• TIPI BBS Software

    From Beery@80:774/27 to All on Fri Jan 17 11:10:37 2020
    Just a FYI, I am in the process of modifying the AfterHours BBS software so individuals can run their own web accessible BBS from a stock TI-99/4A with a sidecar 32K/TIPI setup.

    The software will also run on a PEBox TIPI, but targeting for a minimal setup as I believe more users are likely to have a spare TI-99/4A that they would have no problem running all day versus a PEBox system they would only want to run sparingly.

    If there are folks interested, let me know and please take the time to
    respond either on here or on AtariAge.

    Beery

    --Beery Miller -- 9640 News BBS -- 9640news.ddns.net:9640 --

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A42 2019/02/01 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: 9640 News BBS (80:774/27)
  • From Tim Woodland@80:505/0 to Beery on Mon Feb 24 08:22:20 2020
    Sounds great! I am interested. I currently run Mystic on Linux Mint. I wish you success. Any chance of being able to utilize speech with that BBS?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A44 2020/02/04 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Castle Rock BBS - bbs.castlerockbbs.com (80:505/0)
  • From Beery@80:774/27 to Tim Woodland on Mon Feb 24 15:06:26 2020
    Sounds great! I am interested. I currently run Mystic on Linux Mint.
    I wish you success. Any chance of being able to utilize speech with
    that BBS?

    I guess speech could be implemented, but in what situation would you
    anticipate it being used?

    Beery

    --Beery Miller -- 9640 News BBS -- 9640news.ddns.net:9640 --

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: 9640 News BBS (80:774/27)
  • From Tim Woodland@80:505/0 to Beery on Sat Feb 29 18:54:20 2020
    I have always wanted to find a way to have a BBS talk to you like
    Joshua in War Games. It could say the name of the BBS upon login: "Welcome
    U$ (user name) to TMS9900 BBS, here is the..." then each menu could be
    spoken: "Main Menu", "Message Menu", "Files Menu", for the Doors Menu it
    could say "Shall we play a game?" It could read the help screens, it could
    say the selected options: "Read Message", "System Bulletins", "Goodbye" etc...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Castle Rock BBS - bbs.castlerockbbs.com (80:505/0)
  • From Beery@80:774/27 to Tim Woodland on Sun Mar 1 12:23:52 2020
    Tim,

    Adding speech is really a feature of implementing that in the terminal
    emulator and/or telnet client one is using. And that is really just reading the text.

    Unfortunately, that is something beyond something I would want to even
    attempt. I say that because the string parsing to separate something like
    ANSI escape sequences from the rest of the text would definitely be a challenge.

    Now, if someone were to identify something in the ANSI protocol that enables speech, that would put things a bit closer into reach. However, if something like that is not in the ANSI protocol, more of a challenge.

    All the present TI/Geneve telnet and terminal emulators do not have have anything like that, and only PORT has the potential to play music on the
    Geneve though I have never heard a tune played yet.

    If speech were included, it would definitely have to be something of few
    words instead of everything on the whole BBS, as otherwise one's speed would turn to a crawl.

    If you have some ideas, I will listen.

    Beery

    --Beery Miller -- 9640 News BBS -- 9640news.ddns.net:9640 --

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/02/27 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: 9640 News BBS (80:774/27)
  • From Beery@80:774/27 to Tim Woodland on Sun Mar 1 12:29:13 2020
    As far as the TIPI and AfterHours BBS, I have been coding things. I think I have finally chased down something and know where the root cause is thinking
    it will need a TIPI update to resolve. I'm not 100%, but I think because the TI-99/4A is behaving as a server, I stumbled upon the messaging system in a "hold" until a character is received when waiting for input.

    I have sent Matt a note where I think the issue is and I hope he responds
    with a confirmation of my observation. If not, back to the drawing board again.

