HEX provides information on deafness and disability resources. Callers are
welcome to leave announcements of conferences, products or services related to
disabilities of any sort, or to ask quesions which other callers may be able
to answer.
The Handicapped Educational Exchange (HEX) BBS serves as a clearinghouse
for information about the use of technology to aid disabled people. It
also provides a way for disabled people and their friends to exchange
information and ask questions.
HEX provides the usual BBS services: public and private email, file
transfers (up- and downloads), and bulletins. All these services are
available to TTY users except file transfer, this exception being caused
by the fact that a TTY can't store data.
The HEX was developed by AMRAD under a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Health,
Education and Welfare (HEW) in the late 70s. The grant covered several deaf-
related projects, including:
The grant covered hardware and development for these projects, including
the cost of operating the HEX BBS for the first couple of years. Since
then AMRAD and its members have borne the cost and supplied the effort
which has kept the system "on the air" for almost twenty years.
Just prior to the AMRAD grant, HEW had funded the development of
"DEAFNET", a minicomputer-based network with access points in Washington,
DC, in Massachusetts and in California (home of its developer, the
Stanford Research Institute, or SRI). Deafnet ran under UNIX on a PDP-11
housed in each city, and provided messaging among callers to each
minicomputer. In Washington, the PDP was housed at Gallaudet College
(now Gallaudet University).
The cost of equipment required to replicate this type of capability in
other cities led to the AMRAD proposal to build a TTY-capable BBS on a
microcomputer base, among the other elements of the grant.
The first HEX was built by Bob Bruninga, WB4APR, and was based on a Smoke
Signal Broadcasting 6800 machine with 36K of memory that was programmed
in BASIC. It provided public mail and text files on a single phone line.
Bob, a Naval officer, was reassigned to the far East after about a year
and a half, and the project was taken over by the current system operator
(SYSOP), Dick Barth, W3HWN.
The second version ran on a Smoke Signal 6809 machine with 48K of RAM and
a HUGE! (for the time) 30 megabyte hard disk. It was programmed by the
SYSOP in assembly language, and provided for three simultaneous users and
both public and private mail as well as allowing users to read text
files.
The third (and much-modified, the current) version is programmed in C. It ran
originally on an XT clone and is now on a '286 with one megabyte of RAM. (My,
how software expands!) It adds X/Y/Zmodem file transfers using DSZ, a modem
driver by Chuck Forsberg, WA7KGX. (For information on DSZ and other of Chuck's
communications products, see his home page at www.omen.com.) The board runs
under DESQview, with a separate copy of the software operating for each user.
Currently there are two phone lines which, with the sysop, provide for 3
simultaneous users in the one megabyte of RAM.
For information about the HEX,
NOTE that for ASCII calls, 593-7033 MUST BE CALLED WITH THE CALLING MODEM
SET TO 300 BAUD! It WILL NOT connect to higher speed modems which
negotiate down to 300.
HEX is a project of AMRAD, the Amateur Radio Research and Development
Corp. of McLean, VA.
301-593-7357 supports ASCII (currently up to 9600 bps).
301-593-7033 supports TDD calls, and ASCII at 300 baud ONLY