Okay guys...I know I"m a dinosaur and I do get things wrong (badly) from time to time but I'm really confused about something now. I posted a message over at CBM (Jim Drew) about some of the issues we're still seeing with downloading. Mind you, I did NOT post a message as if I were saying I thought it was the WiModem232 that was the issue. Just want to make that perfectly clear.
From the fog-shrouded depths of my decadent memory, I recall that BITD, with dialup modems, I could set DarkForce! to 19.2k and people could login at any speed below that and download with Zmodem without problems. So...to me, that would seem to imply that we should be able to do the same thing today.
Jim says I'm confused. I get that a lot. :) He says that no Zmodem downloads are possible unless the source (BBS/Wimodem232 or whatever device you are using) and the caller, are *locked* to the same speed. In other words, if you're running your board at 9600 baud, only callers logging in at 9600 can do successful Zmodem downloads. The same thing would apply to DarkForce! at 19.2k.
So I must be confused because I don't recall any complaints back when we were dialup and running at 19.2k with Zmodem downloads. Keep in mind, this was when we were getting between 30-50 calls a day too, and the file section was pretty darned active.
If this is true, then it applies to ALL our BBS's as well. That means I can't call in to any of your BBS's with a speed not matching your BBS and download with Zmodem. I think I'll be calling and trying this theory out.
Anyway, comments, observations, suggestions? I'd love to hear everyone's take on this. Thanks.
Okay, so I set my STacy and its' WiModem232 to lower baud rates and did some testing. At DarkForce!, all attempts at downloading files of any significant size (typically greater than 75-100k) and Zmodem fail. Small files will sometimes succeed but always with errors.
Bikerbobs is set to 9600 so I tried that but with matched speeds Zmodem downloads worked. I'm assuming a mismatch would also produce errors.
SFHQ's pretty much gave the same results. Small files with Zmodem would usually succeed but with errors. SFHQ's did seem more tolerant than other BBS's though so I e-mailed Andy and asked him to send me a screenshot of his WiModem232 settings so I can compare them.
So despite my (erroneous!) memory about Zmodem downloads in the past, it looks like Jim Drew was right (nothing unusual there) and a caller's baud rate must match the BBS they are calling's baud rate, or Zmodem will give a lot of errors/fail.
Using Xmodem worked in every test I tried, large files or small, whether I was logged in at matching baud rates or different ones...
Guess I'll be changing those help screens shown to users when they first go into the File Sig areas... :^\
Some info here... http://gallium.inria.fr/~doligez/zmodem/zmodem.txt
The modems did lock the speed at the max possible between the two... however on the internet, there are no modems involved. (I know this isn't an answer... I only know enough to be dangerous...) 😎