VOGONS


First post, by keenmaster486

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EDIT: DISCLAIMER! This does NOT fall into the same category as IRC/Discord/Slack/etc. It's an instant messaging / group messaging thing intended for communication with friends and families in real life, not communities on the internet. Before you decide to make a snarky comment about IRC, read the whole post and try out the app.

As stated in the title, this is a chat app, or whatever you want to call it.

It's capable of direct messages and group chats. The goal is to have a chat server that is easy to build cross-platform clients for. I started this project just as an experiment to see what I can do, but it's grown to be more than that, and I think it could have a lot of potential.

The web version of the app (and the server that all the clients connect to) is hosted at https://clean-chat-app.herokuapp.com. If you go to that URL you'll find a React frontend, so you'd better be using a modern computer for that side of it.

On the retro side, I just finished building a client using Visual Basic 3.0, in Windows 3.1. It should be compatible with every version of Windows from 3.1 through XP, and any modern 32-bit version that retains the 16-bit subsystem. But you'll be using the web version on those anyway. You can find the "retro client" (with the source code!) at the following URL: ftp://casablanca25.mynetgear.com/software/Win … ents/CCAVB3.zip

I speed-built it just today, so it still definitely has some issues, besides just being extremely basic. Just testing it quickly here on my various retro machines I noticed that it seems to crash with an unidentified Winsock error after about 2 minutes on any OS that is not WFW 3.11. Of course I anticipate fixing stuff like that. I'd also appreciate input on it.

You can find the source code and all the documentation of the API at the following URL: https://github.com/keenmaster486/clean-chat-app

I encourage experimentation with my project! If you feel like building a client for it for some other OS or machine, do it! I'm putting out the challenge here and now for all you programming gurus out there.

I am open to comments and suggestions.

Last edited by keenmaster486 on 2019-10-19, 14:08. Edited 1 time in total.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 1 of 14, by Caluser2000

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IRC

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 2 of 14, by keenmaster486

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Caluser2000 wrote:

IRC

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World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 3 of 14, by Caluser2000

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Sorry to break the bubble. It's been there for ever and there are irc clients for almost all systems that have some sort of access to the interweb. Even Discord chat rooms hook up to them.

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 4 of 14, by keenmaster486

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Caluser2000 wrote:

Sorry to break the bubble. It's been there for ever and there are irc clients for almost all systems that have some sort of access to the interweb. Even Discord chat rooms hook up to them.

I am aware.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 5 of 14, by Caluser2000

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On the topic of irc. There's a channel on Slashnet called #retrodreams fairly new by the looks. Discord #retro-irc

There's a glitch in the matrix.
A founding member of the 286 appreciation society.
Apparently 32-bit is dead and nobody likes P4s.
Of course, as always, I'm open to correction...😉

Reply 7 of 14, by keenmaster486

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This is not IRC, guys. It's not like those, or Slack or Discord. It doesn't operate on the server/channel paradigm. It's more of an instant messaging / group messaging thing intended for communication with friends and family IRL instead of communities on the internet. Can we please recognize that?

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 8 of 14, by keenmaster486

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Major update: there is now a client available for retro browsers - anything that supports HTML frames. Javascript is recommended but not required.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 11 of 14, by keenmaster486

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Oh man, almost forgot about this.

Yes, I am sure I still have the code somewhere. Let me do some digging and see if I can find it.

It never worked very well though. The TCP/IP VBX I used tended to crash after leaving the program open for some time.

Also, the CleanChat server is inoperable right now due to Heroku regressions. The whole project needs to be reworked, honestly.

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 12 of 14, by ericmackrodt

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Fair enough @keenmaster486,

If I could have the VB code just so I have an idea/starting point. I haven't had much experience with VB in my life, especially when it comes to doing networking stuff.

Thanks!