An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
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An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
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Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#2Would these machines have been networked with CAT-3? Daisy chained phone cords?
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#3I am surprised by the assumption that each box could only handle one modem. I seem to remember that some DOS BBS packages could handle multiple modems/users concurrently and only needed multitasking operating systems for “door” programs. Am I misremembering?
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#4And the follow-up article: https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2022/01/27/scale/
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#5The real question is: Was the turbo button pressed?
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#6I am surprised by the assumption that each box could only handle one modem. I seem to remember that some DOS BBS packages could handle multiple modems/users concurrently and only needed multitasking operating systems for “door” programs. Am I misremembering?
I'm fairly certain you are correct. I remember the MajorBBS could handle multiple lines on its own.
I knew a couple of local DOS BBSes that ran multiple lines with PCBoard under DESQview.
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#7Would these machines have been networked with CAT-3? Daisy chained phone cords?
It's also possible they used coax, either ethernet (10base2) or Arcnet.
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#8I am surprised by the assumption that each box could only handle one modem. I seem to remember that some DOS BBS packages could handle multiple modems/users concurrently and only needed multitasking operating systems for “door” programs. Am I misremembering?
Even the Apple II had multi-line BBSes[^1], so I'm not sure about her assumption.
[^1]: e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversi-Dial
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#9Would these machines have been networked with CAT-3? Daisy chained phone cords?
Depends on the exact date.
I never worked with DOS BBS systems, so I can't say about this photo specifically, but the ones I did work with had between one and four dialup modems hooked up to each machine, depending on its capabilities. They did "networking" through a store-and-forward messaging system. It wasn't networking as we'd recognize it today.
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#10Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...
