New OCTOI services (data, voice, fax, etc.)

Manawyrm · October 5, 2023, 11:06am

I’m starting this thread to get people to blog about new, cool services available via the OCTOI network.

I’ve just configured 6 new numbers offering music/radio stations via phone call:

	Prefix	Extension	Service	Description
030	6502	7004	Nectarine Demoscene	Radio
030	6502	7005	The SID Station	Radio
030	6502	7006	SomaFM Left Coast 70s	Radio
030	6502	7007	SomaFM Underground 80s	Radio
030	6502	7008	SomaFM Folk Forward	Radio
030	6502	7009	90s90s Eurodance	Radio

It’s powered by the mp3.sh playrec via Yate, which looks like this:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/Manawyrm/bb2e556b9603edf9f1b6372d65900d31

mp3.sh

#!/bin/sh

# To test add a route to: external/playrec/mp3/mp3.sh https://example.com/stream.mp3
read -r REPLY
echo "$REPLY" | sed 's/^[^:]*:\([^:]*\):.*$/%%<message:\1:true:/;'

# Throw away input (but read from FD3 to not overflow the input buffer)
dd if=/dev/fd/3 of=/dev/null bs=64 &

# mpg123 options:

This file has been truncated. show original

Manawyrm · October 6, 2023, 9:31am

I’ve written an experimental TTY/TDD (45.45 baud, 5bit baudot, 1400/1800 Hz) telnet RAS interface for yate. It’s integrated into my RAS project (uses the same telnet, yate interfacing logic, codec handling, etc.).

For modulation, I’m calling:

which handles the FSK for me.

Minimodem can also handle “Bell103, Bell202, RTTY, NOAA SAME” as other modulations, so having a generalised minimodem interface is probably useful anyways.

I’ve configured it as a new service, just sending out the current time every 5 seconds:

	Prefix	Extension	Service	Description
030	6502	7100	TTY/TDD test line	Time announcement (45.45 baud, 5bit baudot, 1400/1800 Hz)

I’m sure there are way more fun uses for this (ZORK1 over TTY? Wikipedia? Fediverse?).
Service ideas welcome, they just need to be a Linux program or Telnet service.

laforge · October 8, 2023, 7:37am

great!

It brings me to the question: Does any of us have any actual hardware equipment that can process this data? I’ve always read about this TDD technology, but never saw any actual commercially available device/implementation of it. Sure, one can do it in software, but to me that’s really only half of the fun. If both ends are some modern software implementations, it doesn’t really have the kind of hands-on retronetworking appeal…

Manawyrm · October 8, 2023, 11:05am

Yes!
@billy549 has this super nifty terminal with a VFD (!) and thermal printer.
We’ve had a chat over this protocol (me using netcat as a TCP server and him on the physical terminal).

This was tunneled over C*NET, too and even had to survive a layer of alaw to ulaw codec translation

billy549 · October 8, 2023, 5:04pm

I can confirm, I have a Minicom 6000+ which I’ve used to connect with a friend using his Ultratec brand TTY - we were able to connect with Turbo Code too!

Ultratec also sold a serial modem for Baudot communication with TDDs (and also Bell 103/ASCII support)

Manawyrm · October 23, 2023, 12:47am

	Prefix	Extension	Service	Description
030	6502	3070	Typing test	X.75 only, 30 seconds test time

New service: Typing test (with highscore)

based on the MIT-licensed go implementation:

I added some support code for terminal handling and highscore accounting.

This is also the first service which is being offered via the new Yate X75 RAS code.
Still WIP, YMMV, compatibility questionable. AVM & ELSA seem to work well.

laforge · October 23, 2023, 1:01am

Thanks for your enthusiasm working on that kind of stuff (and for your updates here!).

p.s.: typing test… Reminds me of the DOS shareware I wrote in 7th grade (1992/1993), which was a 10-finger-typing training program that looked like an ANSI BBS (graphics drawn with TheDraw) which played MOD files in the background while you were learning how to type. I think I might still have the TurboPascal sources for that somewhere