    Beery

    --Beery Miller -- 9640 News BBS -- 9640news.ddns.net:9640 --

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/02/27 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: 9640 News BBS (80:774/27)
  • From Gandalf@80:505/9 to Beery on Sun Mar 1 20:06:44 2020
    Thank you for the explanation. I remember with TEII, hitting CTRL-1 would
    read the text on the screen. Not to beat a dead horse, but could you use elements of the ANSI Escape Sequence C1 Set control functions "APC"
    Application Program Control or "PM" Privacy Message to send strings of text
    to the TI-99/4A TE client like your modded MXT and then add the function on
    the TE end to send that C1 control function escape sequence to TI TXT2SPCH commands CALL LINK ("SPEAK",S$)? If your TI-BBS software and modded
    terminal client could have this function, not only would it be VERY cool
    (and a feature that nobody else has) but could serve a useful function as
    well e.g. Hearing assist. But I also understand that I do not have the knowledge you do on what would be needed to make this happen and like you
    said if the costs outweigh the benefits. Regardless, thank you for
    listening and for your feedback and thoughts on the matter!

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: ARDA-BBS (80:505/9)
  • From Beery@80:774/27 to Gandalf on Sun Mar 1 21:40:01 2020
    Your approach sounds logical. Unfortunately, the MXT version I modified does not support ANSI.

    The other issue, I do not know of a way to pass talk to the speech
    synthesizer in a method as you described as the TE2 cart would not be accessible.

    I am not going to discount the idea you mentioned, I just do not know how to get there at the moment.


    Beery

    --Beery Miller -- 9640 News BBS -- 9640news.ddns.net:9640 --

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/02/27 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: 9640 News BBS (80:774/27)
  • From Gandalf@80:505/9 to Beery on Sun Mar 1 22:49:11 2020
    Good point. I will check out the different TI term programs that I have. I know that TIPI telnet supports ANSI but not file transfers. You would not
    need the TEII cart, you can incorporate the TI DSK PHD5076 files and loading those files into the program. It can do everything the TEII cart speech can do. Here is a link for more info which includes a sample program. Lines
    110 & 120 load the TXT2SPCH functionality for use within the program.
    Here is the link:
    https://www.ninerpedia.org/index.php?title=Text-to-Speech

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: ARDA-BBS (80:505/9)
  • From Gandalf@80:505/9 to Beery on Sun Mar 1 22:59:20 2020
    FYI here is a link to the TXT2SPCH .DSK file on AtariAge: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/269655-text-to-speech-program/?do=findCommen t&comment=3843444
    Give it a try.
    d

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: ARDA-BBS (80:505/9)
  • From Beery@80:774/27 to Gandalf on Mon Mar 2 09:01:38 2020
    Matt's telnet app for the TIPI as you indicated does use ANSI. It's written
    in C and in an environment I am completely unfamiliar.

    Beery

    --Beery Miller -- 9640 News BBS -- 9640news.ddns.net:9640 --

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/02/27 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: 9640 News BBS (80:774/27)
  • From Gandalf@80:505/9 to Beery on Wed Mar 4 08:22:28 2020
    Yes, I apologize, you have already addressed this on the Atariage forum. I
    am catching up on BBS client discussions as you have been very thorough extracting information about them from the resources there. For now, as you have already indicated, even though it may work, at the current time there
    is not an available ANSI terminal program source to easily modify. Maybe, (Tursi's old TI user group mate) Jeff Brown's TERM80, but awhile back, I reached out to Tursi to see if he had contact with Jeff, and he said that he has not heard from him in quite some time and that he had not been
    involved in the TI community as far as he knew. I still sent an email to
    Jeff asking about the source code to TERM80 but have not received a reply.
    Who knows, maybe someone with skills will create a new full featured BBS
    client and be interested in coding the speech feature. Till then, I am
    looking forward to seeing your updated BBS software! Godspeed Beery!

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A45 2020/02/18 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: ARDA-BBS (80:505/9)
  • From Beery@80:774/27 to Gandalf on Wed Mar 4 19:13:36 2020
    Well, the BBS Software is coming along. I am awaiting for an update to some code for the TIPI where I identified a communication issue when the TI is operating in a Server environment. I need that fixed, and when it is, I
    think everything else "should" work. If not, it should be minimal additional work to complete.

    Beery

    --Beery Miller -- 9640 News BBS -- 9640news.ddns.net:9640 --

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/03/02 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: 9640 News BBS (80:774/27)