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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

#111

Post by Narishma »

dragonwriter wrote: post #35
chubot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS/2 and C compilers were readily available for downloaded on BBses. I'm pretty sure I downloaded Turbo C onto like 20 floppy disks over ZModem or something. Not only did it take forever to download, but installing it was a huge pain, with all the disk swapping. I guess the hard disk didn't have enough space for both the raw disks and the install? I don't remember exactly. I never ran OS/2 but a friend did, and I'm p…

> I guess the hard disk didn't have enough space for both the raw disks and the install? Floppy-disk-based installers were often hardcoded to use the A: drive so even if there was space for the install and the floppy installer on the HDD, you'd need to copy the installer to the floppies to use it, unless you had some workaround.

I'm pretty sure MS-DOS had the SUBST command to alias drives and paths from an early version.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#112

Post by xenophonf »

hoodwink wrote: post #10

Anyone play TradeWars 2002? That's what I was doing in '93 on my BBS.

Dude, I still play TW2002! SWATH is the best modern helper I know about:

http://swath.net/

My meagre collection of SWATH scripts:

https://github.com/irtnog/swath-scripts/tree/master/src

The ICE9 game server:

http://www.oregonsouth.com/ice9/

I don't know if ICE9 still does this, but they used to have a bunch of interesting customizations, like where sectors 1-2000 were a lightly regulated federation space were connected to a small 10-sector neutral zone, with the Star Dock sector being the jumping-off point into the wider universe. I loved playing there!

Cruncher's Trade Wars server:

http://cruncherstw.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/CrunchersTW

Cruncher's is small but fun, with a variety of games and regular resets.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#113

Post by ethomson »

rsync wrote: post #22
davidy123 wrote: post #15

I wrote a lot of BBS software starting from 1986. This was in Toronto mainly on the C64 (28k RAM… plus some available via switching out ROM using assembler), so Spence BBS was an inspiration, but with a friend we wrote software called M1 which had creative features like user contributed ongoing stories and a way to display files or run simple scripts from any command, like a shell. Eventually around 1990 it was exten…

" ... around 1993 as it became https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internex_Online" I remember "io.org" as the shortest domain name I knew in 1993 and adopted it as my default password for anonymous ftp logins. In fact to this day if I login as anonymous on an ftp server, muscle memory dictates I type in "k@io.org" as my password.

That's funny - I have always simply typed `ethomson@` as my password for anonymous FTP, without ever specifying the hostname portion. The then-popular wu-ftpd had an option to enforce that there was a `@` in the password for anonymous access, but it didn't verify anything after that.

I read somewhere that therefore a reasonable shorthand was to drop the hostname portion of your address since the FTP server knew your source hostname anyway. So this is similarly etched into _my_ muscle memory, but looking back I have no idea where I read this or if it was actually common at all or if I was the only one.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#114

Post by bungie4 »

Old sysops get shit done!

I ran BBS's from the late 80's through the 90's. All the local sysops are still friends and we still wax nostalgic over the old days. To a person, we all are still in IT and hold senior positions.

When I remember those days and compare them to today, by and large, nothing is 'easy' anymore. It's what happens when you get to far away from the metal.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#115

Post by mmccaff »

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…

Ah, FidoNET. Two things about Mastodon are what got me thinking about BBSs.

1) Administrators running their own instance that they can customize and have local conversations on, and

2) FidoNET, where instances relay messages to each other across a network.

I had worked on a similar network at the time which used Frontdoor in front of the BBS to call other boards and relay the messages (and receive calls from boards), but was never a part of the FidoNET network myself.

Haha - also "I was too scared of my parents" .. me too. There was not as much darkness as the skull images suggest, but trying to look 3l33t was /I remember that I had a strict limit of $13 a month that I was allowed to spend on long distance phone calls. I paid the bill myself, but my mother could not understand wasting more than $13 (I think it was originally $10, and I negotiated up to $13) a month on calling BBSs. I kept a hand-written log of how many minutes I spent in each area code and the price to call that area code so that I would not go over.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#118

Post by xenophonf »

hoodwink wrote: post #70
Jemaclus wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I've tried over the years to create a TW2002 clone, but I always stall out at the economic system. I've also tried to recreate Barren Realms Elite / Solar Realms Elite, but Amit lost the source code to that, too. Reverse engineering BBS games is hard! Maybe Legend of the Red Dragon would be easier... [Edit: I'm aware that there are TW2002 games out there right now, but those tend to be web-based, and I wanna do…

What are the TW games out there right now? I was not aware! I've dreamt for years about licensing TW to make a mobile version consistent with the gameplay of the BBS days. Before scripts. I don't know if you fall in love with the first games you play as a kid, but 25 years later, I still yearn for a 6 month TW bang with a corp of 4 friends.

There are all kinds of game servers running! See my other post up-thread for two of my favorites. You can find more at http://www.classictw.com/.

They're only web-enabled as a convenience to people without old-school ANSI.SYS terminal emulators and DOS fonts. You can TELNET into all of them. SWATH is probably the best modern helper and runs well under WINE on FreeBSD, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#119

Post by mmccaff »

bungie4 wrote: post #114

Old sysops get shit done! I ran BBS's from the late 80's through the 90's. All the local sysops are still friends and we still wax nostalgic over the old days. To a person, we all are still in IT and hold senior positions. When I remember those days and compare them to today, by and large, nothing is 'easy' anymore. It's what happens when you get to far away from the metal.

Yes we did. It's amazing what teenagers were accomplishing at the time. Full product release life cycles, done after school and homework.

A few memories:

1) I had a 2400 baud modem, and then upgraded to an external 14.4K US Robotics Courier. They were $1000 at the time but USR offered it at $500 in return for advertising their brand. Someone on my BBS paid that fee in exchange for higher access.

2) I'd trade snippets of source code with other BBS authors. We'd exchange the code to implement one feature for another.

3) There were a few beta testers, distributors, and artists.

It's what started my interest in building and releasing software, for sure.

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