Re: biggest win this month
By: pweck to All on Fri Sep 18 2026 16:31:17

share one thing that went right on your board lately. a new caller, a fixed bug, a door finally working. small wins count

I've been wriing a Vidotex/Viewdata front end powered by Synchronet. This is an standard popular in the 70's and 80's for services like Prestel. it runs at 7E1 eather 8N1 parity. It requires a special client of which most sytems have at least one. PC, Mac and Linux users can use SyncTERM in Prestel mode. It presents data on a 24 row x 40 column grid with row 1 used for a header which has the ip (information provider), page number and cost, and the 24thr row for entering navigation commands and error/response messages.

I've streamlined the process to only pull information from webpages upon request rather than parsing thousands of pages nobody will ever read.

if anyone wants to check it out, it's at endofthelinebbs.com port 6502 - don't try your ansi terminal, it's not going to end well for you. :)
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share one thing that went right on your board lately. a new caller, a f bug, a door finally working. small wins count

I've been wriing a Vidotex/Viewdata front end powered by Synchronet.
This is an standard popular in the 70's and 80's for services like Prestel. it runs at 7E1 eather 8N1 parity. It requires a special client
of which most sytems have at least one. PC, Mac and Linux users can use SyncTERM in Prestel mode. It presents data on a 24 row x 40 column grid with row 1 used for a header which has the ip (information provider),
page number and cost, and the 24thr row for entering navigation commands and error/response messages.

I've streamlined the process to only pull information from webpages upon request rather than parsing thousands of pages nobody will ever read.

if anyone wants to check it out, it's at endofthelinebbs.com port 6502 - don't try your ansi terminal, it's not going to end well for you. :)

sounds like an interesting endeavor, i will have to check it out
so who would use it and why?

pweck
sysopnet 23:1/1
bbs.pwecksretreat.com:2332

... A Meteor is an example of a rock star.

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Re: Re: biggest win this month
By: pweck to Nigel Reed on Mon Sep 28 2026 19:17:58

sounds like an interesting endeavor, i will have to check it out
so who would use it and why?

People who remember the old times and want to relive the look/feel of Prestel and viewdata boards. For many of us from the UK, that was our first introduction to any sort of interactive network service, even if it was via a dumb terminal.
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so who would use it and why?

People who remember the old times and want to relive the look/feel of Prestel and viewdata boards. For many of us from the UK, that was our first introduction to any sort of interactive network service, even if
it was via a dumb terminal.

i dont think it made it to the us and canada, at least not in the Prestel/viewdata form, i think Viewtron or Compuserve

pweck
sysopnet 23:1/1
bbs.pwecksretreat.com:2332

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Re: Re: biggest win this month
By: pweck to Nigel Reed on Mon Sep 28 2026 19:59:42

i dont think it made it to the us and canada, at least not in the Prestel/viewdata form, i think Viewtron or Compuserve

No, it was never bit in the States, not huge in Europe either. It was similar to Teletext which was broadcast over the air and not interactive, apart from you type page number you want and it'll eventually pop up). It uses the Mullard SAA5050 "teletext" chip for character generation and has a somewhat unique look to it. Teletext is a 7O1 system so carries different parity. If you want to look at some teletext stuff you can look at https://teletext.nigelreed.net/teletext.html - The best ones are the BBC2 one. It uses a new renderer which is better than previous one.

That's a whole nother story that's really unrelated to this forum so maybe I can discuss it somewhere else.
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