mTCP worked for me, so I don't have any bug reports, but what I miss is NC-like UI for the FTP client. With MS deprecating SMB, FTP seems to be the simplest way of transfering files between old and current machines. The mTCP FTP client worked well for me, but i really miss a UI. I know there is a client like that in DOS Navigator, but I couldn't get it to work.

A Ghost-like program would be great, backing up via network is so much more convenient than using floppies or CD-Rs.

I love your work! Thank you first of all for all of this!

I would like to see ZModem protocol in the telnet program as well. There are many BBSes, that do not support other protocols for file transfers unfortunately and therefore make the combination with mTCP's telnet program useless for download/upload.

Other than that, i would say it's pretty much perfect. Once again, thank you!

I've only found one annoyance: FTP client doesn't accept empty password.

Grzyb wrote:

I've only found one annoyance: FTP client doesn't accept empty password.

I've fixed that for the next version.

It was surprisingly difficult to figure out how to create a user with no password on a modern Linux machine. 😀

GigAHerZ wrote:

I love your work! Thank you first of all for all of this!

I would like to see ZModem protocol in the telnet program as well. There are many BBSes, that do not support other protocols for file transfers unfortunately and therefore make the combination with mTCP's telnet program useless for download/upload.

Other than that, i would say it's pretty much perfect. Once again, thank you!

Help me understand this - are these BBSes that were designed for serial and are now running over Telnet via a simple "stuff each character into a packet" type converter, or are these BBSes natively speaking TCP/IP and Telnet?

Zmodem has a better feature set than any variant of Xmodem or Ymodem but it is fairly complicated to implement. If I compile Telnet without any file transfer capability it requires 92KB. With Xmodem and Ymodem it requires 115KB; that's a lot for such a simple function. Adding Zmodem would make the program even larger. I can get around that by just shipping different versions of Telnet; a stripped one with no file transfer for a fat one with file transfer. But if you are already running Telnet over IP then firing up an FTP client is the proper way to transfer files.

When I added Xmodem and Ymodem to Telnet I was trying to pay homage to Procomm for DOS; the file upload and download menus should look familiar if you know that program. Xmodem and Ymodem are also fully supported by Linux systems with the rz and sz commands. But really the correct way to transfer files is with FTP. If these BBSes are running TCP/IP natively do they have FTP? If they only support Zmodem and nothing else that's pretty limited, and I don't know if investing a lot of time to support them is worth the effort.

Also, do you know what BBS software they are running?

@mbbrutman, for one example, digitaldistortionbbs.com. I believe it's a original BBS converted to use telnet today. It has a huge library of files, yet it doesn't support X/Y modem, only Zmodem...

Is there maybe any possibility to create those modem parts as separate applications and then somehow pipe bits and bytes from telnet client to chosen modem? Then if some modems are not necessary for someone, those can be left out.

I've been playing around with procomm, term95 and even hyperterm over serial cable, emulating hayes modem with my main pc. Though, this is quite complicated setup, compared to the easiness of your tools. 😀

NB! That example has an ftp address as well, if i remember correctly. But it's more fun to do download over X/Y/Z modem, feels more nostalgic. So it's not exactly a functional requirement at least on that example, more like a "really nice to have". 😀

Most BBS that were brought online and offer access through a web page in addition to the direct telnet connection use fTelnet and HtmlTerm (https://www.ftelnet.ca/) as the browser telnet client. This is what the BBS GigAHerZ mentioned also uses. The thing is that fTelnet supports only YModem-G, are you sure GigAHerZ you're not mixing the protocols?
btw the majority of BBS software has the YModem option, but not all have ZModem and I'm not aware of any being FTP-capable (mind you I'm considering different platforms too and BBS software of the past, not something developed today for Windows and TCP/IP native). I guess that's why the client discussed only supports that, correctly in my opinion.

I might have mixed up the BBS. Other one, that had many files was digisoft.club. One of them supported only the Zmodem.

mbbrutman wrote:

It was surprisingly difficult to figure out how to create a user with no password on a modern Linux machine. 😀

I use ProFTPD's "anonymous" account, which accepts any password from the client, so entering empty saves keystrokes.