The Major BBS Forums (Archive)

I finally got a DMA server and man it is pissing me off so much. I've been trying to get this to work and that to work correctly, but I'm getting so many crashes, freezes, etc.... But I'll start back when I was messing with mbbs 6.25 on the gamenet I had online without a dma server.

I had mbbs 6.25 running fine for several months, with major tcp/ip and just connecting in through telnet lines, until one day a huge block of power surges occurred. The MBBS game server never worked correctly since, and I ended up taking it offline completely. I couldn't figure out what the problem was but thought it might have been data corruptions.

So here we go now, a few months later, and now I start messing with DOS wg again. Everything installs fine, network goes through on most of the PCs I've tried, but there are many freezes, re-starts, crashes... just complete unstability. I've had this problem with 3 seperate pcs running the DOS that came with win 95 and win 98, the same one that ran my other mbbs game server fine until those surges hit it.

I've spent all day changing out network cards, hard drives, etc.. So now I've got a headache and almost to the point that I don't care if I ever see another DMA server or DOS MBBS/WG system again. lol...

Any thoughts?

Well, I finally got what seems to be a stable dma server up (been up all night/morning with out crashing or freezing) and guess what? Worldgroup 3.30 and 3.20 don't support the dma client.

I've got a licensed dma client for worldgroup nt, and it installs and everything. In fact, it even works when I go through the ico client module, worldgroups rlogin on 3.3 and 3.2 don't support the dma client.

The last version of worldgroup (that I know of) that actually included a DMA client is wg 3.00 nt.... I hope there is a way around this stuff but am not counting on it.

Malakai wrote:Well, I finally got what seems to be a stable dma server up (been up all night/morning with out crashing or freezing) and guess what? Worldgroup 3.30 and 3.20 don't support the dma client.

I've got a licensed dma client for worldgroup nt, and it installs and everything. In fact, it even works when I go through the ico client module, worldgroups rlogin on 3.3 and 3.2 don't support the dma client.

The last version of worldgroup (that I know of) that actually included a DMA client is wg 3.00 nt.... I hope there is a way around this stuff but am not counting on it.

I got the vircom DMA client to work with 3.2.

Joe

I got it to work manually but for the life of me can't get it to pass through all information on to the dma server. Here is a c/p:

GAMES (GAMES)
Make your selection (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,? for help, or X to exit): 7
Auto-Logoff on sub-bbs (y/N)> y
Auto-Specials off on sub-bbs (y/N)> y
Is sub-bbs to automatically echo (n,y,o)> y
default mode (Ascii/Binary/PermBinary)> a
Go to what page on sub-bbs> ge

i've tried it on wg 3.12, 3.20, 3.30

Here is a copy of the way I have it setup:

├╔═ Edit Module ═══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
├║ Page Name: GE ║
│║ Use as a Menu, Module or File? Module Page ║
│║ Allow "GO" to this module? Yes ║
│║ Key Required for "GO": ║
│║ Module Name: ICO DMA Client ║
│║ Display Module Page Header? Yes ║
│║ ║
│║ Command String: ║
│║ d dmapw 0 192.168.1.104 . %u y y y a GE #GE ║
├║ ║
│║ Return to Menu Tree? ║
│╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Even though it says to use the rlogin client in the docs, as the module page, the rlogin client says nothing but invalid parameters no matter what.

So, I decided to try it on mbbs with majortcp 2.2, and I still got the same stuff... I wish someone could tell me why it's not passing on the information.

Malakai wrote:I got it to work manually but for the life of me can't get it to pass through all information on to the dma server. Here is a c/p:

GAMES (GAMES)
Make your selection (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,? for help, or X to exit): 7
Auto-Logoff on sub-bbs (y/N)> y
Auto-Specials off on sub-bbs (y/N)> y
Is sub-bbs to automatically echo (n,y,o)> y
default mode (Ascii/Binary/PermBinary)> a
Go to what page on sub-bbs> ge

i've tried it on wg 3.12, 3.20, 3.30

Here is a copy of the way I have it setup:

├╔═ Edit Module ═══════════════════════════════════════════════╗
├║ Page Name: GE ║
│║ Use as a Menu, Module or File? Module Page ║
│║ Allow "GO" to this module? Yes ║
│║ Key Required for "GO": ║
│║ Module Name: ICO DMA Client ║
│║ Display Module Page Header? Yes ║
│║ ║
│║ Command String: ║
│║ d dmapw 0 192.168.1.104 . %u y y y a GE #GE ║
├║ ║
│║ Return to Menu Tree? ║
│╚═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝

Even though it says to use the rlogin client in the docs, as the module page, the rlogin client says nothing but invalid parameters no matter what.

