Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully appreciate the horizontal "stack" of modems underneath the desk in the second photo :)
Power strips next to them in that photo are fun too.
An absolute mess of cords!
An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
191–196 of 196 posts
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#192>It's likely that one box in this picture equals one "node", which serviced exactly one phone line at a time, and thus one user at a time.
Not really, plenty of BBS systems would allow several connections on one machine. It was more a limitation of the amount of modems you could cram into the box than anything having to do with the OS. Judging by the 4 stickers on each one (on the right) under the floppy drive, I'm guessing each had 4 lines.
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#193I 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?
It's because it's someone that wasn't around during that time geeking out over something they weren't a part of and making stupid assumptions.
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even for a standard PC, you could buy a 16 port serial card and hook it up to 16 modems, either discreet devices or the dedicated ISP kit which might support dozens of incoming calls (possibly on a single bearer) via various means. Telebit netblazers and then ascend maxs were common in those days.
The question is if you could actually handle that many lines concurrently, with available software and the hardware resources of a single PC. Rachel's article as well as other comments here indicate that you could not.
>Rachel's article as well as other comments here indicate that you could not.
That's because she doesn't know what she's talking about.
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, but what did you use for a multiuser backend database back then? One that could handle multiple threads reading and writing to it? A lot of these old BBS systems were just slapping together endless directories of flat text files.
DOS / Desqview support filesystem locking with "share.exe." Honestly I am not sure how well this worked, but I knew guys who ran multi-line BBSes under DOS and Desqview (and later OS/2) without issue. Even with multiple PCs you would also have similar "shared filesystem" issues. You'd need some sort of fileserver and a shared, network drive. Novell was popular at the time.
My town had a couple of guys that ran Amiga BBSs
Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
#196... and then a raspberry pi today can outdo all of those computers.