecting to 8-Bit Guild, a BBS running BBS Express 850 v1.0, and which supports PETSCII. We're going to execute the connect string, F2 back to the settings menu, use the A key to select PETSCII, then return back to the terminal using the ! command.

The command to connect in Altirra is ATDI hostname.of.a.board.com port

So for 8-Bit Guild:

If the board is up, you should see a CONNECT message. At this time you can switch to ATASCII mode.

Several of the Atari systems I connected to actually gave you a moment to switch to ATASCII expressly. I normally do it as soon as I connect:

In any event, press F2, then A to select ATASCII. Then press ! to return to the terminal.

Follow instructions to log in.

Final notes

You may, of course, use ASCII mode to connect to non-Atari/non-PETSCII systems. The process for connecting via other Atari terminal programs is similar. In several cases, F2 also returned to the settings menu. In Altirra, F2 maps to the START key on the original Atari console. Further key mappings can be found in the Altirra help system under How to use -> Keyboard layout.

Contact information:

See also: frostwarning.com