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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)

#81

Post by vinniedkator »

neoCrimeLabs wrote: post #73

This makes me wish I took photos of Diversi-Dial (aka D-Dial) setups, which somehow impressed me more due to how much they accomplished with much much less hardware. They were able to set up a 7 x 300baud modems in real-time chat system on an Apple ][ . The original marketing called it a CB (Citizens Band) Simulator. They were able to run up to 1200baud, but I never saw one of those functioning. As if 7 people chatti…

And the larger ddial sysops would daisy chain multiple Apple IIes together. A connector would take up one port on each machine. Two machine would give you 12 modems. Each new machine after the second would add space for 5 modems (-1 on old machine, +6 on new machine). For the sysop it was a big investment for very little, if any, monetary reward. I remember a user account would cost $5 a month.

Our ddial was a few towns away so we bought a line in the exchange in between that would forward to the ddial. This way we would not pay a bunch on long distance calls.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#82

Post by SpaceNoodled »

jprd wrote: post #53
SneakyMission wrote: post #10

Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...

Glorious. This must be what is like when old people long for the hot car they lusted for in their youth.

I recall old people being glad that air conditioning was invented.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#83

Post by layer8 »

whatthe12899 wrote: post #65
SneakyMission wrote: post #10

Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...

wait, are you OP? or did you happen to find a high res version of the same paper-copy picture that OP supposedly was given 30 years ago and then scanned and then threw out. or did OP make it up? or is OP just a bot? maybe i'm a bot. anyway i used to call into BBSs back in the early 90s and the thing I'm remembering is that they survived mostly on donations, and now that I am seeing the infrastructure that supported t…

Click on the HN “past” link for this submission near the top of this page, then you’ll get to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30096565 (see the top comment there) from when the original image link was still working.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#84

Post by hamdingers »

whatthe12899 wrote: post #65
SneakyMission wrote: post #10

Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...

wait, are you OP? or did you happen to find a high res version of the same paper-copy picture that OP supposedly was given 30 years ago and then scanned and then threw out. or did OP make it up? or is OP just a bot? maybe i'm a bot. anyway i used to call into BBSs back in the early 90s and the thing I'm remembering is that they survived mostly on donations, and now that I am seeing the infrastructure that supported t…

Many sites including Google offer reverse image search. You give it an image and it gives you a list of places it appears, sometimes in higher resolution or with more context (or different context, which can be interesting).

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#85

Post by johnohara »

Not mentioned but very important was the number of inbound telco lines installed. Equally important was making sure the local phone company properly configured the hunt group for those lines. Without a properly functioning hunt group it would be very difficult to optimize the allocation of telco connections to all the users connecting and disconnecting.

Also, it was unusual at the time for a local phone company to receive a request for 25 lines (or more) to be installed in the basement of a residence. They would generally push back thinking you were running a bookie operation or some such.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#87

Post by [deleted] »

icedchai wrote: post #6
mcculley wrote: post #3

I 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.

[deleted]

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#88

Post by daneel_w »

icedchai wrote: post #45
rconti wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this jumped out at me too. It's a wild misunderstanding of how BBSes worked. That said, I have no idea how a multi-node BBS would work, in terms of keeping state synchronized.

It depends on the era. Earlier: one PC per user, shared file system using a Novell network. Later: multitasking OS (Desqview, OS/2) or BBS software that natively supported multiple users (like MajorBBS.) I ran a BBS on an Amiga for a while. The OS natively supported multitasking, but I only had one line. At least I could log in the same time as a user...

The older brother of a friend of mine in the 90s was the co-sysop of one of Sweden's largest "elite" BBSes at the time, Farout BBS. I got to tag along to the sysop's apartment once and see the setup, which was an Amiga 2000 with 3 active nodes and available serial ports for a total of 7 nodes, though the sysop hadn't gotten around to get more telephone lines wired to his apartment.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#89

Post by themafia »

SneakyMission wrote: post #10

Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...

Apparently "Software Creations" BBS, which ran PCBoard BBS software and was operated in cooperation with Apogee games.

https://x.com/ScottApogee/status/1593729387106512896

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#90

Post by layer8 »

mcculley wrote: post #3

I 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?

Some details/speculation from the original thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30098186

“as modems got faster, supporting 16 modems on a single machine became impossible, and it was often cheaper to buy a new commodity desktop PC rather than a much more expensive machine with a 16-port serial card capable of handling the IO.”

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