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A look at my BBS Software from '93

mmccaff.github.io

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Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#121

Post by mmccaff »

djsumdog wrote: post #50
chrissnell wrote: post #40

The late 80s/early 90s BBS scene was an amazing time for me. I was in high school and I've never been as interested in computers and communications as I was then. I never ventured into the "dark" side like OP--I was too scared of my parents--so I ran a legit FidoNET BBS using the RemoteAccess BBS software and the Frontdoor mailer (and later, Maximus and BinkleyTerm). The most amazing thing about it all was that it wa…

Oh the Nostalgia! My soul hurts. I was just a kid (teenager) so I didn't have the funds to run a BBS myself. But I remember the 60 minute limits, the long lists of local BBSes, the ANSI graphics, Maximus, RemoteAccess and others (I had played with a few in the hopes of starting a BBS, but that era was starting to end when I graduated in the early 2000s), Door games, RIP graphics (the very early days of vector art on…

Yes, I had so many DOOR games, and Solar Realms Elite (SRE) and Baron Realms Elite (BRE) were the only ones that I enjoyed playing myself.

I liked how they were turn based (each user got X turns per day) and one player played at a time, but you were playing in a multi-player world against other people who would take their turns for the day.

I always thought it'd be interesting to do something similar in modern day, where you could take turns offline in a game (eg. in a subway or something, without internet access) and when you had online access, those turns were submitted against other people in the game. I wonder if there is anything like that?

RIP graphics were progress and a great innovation.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#122

Post by mmccaff »

oaktowner wrote: post #55
chrissnell wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, but there was also a certain amount of vanity to it. If you had the cash, you were the dude . You could watch as an entire region's (or even entire countries') mail flowed through your system. You probably walked down into your office and watched your busy Fido server (or servers) and a sweet stack of USR Courier external modems blinking away (you never wasted time on cheap gear) and when you participated in g…

Even the talk of "long distance phone calls" makes me nostalgic. I remember when, as a kid, if you answered the phone and it was a long distance call for mom or dad, we would run to get them yelling "Long distance! Long distance!" Every second was precious.

Yes, and seeing LD boards outside of the usual ones in your local calling area was an exotic treat. Every second was precious. :)

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#123

Post by selllikesybok »

eveith wrote: post #95
lucaspiller wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't part of the scene (too young), but from comments here it sounds like there was a certain romanticism about writing/building and running your own BBS. It's not quite the same as spending 5 minutes to spin up a new Digital Ocean instance and running a Docker image.

I think that the achievement of some home-made appliance that was actually hard to get money-wise (and probably build) is one aspect of what makes those memories fond. But I have another explanation, which, I think, explains much of it. Being a part of the BBS network meant one had overcome a bit of a hurdle and reached a small community that actually cared about the system and the sense of the community itself. Thos…

In my local calling area, the motives and reasoning were simpler. Some of us just wanted more TW2002 and LoRD instances. Some of us needed to cut the phone bill. And some of us did it to, well... 'do it' (cause there is nothing quite so attractive as power -_^).

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#124

Post by mmccaff »

apaprocki wrote: post #18

Re: losing BBS/source from the 90's -- I was fortunate enough to regularly back things up to QIC tape, and lo and behold, 22 years later a hacked up box restored the BBS perfectly and it ran in DosBox on my laptop. I was pleasantly surprised that it all worked immediately. Hardest part was finding parts for a floppy tape and installing the right Windows version. Seeing the ANSI art made it all worth it... https://twi…

Amazing that you got it back up and running! I would love to see some of the old messages on the public message boards of my BBS from those days.

I had a tape drive as well,and I did back things up at the time, but even those backups are gone.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#125

Post by brusch64 »

henrikschroder wrote: post #98
brusch64 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do these numbers mean ? My Google-Fu is failing I was just a little bit too young to get access to BBS in my youth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet I was 2:201/274.9. My upstream node that I connected to was 2:201/274. He connected to his upstream hub, 2:201/200, who in turn connected to his upstream net coordinator, 2:201/0, whose upstream was the regional coordinator, 2:20/0, and finally up to the zone coordinator, who I think was 2:0/0 or something. A zone was a continent, 2 was Europe. Regions were countries in Europe, 2…

Thank you - heard about FidoNet before, but wasn't aware of these numbers or what they mean.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#126

Post by mmccaff »

rsync wrote: post #23
eric_arrr wrote: post #13

Fellow obscure BBS software author here. Mine was Apocalypse / ApX (a hack of Havok, which was a hack of something else, which was a hack of Emulex/2, which I think was a hack of Forum?), around '92. I, too, remember recruiting ACiD guys to help out with the menu art. Ah, memories.

Weren't the vision/vision2/visionX based on forum hacks as well ? And celerity ? All written in turbo pascal, right ?

I loved collecting BBS Software at the time to look at what other people were doing.

Pretty much everything was either a Forum (Pascal) or WWIV (C) hack.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#127

Post by hackermailman »

Blue Board (Commodore64) software was the best I found for the late 80s/ early 90s, it was cheap, incredibly easy to run and customize, consistently updated, and it came with a built in terminal so when no one was on your board you could call other ones or easily script a file transfer/mail sync with a remote board.

I remember a lot of STS chat boards too, In 1989, a DDial-like clone, Synergy Teleconferencing System AKA STS was released for IBM PCs and until 1997 I regularly would connect at 300bps to talk with local hackers at 3:00am on these "big" 16 line STS boards until easier access to IRC killed them off.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#128

Post by mmccaff »

rsync wrote: post #19
hoodoof wrote: post #11

How old were you when you wrote this? Looks like a big system - was this your first major project? I seem to recall OS/2 and a C compiler cost money back? How did you get to be using those, through work or did you buy them? Why did you choose OS/2 - did you consider any other alternatives?

"I seem to recall OS/2 and a C compiler cost money back? How did you get to be using those, through work or did you buy them?" His new user questionnaire asked new users to identify/define several warez release/courier groups. I don't think he was licensing software ...

I'm not even sure that I used that new user questionnaire myself. It was a feature of the software, for SysOps who ran warez boards.

I actually had a licensed copy of OS/2. My dad taught computer science at a small college and was able to get it for me.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#129

Post by Clubber »

hoodoof wrote: post #11

How old were you when you wrote this? Looks like a big system - was this your first major project? I seem to recall OS/2 and a C compiler cost money back? How did you get to be using those, through work or did you buy them? Why did you choose OS/2 - did you consider any other alternatives?

Most software back then was openly pirated and traded. Even non-warez BBS's had pirated software in the 1980s. It wasn't even considered a bad thing, just, "I have this, want a copy?" or "I need this, anyone have a copy?" We had Commodore meet ups at the local library and everyone openly copied software. Local governments had little idea what a computer even did. The SPA hadn't been considered or was in it's infancy. Computer nerd was barely a term yet. It was our own little world.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#130

Post by tbyehl »

josteink wrote: post #108
apaprocki wrote: post #18

Re: losing BBS/source from the 90's -- I was fortunate enough to regularly back things up to QIC tape, and lo and behold, 22 years later a hacked up box restored the BBS perfectly and it ran in DosBox on my laptop. I was pleasantly surprised that it all worked immediately. Hardest part was finding parts for a floppy tape and installing the right Windows version. Seeing the ANSI art made it all worth it... https://twi…

> Hardest part was finding parts for a floppy tape and installing the right Windows version Surely you mean floppy drive?

QIC-40 and QIC-80 drives connected to the floppy disk controller.
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