Image BBS with a Lantronix UDS-1100
Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2023 11:45 am
Over the Christmas holiday I finally pulled out my C64 storage bin and started playing with the real hardware again. Years ago I bought a Swiftlink cartridge on eBay but never actually tried it out, so I thought it was high time to do so. It seemed like nothing to plug it in and fire up CCGMS 2020, but then how to connect it to the Internet? Suddenly it dawned on me, I've got dozens of Lantronix MSS-100's and UDS-1100's kicking around, and I seemed to recall that they support modem emulation so I grabbed one off the shelf and plugged it in.
What do you know, I was calling a real BBS through it within seconds. The only "downside" I could find is that even with the latest firmware, it does not support DNS lookup when executing an ATDT command - you have to use an IP address. Other than that, it even provides the incoming IP address on the end of a "RING" message when you telnet to the listen port of the UDS-1100, and its hardware flow control works flawlessly with the Swiftlink.
So the next thing that came to mind was - could I use this setup to run an Image BBS on real hardware? Some googling showed that others had indeed attempted to do so and sounded like they'd had success, so I think I may just try it. Even so, I thought I'd post the question here in case there are any known gotchas I should know about beforehand.
Have you or anyone you know of successfully (or unsuccessfully) ran a BBS using a Swiftlink and a Lantronix UDS-1100 Serial Server?
What do you know, I was calling a real BBS through it within seconds. The only "downside" I could find is that even with the latest firmware, it does not support DNS lookup when executing an ATDT command - you have to use an IP address. Other than that, it even provides the incoming IP address on the end of a "RING" message when you telnet to the listen port of the UDS-1100, and its hardware flow control works flawlessly with the Swiftlink.
So the next thing that came to mind was - could I use this setup to run an Image BBS on real hardware? Some googling showed that others had indeed attempted to do so and sounded like they'd had success, so I think I may just try it. Even so, I thought I'd post the question here in case there are any known gotchas I should know about beforehand.
Have you or anyone you know of successfully (or unsuccessfully) ran a BBS using a Swiftlink and a Lantronix UDS-1100 Serial Server?
. I have one by Digi, but ended up using BBSServer instead when I ran a BBS. I should see if I can sell it on E-Bay or something.