Got my Raspberry Pi 400 in, which is a Raspberry Pi 4 in a nice keyboard. By itself, it's a pretty sweet pickup, I paid $99 for the deluxe kit that comes with the official mouse, usb power supply, sdcard and book.

First thing I did was throw DOSBian on it. DOSBian is a stripped down distro that boots your Pi into DOSBox. *And* I've got it running through an HDMI -> VGA convertor box to run on an old curbside pickup Dell monitor. And finally, I got online with it using a WiModem232. (I couldn't get modem emulation working right in DOSBox on it...)

DOSbian still has some hiccups on it. It wants to run at 1024x768, but games look kinda ugly on a crt since it's upscaling them. Set the pi to 640x480 and they'll look *much* better. Pixel-perfect even (it letterboxes 640x400/320x200 content so it's still pixel perfect and you can use the monitor's controls to expand the image.)

Even has an option to install MUNT which is an MT-32 emulator. SimCity 2000 sounds great, and I finally got to hear CANYON.MID as it was always meant to be heard.

If you're on bbsing FB groups, you've probably seen some of my posts about it already, but it's working pretty well so far.

--- ENiGMA 1/2 v0.0.12-beta (linux; x64; 12.19.0)
* Origin: cortex (77:1/161)

On 18 Nov 2020, deepthaw said the following...

First thing I did was throw DOSBian on it. DOSBian is a stripped down distrothat boots your Pi into DOSBox.

I didn't know DOSBian was a thing. Could I run an old Telegard BBS w/ DOS doors & tossers on it (w/ the whole ARM <-> x86 thing)?

Jay

... A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was ticketed for littering

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2020/10/23 (Raspberry Pi/32)
* Origin: Northern Realms (77:1/156)

Got my Raspberry Pi 400 in, which is a Raspberry Pi 4 in a nice
keyboard. Byitself, it's a pretty sweet pickup, I paid $99 for the
deluxe kit that comeswith the official mouse, usb power supply, sdcard
and book.

I'm waiting for mine to arrive. I have been holding off on upgrading my Amibian system to a Pi4 and now I have the perfect excuse to do so.

How is the build quality?

|15frank |08// |15netsurge
|07disksh0p|08!|07bbs |08% |07bbs.diskshop.ca |08% |07mystic goodness |11SciNet |03ftn hq |08% |07https://scinet-ftn.org

--- Mystic BBS/QWK Gate v1.12 A47 2020/10/31 (Linux/64)
* Origin: % disksh0p!bbs % bbs.diskshop.ca % SciNet ftn hq % (77:1/100)

On 11/18/2020 3:32 pm Warpslide said...

I didn't know DOSBian was a thing. Could I run an old Telegard BBS w/ DOS doors & tossers on it (w/ the whole ARM <-> x86 thing)?

Probably. I know DOSbox has had problems with file sharing and handles and stuff for socket based communications, but it'd certainly be worth a try.

I've been able to get it dialing out on a "real" (WiModem232) modem and was able to connect to multiple BBS's just fine. zmodem likes to fail, but that's zmodem over telnet for ya.

--- ENiGMA 1/2 v0.0.12-beta (linux; x64; 12.19.0)
* Origin: cortex (77:1/161)

On 11/18/2020 3:33 pm Netsurge said...

I'm waiting for mine to arrive. I have been holding off on upgrading my Amibian system to a Pi4 and now I have the perfect excuse to do so.

How is the build quality?

Very nice. It's a chiclet style keyboard, and it's not full size so it's slightly suboptimal for the DOS games I want to play (Gold Box RPGs which used the number pad a *lot*) but you can Fn the right half into the keypad, so that's good. It's surprisingly heavy in a good way and does *not* feel cheap in the slightest. I'm very happy with it. The GPIO pins are there still and tucked away in the back. Reminds me a lot of the C64 in a way.

--- ENiGMA 1/2 v0.0.12-beta (linux; x64; 12.19.0)
* Origin: cortex (77:1/161)

Very nice. It's a chiclet style keyboard, and it's not full size so it's slightly suboptimal for the DOS games I want to play (Gold Box RPGs
which usedthe number pad a *lot*) but you can Fn the right half into the keypad, sothat's good. It's surprisingly heavy in a good way and does *not* feel cheap inthe slightest. I'm very happy with it. The GPIO pins are there still and tuckedaway in the back. Reminds me a lot of the C64
in a way.

Yeah, first thing I though of was the wedge 8-bit generation when I saw it.

You could always get an external USB numpad. I bought one specifically for gaming on the road. They are awesome.

|15frank |08// |15netsurge
|07disksh0p|08!|07bbs |08% |07bbs.diskshop.ca |08% |07mystic goodness |11SciNet |03ftn hq |08% |07https://scinet-ftn.org

--- Mystic BBS/QWK Gate v1.12 A47 2020/10/31 (Linux/64)
* Origin: % disksh0p!bbs % bbs.diskshop.ca % SciNet ftn hq % (77:1/100)

On 11/18/2020 6:18 pm Netsurge said...

Yeah, first thing I though of was the wedge 8-bit generation when I saw it.

You could always get an external USB numpad. I bought one specifically for gaming on the road. They are awesome.

That's my plan for sure. Maybe somebody'll even make one that matches the build.

--- ENiGMA 1/2 v0.0.12-beta (linux; x64; 12.19.0)
* Origin: cortex (77:1/161)

On Thursday November 19, 2020, Deepthaw said to Netsurge...

That's my plan for sure. Maybe somebody'll even make one that matches
the build.

It really is amazing as to how far the Raspberry Foundation has pushed their little device.

[%] frank!netsurge // hysteriabbs.com // zeus 1.7 // amiga 4ooo [%]
. SciNet! . the ftn of the bbs scene . https://scinet-ftn.org .

--- Zeus BBS 1.5
* Origin: hysteria - amiga 4ooo - hysteriabbs.com (77:1/111.0)