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Packet Radio Re-Visited

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Packet Radio Re-Visited Packet Radio re-visited. Roger J. Cooke, G3LDI This article is an attempt to introduce you – the reader – to packet radio. Most of the new licensees have probably never heard of packet radio. It has almost fallen off the amateur radio scene since the inception of the Internet. Packet radio is a data mode that was first used in the early 1980s. It was a radio based system and the equipment needed was a VHF/UHF/HF radio, a Terminal Node Controller (TNC) or modem and a computer. Nodes were set up all over the UK/world along with Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). Those running Nodes and BBS had to have an NOV and a special licence. For example, my node was G3LDI and my BBS was GB7LDI. The Node could be used on several frequencies with a suitable Secondary Station Identifier (SSID). This can be seen on the APRS network for example with G3LDI-8. The content of the BBS is pure amateur radio, and it is also used as a personal mail server, so you can mail other amateurs. Anybody can send a bulletin, although they are moderated by the SYStem Operator (Sysop). The radio days are virtually over, the Internet is so much faster. Speed was limited by bandwidth so we were defeated by the Internet in that respect. However, a new system has evolved, thanks to John Wiseman G8BPQ, the author of the BPQ Node. Now, a completely new Node software suite has been produced by John. It consists of: The Node itself. In my case, it is G3LDI or SWAR. Connect to other Nodes all over the world. The BBS ( Mail Server ): GB7LDI Bulletins and Mail APRS Node: G3LDI-8 Find out where you are. (?) Chat Node: BPQ Chat. This enables the user to chat to other amateurs on the keyboard all over the world. This will give you hours of enjoyment, and all you need is a computer connected to the Internet, and the majority of amateurs have that already. The only other things you will need is a window or two, some putty and some time to put things together! There are dozens of books around about packet radio, plus articles on the Internet, and indeed my old one on the NARC web site. Has anybody ever read that? OK, if I have gained your interest, let’s get started! Putty I said you would need Putty – it is in fact a terminal program for your computer. You use this in much the same way as your email program. First of all you will have to download and install it. Go to: http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.67/x86/putty-0.67-installer.msi This will download and install the program once you click on the downloaded file. It will run as it is, but is grossly unattractive so the best thing to do is reconfigure it. Step 1 - Run PuTTY and login The default appearance is 10 point Courier New font with white text on a black background. It really does not encourage you to use the program at all, so the first thing to do is some editing. This is what it looks like. Not very pleasing! Right click on the top of the window to get a menu. Step 2 - Get to Reconfiguration window On the pop-up menu select the Change Settings... button. Step 3 - Make font changes To change the font click first on Appearance in the left panel, then on the Change... button You can select from either a short or long list. I choose Times Roman 14 Bold. ( It’s an age thing!! ) Select Size 12 and click OK to boost font size. Step 4 - Make translation changes (to fix man pages) To change the translation click first on Translation in the left panel. Select UTF-8 Step 5 - White background with dark text To change Colours click first on Colours in the left panel then Default Foreground in the right side. Change to 15 for Red, Green and Blue Next click on Default Bold Foreground in the right side. Change to 0 for Red, Green and Blue Next click on Default Background in the right side. Change to 244 for Red, Green and Blue and click Apply to see the new look Step 6 - Save settings to use in future sessions Before you save the settings, make sure you have entered the address to connect to: g3ldi.no-ip.org Then enter the Port to connect to: 8010 This is the only Port that will work. To save settings, right click again on top window bar, select Change Settings... to see the PuTTY reconfiguration window. Type in a name for the Saved Session and click the Save button followed by the Apply button. In future PuTTY sessions load this Saved Session name again to have all the settings return to your preferred values. I think these are most important to give a nice display on the screen. This is what I ended up with. Now, every time you invoke PUTTY, click on the name you gave to your session and it will connect with the same parameters every time, thus giving you a very nice display. Having got that far, you will need a USER name and PASSWORD. If you choose your username and password and then email them to me, [email protected] I will enter you as a user into my system. You won’t be able to get any further until you have done this. I shall return a message to let you know I have entered you and then you can proceed. Invoke your named session in PUTTY and you will have a cursor and prompt asking for USER name followed by PASSWORD. You are now in the system. This is what you will see: These are the commands of the Node SWAR or G3LDI. Type BBS to connect to the Mail Server and Bulletin Board. Type DX to connect to the GB7RDX Cluster. Type CHAT to connect to the CHAT server and talk to people on there. Type TALK to connect to the Sysop ( If I am about! ) Type Info for general information about the system. Type NODES to show how many Nodes around the world you can connect to. Type PORTS to see how many ports are available. Type ROUTES to see how the packets are distributed. Type USERS to see who is using the system. Type MHEARD to see who my Node has detected. CONNECT and BYE are self-explanatory. Assuming you typed BBS, you would then see the following screen. It is much larger than this however, and is very easy to read, unlike that awful white text on a black background, yuk! This is the BBS GB7LDI. There is a command structure as follows and will be shown when you type ? Try reading some of the bulletins and you will soon get a feel for the behaviour of the BBS. You cannot read other people’s mail and they cannot read yours. It is just what it says, PERSONAL. Assuming you are trying the CHAT mode, this is what you will see when you type /h for the help screen. You are seen as soon as you join CHAT, so be careful and watch for a while. You can interject comments to anybody on there and talk to whomever you want. You can send personal mail to anybody who is also on the system, and it is much like email really, except you won’t see any adverts, spam, rubbish mail or any suchlike items. I don’t have any files in the files section as yet, but I shall try transferring some from my old FBB Library, because there were some interesting files in there. The main idea is to get some of you interested. If you are, and I hope you are, please let me have your USER name and PASSWORD via email and I will set it up for you. I hope you get some fun from an amateur radio packet mail server now on the Internet. 73 de Roger, G3LDI@GB7LDI.#35.GBR.EU .
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