PBTerm: terminal program
PBTerm is a Windows terminal program for calling any BBS, including yours. It is installed in your ProBoard folder.
Figure 1. PBTerm connected to a board.
Connecting
Phonebook entries have a Protocol: Telnet (port 23), RLogin (513) or SSH (22). The port follows the protocol when you change it. Quick Connect is Telnet only. Double-click an entry, or press Enter on a selected row, to call it. Settings > Show the phonebook when PBTerm starts controls whether the phonebook opens at start-up. After connecting, the keyboard goes straight to the terminal.
- Telnet is normal Telnet with option negotiation.
- RLogin has two entries: “Rlogin”, where the first field is the password and the second the BBS user name (the order PBDispatch and Synchronet use), and “Rlogin (user/password swapped)”.
- SSH uses host keys on first use: the SHA256 fingerprint is stored in the phonebook file, and an unknown or changed key shows a Yes/No prompt (a changed key defaults to No). Login tries none, then the password from the entry, then keyboard-interactive.
What a caller sees
Once the connection is made, the board sends its logon screens. The picture below shows PBTerm at the name prompt of a ProBoard v4 board, node 1: the board's logon art, the ProBoard version line with the node number, and the “Please enter your name or handle” prompt. The status bar shows Connected, the screen size (80×25) and the scrollback length.
Figure 2. The logon screen in PBTerm, waiting for the caller's name.
Terminal types
Choose the terminal type in the phonebook entry: ANSI, ASCII, RIP, VT52, Atari VT52, PETSCII (C64) and ATASCII (Atari 8-bit). The matching emulation switches on when you connect.
| Type | Notes |
|---|---|
| ANSI | 16 colours, CP437 font, cursor movement, erasing, insert and delete, colours. Not supported: scroll regions. Text wraps the way xterm and SyncTERM do, so art that fills all 80 columns does not scroll early. |
| PETSCII | 40 by 25, C64 colours, reverse video, cursor keys, both character sets. |
| ATASCII | 40 by 24, Atari colours, inverse video, graphics characters. |
| VT52 and Atari VT52 | The VT52 escape set; the Atari ST adds colours and more. |
| RIP | RIPscrip 1.54: lines, shapes, fills, text, buttons and mouse regions. A click on a button sends its host command. |
The C64 and Atari glyph sets are built in. Real ROM dumps placed in a Fonts folder next to PBTerm.exe are used instead.
Sixel graphics are supported, with up to 1024 colours. PBTerm answers the SyncTERM version query.
Not supported yet: RIP icons and block text, the Borland stroked fonts, RIPscrip v2 and v3, IEMSI auto-login, PETSCII quote mode and the C64 border colour.
Look and window
Settings lets you choose a Dark, Light or Follow Windows theme, a style (Blue, Graphite, Windows) and an accent colour, with a live preview. Window resizing has four modes: keep the screen's proportions (default), any shape, grow the grid (more columns and rows, sent to the board with NAWS), and whole-number steps. Zoom runs from 1x to 4x. Full screen is F11 or Alt+Enter.
Scrollback
Lines that scroll off the top, and every page that is cleared, are kept in a history of 100,000 lines by default (Off up to 1,000,000 or more in the Settings). Use the mouse wheel, Shift+PgUp and Shift+PgDn, Shift+Home for the oldest line and Shift+End for the live screen. Typing a key returns to the live screen.
File transfers
PBTerm has built-in Xmodem, Ymodem, Ymodem-G, Zmodem and Kermit.