So, I decided to try it on mbbs with majortcp 2.2, and I still got the same stuff... I wish someone could tell me why it's not passing on the information.

You may be missing something on the command line.
When I get home (late tonight) I will post the command strings I use.
If you give me your email address I can send you the DMA password for my DMA server and I will let you connect to it.

Joe

OK I've sent you an email

I think I've figured it out!!!

I knew that I had all my command strings correct, enough to test the dma server out.. but I kept going back and thinking about the command strings and wondered if there was a setting called "max consecutive commands" on modules, and even if there was, would it apply to command strings as well as just people on a menu system, wanting to pass on multiple commands to navigate to where they want.

No, there is no setting called max consecutive commands, but under general settings, core settings, there is a setting called MAXCAT, which is the same thing. It is automatically set to 7, which pushes around 2/3rds of the information through... So, I changed it to 15 and tested it out on wg 3.12nt so far, and it went through to the DMA server without any problems.

I'm assumming that there is the same setting on 3.20 and 3.30 nt, and mbbs dos.

Malakai wrote:I think I've figured it out!!!

I knew that I had all my command strings correct, enough to test the dma server out.. but I kept going back and thinking about the command strings and wondered if there was a setting called "max consecutive commands" on modules, and even if there was, would it apply to command strings as well as just people on a menu system, wanting to pass on multiple commands to navigate to where they want.

No, there is no setting called max consecutive commands, but under general settings, core settings, there is a setting called MAXCAT, which is the same thing. It is automatically set to 7, which pushes around 2/3rds of the information through... So, I changed it to 15 and tested it out on wg 3.12nt so far, and it went through to the DMA server without any problems.

I'm assumming that there is the same setting on 3.20 and 3.30 nt, and mbbs dos.

Yup that will do it. Their are a bunch of settings you need to make on the DMA server as well to make sure the account setup goes well.

I will send them to you...

Joe

am i correct in understanding that the description feature doesn't work with wg nt, because it's using ICO instead of major tcp/ip? It mentions in the docs something about text variables and then says the description feature is not available for ICO, and considering NT has ICO built into it...

Malakai wrote:am i correct in understanding that the description feature doesn't work with wg nt, because it's using ICO instead of major tcp/ip? It mentions in the docs something about text variables and then says the description feature is not available for ICO, and considering NT has ICO built into it...

I think it works in the nt verssion. You cant use spaces though.

Galatic Empire (wont work)
Galatic_Empire (Will)

Joe

Well, I tried it in the nt version, and it shows everyone as being in ICO DMA Client instead of the module/game name .. There are references in the DOCs to TCP_RL_MOD and TCP_RL_MOD2 text variables but it doesn't say anything about how to get to those variables or to create them.

It'd be nice to have this feature work, but I could live without it :/

Malakai wrote:Well, I tried it in the nt version, and it shows everyone as being in ICO DMA Client instead of the module/game name .. There are references in the DOCs to TCP_RL_MOD and TCP_RL_MOD2 text variables but it doesn't say anything about how to get to those variables or to create them.

It'd be nice to have this feature work, but I could live without it :/

even major tcp/ip has text variables that are automatically used if you have the module TCP/IP MISC FUNCTIONS being used.

thats how my wg 2.0 sysop ip lister works just using the text variable to display the current ip address of the other user "othusn"

possibly a level 4 config option maybe? im just guessing here, or maybe an option to toggle on and off for display module name?

i don't see anything like that but i could be missing something..

Joe, if you want a few more players in GE, then I think I can get you atleast one more instantly if you want to give me access to your DMA server. I put my test dma server live on the bbs this morning, and there's a guy that's been playing GE for probaby 10+ hours off and on since then lol.

I'd like to link to trade wars too, but not sure how many people would play it.. it'd be worth a shot.

Malakai wrote:Joe, if you want a few more players in GE, then I think I can get you atleast one more instantly if you want to give me access to your DMA server. I put my test dma server live on the bbs this morning, and there's a guy that's been playing GE for probaby 10+ hours off and on since then lol.

I'd like to link to trade wars too, but not sure how many people would play it.. it'd be worth a shot.

i got 8-12 players active in tw2002, 34 in ta, and close to 10-20 in other games.

dan, what happened to all of your games on arcticzone?

Malakai wrote:dan, what happened to all of your games on arcticzone?

as in playable games?

i changed arcticzone.dyndns.org to be a wg-support only site.

all my wg games 2.0 and wg3nt reside on ta97.dyndns.org
from that bbs hit c to port to my nt bbs

trying to keep all my users together.

i got 17 more newly registered games going on the nt portal betwene now and next week, also got the door game server going up with 54 door games all registered, some of em i paid for just to bring some greats back from bbsfiles.net

i didnt want to mix my support clients with my game players so i mixed em up.

