Beta Test Modified Versions of Vice 3.6.1 and TCPser

[Cube Inc]

That is good news, Bucko. Unfortunately there were bugs found and fixed in both Vice and tcpser necessary to get the file transfers working 100%. I am not sure what version of Vice you were using, but I had to modify the ACIA driver so it wouldn't drop bytes if the BBS/Terminal program was not "fast" enough.

Important: Make sure you have IP232 turned on in Vice! You need to use the network mode, IE: for your serial device, don't pipe it through netcat - just enter the IP address of the tcpser instance and the port, otherwise it won't add the IP232 padding and you will get corrupt file transfers that way as well. If tcpser is running on the same host as vice, you should just have "127.0.0.1:25232" in the device field:





I was trying Turbo232 and Swiftlink mode, neither seemed to make a difference at 38400.

I am not sure how to grab the revision number - I downloaded it as the official release of 3.6.1, but it doesn't seem to indicate a specific revision number in the about dialog box, CLI help menu or even the README file.



Do you know where I might find the revision number?

[Cube Inc]

Tried to assemble the tcpser mod in Debian and got the following errors there are more but I only copied a few of the lines...

/usr/bin/ld: src/bridge.o: relocation R_X86_64_32 against `.rodata' can not be used when making a PIE object; recompile with -fPIE
/usr/bin/ld: src/debug.o: relocation R_X86_64_32S against `.rodata' can not be used when making a PIE object; recompile with -fPIE
/usr/bin/ld: src/getcmd.o: relocation R_X86_64_32 against `.rodata' can not be used when making a PIE object; recompile with -fPIE
/usr/bin/ld: src/ip.o: relocation R_X86_64_32 against `.rodata' can not be used when making a PIE object; recompile with -fPIE

I tried to recompile with -fPIE but it sas no such directory or file PIE

Any ideas??

I'm guessing that Debian tries to compile Position-Independent Executables (PIE) by default, so in your case you would actually need to give it the -no-pie option instead. Typically you only need to compile in Position-Independent mode if you are building a shared object, which we are not in this case.

Odd that adding the executable bit to (something?) resolved this - the only thing that I can think of there is that the error message was symptomatic of another error earlier on. Worst case, try doing a full aclocal; autoconf; ./configure; make clean; make

[Cube Inc]

Oh, and here's the Version screen from the Linux / SDL version:



Nothing about revision # on this screen either.

[Cube Inc]

I downloaded the Vice executable zip from the forum onto a clean Windows 10 VM, and although Windows Defender popped up a warning saying that you shouldn't run the application, I clicked "Run Anyway" and it opened up the familiar blue screen we all know and love. Perhaps you may have to check your computer's security settings; none of the .exe files are signed so perhaps Windows is balking at that?

[Racer]

Maybe I am doing something wrong but I do not see a tcpser executable file for windows?

[Cube Inc]

Racer - My apologies for the confusion - you are correct! I am not sure what happened there, but here is the tcpser source code and the Windows binaries in a .zip file. You only need tcpser.exe and msys-2.0.dll in the same folder to run tcpser on Windows. I usually start it with the following command:

tcpser -s 38400 -p 6400 -v 25232

tcpser-cubeinc.zip

(1.39 MiB) Downloaded 325 times

Modified TCPSer WITH the Windows binaries.

[hendrb01]

Is that Vice or tcpser that gave you that error?

Cube... It was tcpSER. Are you running Windows 10 32 or 64 bit?

I got the error on a 64 bit version of Windows 10.

[Cube Inc]

Hi Brent, I am running both VICE and TCPSer on Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit. I posted the Windows "About" screen next to Vice earlier, and I've tried both programs on two different Windows 10 hosts without any issues. The first host was the one on which they were compiled, and the second was a stock Windows 10 image with nothing installed but the latest Windows updates.

How are you starting TCPSer?

[Racer]

May have found a small issue in tcpser.

Using on Windows10 x64

Any terminal program, Z*Term, CCGMS, Novaterm, etc

typing in AT commands works as expected until you type in ATA (For answer)

I have logging enabled in tcpser and after I type ATA this shows on the tcpser screen

Code: Select all

2022-05-18 17:00:05:425008:INFO:Returning to call

And it just sits there locked up. Now I do not know what it does if say you were getting a call and using ATA to answer but if there is nothing to connect it just locks up. If memory serves, you should be able to abort the ATA by hitting return/enter.

[Cube Inc]

Racer - You are correct, normally you'd use ATA in your C64 terminal while an incoming call was "RING"ing. I inadvertently broke the ATA command in the situation you describe (typing ATA when there is no incoming call) when I was fixing the ATO command, which is supposed to allow you to rejoin your connected call after breaking out with +++. Instead, ato would do the opposite and end the call. I am working on another release of tcpser and I will have this fixed for you then. Thanks for letting me know.

Actually, you've just helped me figure out something else I had noticed once or twice but never knew what caused it - where tcpser appears to be "unresponsive" to the console (and in the emulator) What is actually happening is that when you attempt to ata with no incoming caller, tcpser closes the socket descriptor - which (because there is nothing calling) is set to 0 which is actually the socket descriptor for STDIN. Therefore, you can actually still see stuff show up in the console (STDOUT is still connected to your console), but you can't interact with tcpser even to use CTRL-C to close it because the program never receives your keystrokes. That, too, should be easy to fix now that I know what is causing it. I had seen it once or twice before, but never could reproduce it until now.

ATA should still work properly to answer if you have an incoming caller, and if you just want to take the modem "off hook", ath1 should do this for you.