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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)

#111

Post by EmmEff »

bink wrote: post #101
throw0101d wrote: post #59

> It's possible they managed to do some rudimentary multitasking with DESQview (or worse...) and so supported two whole users with each box. Does that mean they had to be at least 386s to do protected mode? Or was it virtual 8086 mode? I (fortunately) have forgotten the finer points of how that stuff used to work. I DO remember how damn crashy a box became when you ran it "under DV". Constant system freezes. Yep. I d…

DESQview was absolutely not crashy. I ran several different types of BBS software in it without issues. The "DESQview (or worse...)" comment raised the hair on the back of my neck. DESQview was revolutionary at the time and I was annoyed at having to use Windows many years later. ASCII windows may not have been everyone's cup of tea but I loved it.

I recall running Opus (or maybe the predecessor whose name escapes me) under DESQview on my lousy XT clone. I don’t recall it being crashy but it certainly didn’t have enough horsepower to handle the BBS software and an interactive DOS window.

I couldn’t afford a second machine in those days and having to sacrifice my one and only PC for the full-time BBS wasn’t fun :)

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

#112

Post by wvenable »

ryandrake wrote: post #20

I remember thinking that I would reach absolute peak-coolkid if I could start and run a BBS. I even installed WWIV and DesqView to fuel the fantasy and prepare. But my parents didn't understand technology and couldn't grasp why I wanted to hook up (and pay for) a second phone line for the house. So, unfortunately I would remain a mere luser until I went off to University where the Internet was just getting popular an…

When I got my first PC (a 286 with a 2400 baud modem) I had to wire my computer to the telephone line from my bedroom all the way to the kitchen. I had some very long telephone extension cable and every morning for 2 weeks my parents woke up with chest-high line running down the hallway.

After those 2 weeks, my parents decided to get me my own phone line in my room. That's also week I started running my own BBS. I ran it for several years.

Those were strange and interesting times.

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

#113

Post by Ranxer »

philxor wrote: post #109

I worked for Exec PC internet which evolved from the BBS which was the largest in the US afaik. It ran on somewhat custom PCs where there were I think four nodes per board on bread racks. No cases. Custom software. That BBS was over 250 lines at one point. I remember hearing stories the room with the modems, a lot of Couriers near the end, was so hot they would have to replace dead ones every week.

ExecPC had shelves of Couriers and at some point they were just bare modem cards not in indiviual cases. It was impressive to see.

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

#114

Post by henrikschroder »

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 don't think those boxes had a 16550 UART...

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

#115

Post by rconti »

Ranxer wrote: post #113
philxor wrote: post #109

I worked for Exec PC internet which evolved from the BBS which was the largest in the US afaik. It ran on somewhat custom PCs where there were I think four nodes per board on bread racks. No cases. Custom software. That BBS was over 250 lines at one point. I remember hearing stories the room with the modems, a lot of Couriers near the end, was so hot they would have to replace dead ones every week.

ExecPC had shelves of Couriers and at some point they were just bare modem cards not in indiviual cases. It was impressive to see.

I worked for an ISP that was racks and racks of bare couriers with lucent portmasters.

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

#117

Post by anyfoo »

Awesome.

Side note: virtual 8086 mode was protected mode, or rather, implied protected mode. A task could run in virtual 8086 mode where to the task it was (mostly) looking like it was running in real mode, when in actuality the kernel was running in full protected mode.

Note that the "kernel" was never DOS. It could often actually be a so called "memory manager", like EMM386, and the actual DOS OS (the entire thing, including apps, not just the DOS "kernel") would run as a sole vm86 task, without any other tasks. The memory manager was then serving DOS with a lot of the 386 32 bit goodness through a straw, effectively.

It's very bizarre from today's (or even back then's) OS standards, and evolved that way because compatibility.

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

#118

Post by leptons »

yarone wrote: post #51

Ahh BBS's: where I learned the difference between a local call and a "local toll call" (parents were not happy)

Same here, except I took it further and was calling out of state BBSs to download the latest warez. First phone bill after getting the modem was $250, in around 1984 (or about $800 in 2026). Parents were pissed. That's when I learned about phone phreaking.

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

#119

Post by jamroom »

ghewgill wrote: post #11
icedchai wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

MajorBBS could handle multiple lines on its own, but you had to handle ALL of the lines with one box. That meant a serial port interface like DigiBoard which provided some number (8 or 16 or more) of serial ports that you would connect to modems.

Yep - I ran a 16 line Major BBS back in the mid 90's in Seattle - used what was called a "Bocaboard" - had 16 serial ports on it - plugged in 16 external USR 28.8 modems. It all ran off of one PC.

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

#120

Post by empressplay »

So, a number of different BBS servers supported multiple incoming lines (effectively multitasking inside of the BBS server application itself, not by running multiple copies of the software on the same machine), typically up to 8 in one machine either using a special communications card that connected to a number of external modems or by stuffing internal modems into as many ISA slots as you can (typically up to 6 so you still had IO and video, 7 if you ran 'headless'.)

Some BBS servers also supported multiple instances by connecting to a master server, which supplied dynamic content such as chat, forum messages and e-mails or door game data to all of the other machines. In large markets a BBS having dozens of lines was not uncommon.

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