I hear ya.. Ya know, I've had more people come online to download files than anything else on my bbs. It got so bad that people were just constantly creating fake accounts to download files.

So, while doing some major updating, I made anonymous ftp and guest accounts on the bbs. Both have unlimitted forum reading and file downloading. Guest account was pretty tricky, because worldgroup wasn't made for guest accounts... but it's been used several times already by people, and I think it's probably help alleviate some of the fake accounts.

Anyway, check out my bbs again sometime, check out the updates and such when you get a chance.

Malakai wrote:I hear ya.. Ya know, I've had more people come online to download files than anything else on my bbs. It got so bad that people were just constantly creating fake accounts to download files.

So, while doing some major updating, I made anonymous ftp and guest accounts on the bbs. Both have unlimitted forum reading and file downloading. Guest account was pretty tricky, because worldgroup wasn't made for guest accounts... but it's been used several times already by people, and I think it's probably help alleviate some of the fake accounts.

Anyway, check out my bbs again sometime, check out the updates and such when you get a chance.

will do

Malakai wrote:I finally got a DMA server and man it is pissing me off so much. I've been trying to get this to work and that to work correctly, but I'm getting so many crashes, freezes, etc.... But I'll start back when I was messing with mbbs 6.25 on the gamenet I had online without a dma server.

I had mbbs 6.25 running fine for several months, with major tcp/ip and just connecting in through telnet lines, until one day a huge block of power surges occurred. The MBBS game server never worked correctly since, and I ended up taking it offline completely. I couldn't figure out what the problem was but thought it might have been data corruptions.

So here we go now, a few months later, and now I start messing with DOS wg again. Everything installs fine, network goes through on most of the PCs I've tried, but there are many freezes, re-starts, crashes... just complete unstability. I've had this problem with 3 seperate pcs running the DOS that came with win 95 and win 98, the same one that ran my other mbbs game server fine until those surges hit it.

I've spent all day changing out network cards, hard drives, etc.. So now I've got a headache and almost to the point that I don't care if I ever see another DMA server or DOS MBBS/WG system again. lol...

Any thoughts?

How many PC's you talking about, or all of this happening on one PC? Sounds like you may have corrupted something on the MB.

Toyduck wrote:

Malakai wrote:I finally got a DMA server and man it is pissing me off so much. I've been trying to get this to work and that to work correctly, but I'm getting so many crashes, freezes, etc.... But I'll start back when I was messing with mbbs 6.25 on the gamenet I had online without a dma server.

I had mbbs 6.25 running fine for several months, with major tcp/ip and just connecting in through telnet lines, until one day a huge block of power surges occurred. The MBBS game server never worked correctly since, and I ended up taking it offline completely. I couldn't figure out what the problem was but thought it might have been data corruptions.

So here we go now, a few months later, and now I start messing with DOS wg again. Everything installs fine, network goes through on most of the PCs I've tried, but there are many freezes, re-starts, crashes... just complete unstability. I've had this problem with 3 seperate pcs running the DOS that came with win 95 and win 98, the same one that ran my other mbbs game server fine until those surges hit it.

I've spent all day changing out network cards, hard drives, etc.. So now I've got a headache and almost to the point that I don't care if I ever see another DMA server or DOS MBBS/WG system again. lol...

Any thoughts?

How many PC's you talking about, or all of this happening on one PC? Sounds like you may have corrupted something on the MB.

thre freezes are just lockups right? hd is chugging but you get no response to the kb?

the crahes are they red screen (catastro) or rebooting GP's?
send me the catastro.txt and gp.out ill try and debug it.

I'm about 100% sure that the first PC actually sustained hardware damage the day when it got hit with 50+ power surges all in a 10-14 minute period. Remember, the mbbs server worked fine for many months.

The 2nd pc i tried (i believe) was an old win 95 system. It didn't recognize the hard drive...

So, I tried a third system, which was a newer asus system... it didn't work correctly, but one of the main problems I couldnt get over was it loading the network card in dos. It was actually seeing something else that it thought was a 10mbps network card, getting an error, etc.

When I loaded the driver a 2nd time, it would find the 100mbps network card that I actually was using, but it apparently wouldn't use the 2nd one.

So, what I did was copy the contents of the first mbbs gameserver to the hard drive from the 2nd pc (win 95 pc) and it loaded fine.

I loaded both the mbbs gamenet server I ran before and worldgroup dma server I had recently started working on, and they both run without any problems.

I think I just had a bit of bad luck but now have pretty much worked that part out. Still can't figure out what in the asus system was mistaken for a 10mbps network card, whether it was a usb port or i.link or what, but it doesn't matter, as I probably wouldn't waste the resource just for mbbs dos which doesn't need all that power.