A look at my BBS Software from '93 • Hacker News Board

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#151

Post by vt240 » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:08 PM UTC

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…

Smartest decision I ever made was backing up all my old childhood 68k and PPC Macintosh systems to QIC using a friends SCSI drive. Later I bought a ClubMac (haha remember them) drive for nothing on eBay. A couple years ago I was able to restore some old old systems from the attic, nostalgia city ! I think I had some Mac specific BBS software in there somewhere, TeleFinder and FirstClass I remember. There was another GUI based one, I think NovaTerm. I sure wish I would have imaged some of the Apple IIgs software though before all the floppies went bad.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#152

Post by bluefox » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:08 PM UTC

wiz21c wrote: post #146

exogeny wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pfft, iCE > ACiD any day of the week!

Thumbs up ACiD! iCE! ASCII art, we had to be joking :-) I remember those multipages drawings... And, what was the tool ? TheDraw I guess ?

TheDraw was OK, but ACiDDraw was awesome...

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#153

Post by rottyguy » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

whatever_dude wrote: post #143

One thing that always fascinated me is that although BBSs connected people, they were necessarily constrained by distance given the difficult (and price) of long-distance calls. That reflected on the shape of the community around it. There were some things that would be common between them but overall different area codes had very different scenes. This is somewhat diluted today, since you can connect with whatever c…

also, it was constrained by a queue. Usually 1 phone line therefore only one person could be on at a time (cooperative multitasking if you will). busy signals (when was the last time you got a busy signal anywhere?) and auto-redials. good times!

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#154

Post by 1001101 » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:16 PM UTC

Not sure if anyone saw this: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/a-198... Basically RPi + tcpser == Internet BBS. I ran a PCExpress BBS - AMI Express for PC -- (USR Dual) for a while, and feel very lucky to have been a part of that era. Have been thinking about doing something on tcpser. Still part of that a bit, as we still make modems at the current gig. Get nostalgic every time when I hear them training up.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#155

Post by JohnLeTigre » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:19 PM UTC

I miss those days

I miss live-chatting with the sysop if he was around

I miss gaining access levels and discover new files/areas

I miss re-loging at 12:01am to have double turns for my attack in BRE

I miss the discovery involved, how you would need to come up with interesting/new content to maintain you UL/DL ratio

I miss the epic mail convos we had in my BBS community

I miss GT's

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#156

Post by EvanAnderson » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:20 PM UTC

Being involved in the late 80's / early 90's BBS "scene" was formative for me. I wrote and "sold" some unimaginative "Door" programs (even going to far as to register my copyright on one of them). I wracked-up a lot of long-distance bills! I always wanted to run a board, but never got my act together enough to do it.

Since the audience here is very diverse I'll selfishly throw out a couple nostalgia requests:

A friend's board ran a door game called "Cyberspace" that was a TinyMUD-esque "single user dungeon" game. At one point we had 10 - 12 people actively building rooms, adding mobile NPCs, etc. It was loads of fun even though only one person at a time was interacting with the software. I've looked periodically over the last 20 years to see if I can find the people who wrote it on the 'net, but I've had very little luck. (It was Turbo Pascal-based, and originally written for WWIV, but we "adapted" it to work on Searchlight and later Renegade.)

I'd love see if anybody from the old 203 board "Bit Truth" or the classic 602 "Unphamiliar Territory" is on here. Any takers?

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#157

Post by cgrusden » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:23 PM UTC

I love this. Reminds me of my MajorMUD days, thanks for sharing

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#158

Post by synrst » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:25 PM UTC

Ansi art, still 31337 af.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#159

Post by rsync » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:36 PM UTC

mmccaff wrote: post #126

rsync wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was also "real" BBS software like wildcat and MajorBBS ...

I also remember some very, very active and high quality boards that ran citadel ... citadel was sort of the HN of the BBS world ... no ANSI, no fluff, just quick command keys and all high quality discussion.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#160

Post by glenneroo » Thu, Apr 20, 2017, 2:41 PM UTC

Imagenuity wrote: post #58

djsumdog wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Glad to hear someone still remembers RIPscrip graphics. I was a co-founder of TeleGrafix Communications, who made the RIPterm and RIPaint software for viewing and creating those graphics.

Hey I "volunteered" at your shop for awhile! I used to ride my bike an hour after school to get to the office, just to package up RIPterm/paint floppies and use that shitty FedEx PC in the back. I was a wanna-be code junkie and hoped I could glean some of the genius that went into making RIPscrip, though I'm sure it would have gone over my head anyways. It's a real shame that you guys didn't cash in, I always felt it was the natural progression from ANSI which dominated the BBS scene at the time.