Flipside: Running a BBS off a TI

[S1500]

So, did anyone actually run a BBS off of a TI? Many moons ago, I got my hands on some Extended Basic-based BBS, but it ran quite badly. It also didn't have the luxury of a clock like all other BBS software had. With just one disk drive, it may have proven to be way too much of a task for my TI at the time to handle.

 

But what was your experience? Was it doable with the right hardware? Was it more possible with a Geneve?

[slinkeey]

I have been on telnet://heatwavebbs.com

 

That is running on a Geneve though.

 

One setback is the fact that it only has one node, but back in the 80's many of the BBSes only had one node so I guess that s not a huge drawback.

Edited October 22, 2012 by slinkeey

[+Lee Stewart]

In the DC area, there was a BBS run on a 4A with 3 floppies as I recall. I believe it was called TIBBS or similar. I don't remember exactly 'cause I'm old and I can't seem to find any of my printouts from it!---probably in a box somewhere in the attic. I was on the BBS quite a lot in 1983 and 1984. I was using a TI acoustical coupler at 300 BAUD!

 

...lee

[Mad Hatter]

As a matter of fact there is still a BBS running off an actual TI-99/4A, named the Hidden Reef:

718-448-9402

 

And also the one mentioned by slinkeey named Heatwave:

602-955-4491 or heatwavebbs.com (telnet)

[RXB]

P.U.N.N. ran one of the longest BBS around. It was using a TI with 2 Morningstar memory cards.

If finally folded when it only got 1 call a month.

[Tursi]

FlipSide was, interestingly, the name of my TI-based BBS in Ottawa, Canada, for about 5 years. The software was 'FlipTerm', now on WHT, which I wrote entirely in c99. I started with a 16-bit/32k console, two 180k floppies, and a single 180k RAMdisk. The RAMdisk was used for the BBS itself, a custom 'MENU' took control at reset and loaded the BBS, as well as all the modules and the main message base. The two floppy drives held additional message bases. By the end I'd added a 90k external floppy for online games and a 384k RAMdisk for more.

 

The software itself was simple, but functional. It supported multiple message bases with (by the end) user-based security, reply threading and line-by-line editting, auto-word wrap on entry, online games (I had four or five), autodetect of 300/1200/2400 baud, XMODEM up/download (though I didn't have enough storage for that to be valuable), and a sysop menu for limited maintenance and chat with the user online. It worked pretty well and was coded for an 80-column default, most people didn't realize it was on a 10-year-old home computer rather than a PC. (Including several people who I watched trying buffer overflow exploits).

 

It's main downside was that customization required recompiling the code -- a long job if it all needed to be updated. Although I sent a couple of copies out I don't think anyone else ever ran it.

 

Oh, and I worked around the clock issue by making it the co-sysops' job to sign in once a day and update the time string. It was a 60 character string and they were allowed to write whatever they wanted, as long as it included the date. We had some interesting debates in the date line.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Tursi