Notices

I'm requesting to any Devs out there - I'm willing to donate $100 to anyone who can port Syncterm to Maemo 5 (Fremantle) for the N900 device.

I recently picked up a N900 and LOVE it, but we really need a true BBS client for Maemo 5. Since I unfortunately can't program my way out of a paper bag... I figured I would put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. User "Qwerty" was able to port it to the OS2008 version of Maemo... this shouldn't be impossible.

I've been hunting for a larger screened phone with a hardware keyboard to replace my aging WinMo X1, and the N900 does everything I need it to, minus having a BBS client. I've tried TinyFugue and PCMAN X, and neither offer the proper ANSI colors and IBM Extended Character Set needed for an actual BBS. PCMan also adds some weird characters after every letter entered... and TinyFugue doesn't do local echo...

I used to run a Worldgroup BBS during college, and have spent the last 6 months setting everything back up to bring the system online again. I would love to have a way to Sysop it from my phone.

I couldn't find any previous examples of how others have structured a donation system before, would a Mod care to post and explain how? I understand this is my first post, and would like to follow whatever system is in place.

Anyone else care to sweeten the pot? Any Devs who would like a system to test this out on, feel free to log into my BBS at bentoboxbbs.com, using the standard telnet port of 23.

I thought almost any OS2008 application could have it's .deb file installed on the N900. You'll probably see error messages associated with the install but these are mostly just the notation of missing OS2008 desktop packages and nothing that actually keeps you from executing the application.

What happens when you try to install the OS2008 Syncterm on your N900?

I downloaded and followed the instructions in the following post:

HERE

I've installed gainroot, but no matter what I try, it always tells me "permission denied." I'll spend a couple hours tonight looking around to see if I can find another .deb file.

I would consider myself very much a beginner when it comes to Maemo and Linux based OS's in general... which is half the fun of the N900. It would be nice to have an actual port in the N900 repositories.

Works for me (don't think keyboard is working though). Put it into a Linux filesystem and then execute it.

Screenshot:

http://twitpic.com/40k85h

Yeah, I've had it on my older N800.

Except for a really buggy launch, once the screen displayed properly, it worked pretty good.

I ended up prefering Xterm with bash2, konwert filters, a cp434 special font, and libvte to remove the invisble pixel border so I had a true 800x480 screen instead of a 798x478 screen.

I have a really nice 80x25 full screen display which is much nicer on the eyes.

If you want, I can find some older pictures I took of it.

I got it to work for me.

Download the file (here's a copy already unziped: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/121443/syncterm.nokia ), and save it to your device (listed as 'Nokia N900' in your device's browser).

Then do this in terminal:

Run that last command whenever you want to start syncterm.

This is how I get it full screen and correctly centered but it doesn't immediately launch quite as fast.

wmctrl -r syncterm -b add,fullscreen
/home/user/MyDocs/syncterm.nokia -iSF &
sleep 2
xkbd -geometry +722+65536 -k /media/mmc2/Keyboards/Rightfull.xkbd & wmctrl -r syncterm -b add,fullscreen

I use Xkbd since I don't have a keyboard.

Thanks for all the help so far! Syncterm will start up, although as stated above, the keyboard doesn't work. I noticed any keystrokes I entered were sent to the xterm window in the background instead of Syncterm. Any way around this?

I would guess that you need to refocus the Syncterm window.

Try whatever out.

Tap on the Syncterm screen, refocus screen from Xterm and back, lock device and then unlock it, etc.

No dice, I've gotten xterm to stop receiving the keyboard button info... but Syncterm just won't register them. Hopefully someone will take on the porting challenge.