NBF - More detailed information

Why NBF?

My old packet program works just fine. Why change to NBF ?

• Message list system. The little green man which examines message headers has been put inside the grey box. Feeding is not necessary.

• Enable multitasking: NBF doesn't steal CPU time, but it takes care it always gets the few per cent required for smooth operation. You won't even notice the machine to slow down when NBF is operating in the background.

• Experience the amazing speed of your 9k6 TNC. NBF is not written in basic.

• No stupid "only one this and that function at a time" limitations.

• User interface fine tuned for convenient everyday use.

• Absolutely no registration fee. Still fully functional.

List of the main features

• Possibility for multiple connections in different windows plus a monitoring window.
• Advanced list system. Automatic downloading and sorting of message titles by various criteria, search feature.
• Compressed mail forwarding. Address book.
• Automatic HTML-viewer (currently requires IE5)
• Scandinavian characters work correctly, an important feature here in Finland
• Automatic decoding of 7plus-files. Corrects shifted/missing linefeeds automatically! (the most common reason for corrupted 7plus-messages)
• Remote commands
• Autobin protocol for file transfer (doesn't crash at 1MB, as some programs do, hi)
• Optimized COM-port handling: real qso-speeds in excess of 850 cps possible on 9k6 (limited by the radio connection, not the program)
• Direct FlexNet, AGW and Winsock (telnet) support, in addition to the WA8DED hostmode.
• Sound (incoming connections, //bell-command, DX-tips)
• Uses windows clipboard
• A real 32-bit program, doesn't steal CPU time (eg. WinAmp works simultaneously without any problems). Fast message list cleaning, up to 5000 titles per second.
• Low CPU load: only 4% on a 300MHz computer, full speed 9k6 download.
• Easy to use, fully controlled by mouse
• Easy to use, fully controlled by keyboard :-)
• For ex-T4-users: configuration files and message lists can be automatically converted.

Hardware requirements

NBF requires a 32-bit Windows platform (95/98/NT). In practise, at least a Pentium-class machine with 32 megs of ram is required to run any Windows application. NBF is no exception. The program itself takes less than two megabytes of hard disk space, but you should reserve some space for message files too.

Connection to the surrounding world can be made either with a TNC, FlexNet, AGW or telnet.

The TNC must have a WA8DED-compatible firmware, such as TheFirmware. It should run with at least 6 MHz clock (4 MHz with a slow 1k2 radio connection). The faster the better. A backup battery is not required nor recommended because the TNC is reinitialised each time NBF starts.

FlexNet is a German software package which contains a great amount of drivers for different packet hardware. All FlexNet modules must be loaded before Windows. NBF communicates directly with the FlexNet kernel so TFEMU should not be loaded.

AGW Packet Engine provides similar functionality as FlexNet. It is started within Windows, so it also works with Windows NT.

The telnet interface is mainly intended for connecting to a Linux node across a LAN, such as in many clubhouse installations. It’s highly experimental, and may not always work properly. Only ASCII transfer is supported so far, but binary transfer might also work depending on the configuration on the Linux side.

Some users have reported that NBF works under Linux too, with Wine and telnet (kernel 2.2.12). The hostmode interface has not been tested under linux yet, so if you have a suitable test setup, we’d definitely like to hear about the results.