The FBB DED Interface and LinBPQ

Warning

You MUST use FBB 7.0.12-svn which means building from source, there is a bug in the DED driver which causes severe CPU loading due to an out of control polling frequency. A small edit/patch to the source file is required until it has been committed into the SVN by the maintainer, at the current time this has not yet occurred. This patch and build process has been outlined in a separate document.

Creating the DED Interface

The TNCPORT definition creates a virtual tty device with a WA8DED emulator listening on it, this is what FBB will be use when defining a WA8DED interface.

LinBPQ: bpq32.cfg – DED Interface

; FBB BBS DED Interface
TNCPORT
 COMPORT=/home/pi/fbb_ded
 TYPE=DED
 STREAMS=10 ; The number of DED streams to assign to FBB (NbCh).
 APPLMASK=1 ; APPLICATION 1 in the application list.
ENDPORT

Converting APPLMASK to match the APPLICATION number can be a headache for anyone struggling with numbers like me.

This below example is for APPLICATION 5 rather than 1.

APPLMASK=16 ; BITMASK 10000 bin / 16 dec / 10 Hex = APPLICATION 5 

The APPLMASK is a bit mask, which tells the DED interface emulator to which application it should connect to, which in our case here is the application FBB, defined with:

LinBPQ: bpq32.cfg – Application Definition

APPLICATION 1,FBB,,PE1RRR-3,MATRIX,255

               ^  ^    ^       ^     ^
Node command —-|  |    |       |     |
Leave Empty——————-|    |       |     |
FBB Callsign—-————-———-|       |     |
FBB Netrom Alias—————————————-—|     |
Netrom Quality (255=Local)————-——————|

Advanced FBB port.sys

In the FBB port.sys, define the same DED interface path as the one configured in LinBPQ’s bpq32.cfg

# fbb7.0.10 
#
# Number of Com Ports (not including Com 0) and TNCs
#
4	4
#
#Com Interface Adress (Hex) Baud
1       9       /home/pi/fbb_ded    115200
2       9        1900         0
3       9        1901:1902    0
4       9        1A2C:1A2D:1A2E 0
#
# Interface “Com4” above refers to TCP ports for : POP:SMTP:NNTP
# You have to convert the desired TCP port number to Hexadecimal.
# e.g Hex to Dec TCP Port: 6300=189C, 6301=189D, 6400=1900
# You can use google’s calculator to perform these conversions.
# 73 PE1RRR
#
#
# Interface 8 = TFWin.dll
# Interface 9 = LINUX
#
# Maxframe: The maximum number of frames the TNC will send at a time.
# NbFwd   : Number of channels for OUTGOING forward at the same time.
# MxBloc  : Size of forward-block in Kb.
#
# M/P-Fwd : Minute of the hour for start of forward, and period
#           (how many minutes between each forward-start).
# Mode    : One of these:
#           B : BBS-mode.
#           G : "Guest"-mode.
#           U : Normal-mode.
# Type host-mode, one of these:
#           D : WA8DED
#           K : KAM hostmode.
#           M : Telephone-modem.
#           P : PK-232
#           Q : BPQ v 4.x
# Addition: One of these letters can be used too:
#           L : Send unproto beacon after each arriving mail.
#           Y : Yapp allowed on this QRG.
#           W : Gateway allowed TO this QRG. (dont forget to 'eo' on bbs)
#           R : Read-Only acces.
#           E : Recommanded by JP F6FBB
# 
# Freq.   : Text to describe this port (max 9 characters, no space)
# Same number of lines as number of TNCs+1.
#
#TNC NbCh Com MultCh Pacln Maxfr NbFwd MxBloc M/P-Fwd Mode  Freq
0   0    0   0      0     0     0     0      00/01   ----  File-fwd.
1   10   1   1      230   4     2     10     40/59   DULYW LINBPQ
2   10   2   1      250   2     4     10     15/15   TBWY  Tel_BBS
3   10   3   1      250   2     4     10     15/15   TUWY  Tel_Usr
4   4    4   0      250   2     4     10     00/10   SU    Pop/smtp
#
# NbCh is linked to STREAMS in the LinBPQ TNCPORT definition. 
# It is possible to increase this to 20 as long as you adjust
# both parameters to the same.
#
# Special callsigns and modes for some channels
# TNC Nbs Callsign-SSID Mode
#1    1   PE1RRR       U
#
# End of file