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Atari 8-bit related BBS(s)


svenski

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Came across this on a blog I follow.

 

http://www.textfiles.com/bbs/BBSLISTS/ataribbs.txt

 

Alcatraz isn’t listed but some of the other 215 area code boards are listed.

Man... that goes back further than I do. I don't remember any of those NE Ohio BBS's. I really didn't get into the BBSing until about '86-'87. Not sure when the Akron area Atari BBS's started up but none of them seem to be on that list.

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Came across this on a blog I follow.

 

http://www.textfiles.com/bbs/BBSLISTS/ataribbs.txt

 

Alcatraz isn’t listed but some of the other 215 area code boards are listed.

 

What, no DarkForce? Blasphemy! :)

 

Well, okay - looking at the date I guess it's understandable. We didn't

start up until the early 90's...

 

PS I'm with Tillek - I don't recall most of the Kentucky listings either.

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Came across this on a blog I follow.

 

http://www.textfiles.com/bbs/BBSLISTS/ataribbs.txt

 

Alcatraz isn’t listed but some of the other 215 area code boards are listed.

 

That's a great list. In the 216 list, T.A.P. was the only one that lasted well into the 90s (and possibly early 2000s). It was ran by B&G Electronics in Lakewood, Ohio. They were one of the authorized Atari dealers in NE Ohio. T.A.P. stood for "The Atari Professionals". It started out as an AMIS BBS. I think it then upgraded to the original 850 BBS Express. The BBS eventually switched to ST Express. Sometime in the early 90s, B&G started to sell PCs and they change the BBS name to T.C.P. which stood for "The Computer Professionals". B&G Electronics is still around. Besides computer repair, they are a local ISP.

 

I remember the BBS "Peek + Poke". I am not sure if I called it though. It was a Lake County BBS and therefore, a long distance call from the Cleveland suburbs.

 

It's funny seeing "Atari Merry Go Round" in the list. I never could get through to it. The number was always busy, then one day it became disconnected. I don't know of anyone who got through to it.

Edited by JohnPolka
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What, no DarkForce? Blasphemy! :)

 

Well, okay - looking at the date I guess it's understandable. We didn't

start up until the early 90's...

 

PS I'm with Tillek - I don't recall most of the Kentucky listings either.

 

Part-Time isn't listed in the 216 section, but it started in 1985. Maybe it went online shortly after this list was published. There's a few other 216 Atari BBSs that I know were online then that aren't listed. The Basement went online in November 1986, so that's why it's not listed. :)

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I noticed the following code in the list:

 

R=RINGBACK SYSTEM

 

Does anyone know how a ringback system worked with BBSs back then?

 

There were a couple of different ways:

 

At signup, you'd provide the number you were typically going to be calling from. Once your account had been activated, you'd connect to the BBS by calling it and entering your credentials, at which point it would hang up, typically giving a message to set your modem and /or terminal software in answer mode. The BBS would then call you back a few minutes later, and your session would be allowed.

 

Later, once Caller ID was widely-avaialble, the same thing could be accomplished using it.

 

There was also voice verification, in which the sysop would call you back after signup to establish that the number you gave was real. Not true ringback in the strict sense, but similar in method and with about the same end goal.

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I noticed the following code in the list:

 

R=RINGBACK SYSTEM

 

Does anyone know how a ringback system worked with BBSs back then?

If I recall right.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_ring_back

 

Basically, you call the BBS, but it's busy. So you sit around watching TV, hanging out, maybe calling another BBS... when the line is free, they call you. You set your modem to answer.... and you're on.

 

The way I recall it working, you (the caller) got a different "ring" on your phone to let you know it was a ringback... the person you called... they'd get a regular ring (which would trigger the modem's answer routine).

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There were a couple of different ways:

 

At signup, you'd provide the number you were typically going to be calling from. Once your account had been activated, you'd connect to the BBS by calling it and entering your credentials, at which point it would hang up, typically giving a message to set your modem and /or terminal software in answer mode. The BBS would then call you back a few minutes later, and your session would be allowed.

 

Later, once Caller ID was widely-avaialble, the same thing could be accomplished using it.

 

There was also voice verification, in which the sysop would call you back after signup to establish that the number you gave was real. Not true ringback in the strict sense, but similar in method and with about the same end goal.

... or, it's that. Maybe we need to track one of those guys down and find out more information.

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If I recall right.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_ring_back

 

Basically, you call the BBS, but it's busy. So you sit around watching TV, hanging out, maybe calling another BBS... when the line is free, they call you. You set your modem to answer.... and you're on.

 

The way I recall it working, you (the caller) got a different "ring" on your phone to let you know it was a ringback... the person you called... they'd get a regular ring (which would trigger the modem's answer routine).

 

Yeah, I had a feeling that's what it was referring to, but I wasn't sure. I even asked my step dad who worked for Ohio Bell, et al for 35 years what it was. He was pretty sure it was what you described. I don't believe I ever called any BBSs with that feature. Cool stuff!

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... or, it's that. Maybe we need to track one of those guys down and find out more informat

 

I think it was the automatic ring back service that you linked to. My step dad said phone companies had those services for ages. It also makes sense that they would mention it in a BBS list. If the ring back was driven by the BBS, then you wouldn't need to mention it in the BBS list.

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Man... that goes back further than I do. I don't remember any of those NE Ohio BBS's. I really didn't get into the BBSing until about '86-'87. Not sure when the Akron area Atari BBS's started up but none of them seem to be on that list.

 

 

The original Boot Factory is on the list... even though they didn't have the name correct.

 

post-8623-0-23481500-1523930138.png

Edited by bf2k+
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Looks like ST Guild might be down and out? anyone on here the SYSop? when I try and connect it tells me it cannot resolve the address..

 

James

 

I got a hold of the SysOp on Facebook. He said he will reboot his BBS today. Hopefully that's all that's needed.

 

-JP

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With the recent talk about BBS lists, I thought I'd share this one.

 

Page 11 of the following text file has a pretty extensive list of Pro! BBSs sorted by node number. This list was from June 16, 1989.

 

https://ia800801.us.archive.org/26/items/PROBBSnews/pbnv1n2.txt

 

On the list is Part-Time (node 7) and the Basement (node 127) which was called WL's Basement at the time. Boot Factory is now node 1, since BF2k+ is running Keith Ledbetter's old BBS. :)

 

This was from issue #2 of a Pro! BBS newsletter that I edited in 1989 (see https://archive.org/details/PROBBSnews ).

 

-JP

Edited by JohnPolka
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Mucking around with my BBS hard drive images in Altirra a bit more tonight, and was happy to get the R: telnet modem handler working, in my quest to see the ANSI screens that I made using the ST. I always thought this was cool that my little 8-bitter BBS could serve full 80 column ansi screens.. and translate ATASCII box characters, and i could embed color codes in selection menus.

 

With this working, there's a very real possibility of "The Last Hope BBS" Pro node #244 coming back online soon!

 

Some teaser screenshots from both the ATASCII and ANSI sides for your viewing pleasure....

post-53052-0-84599800-1524727729.png

post-53052-0-78735600-1524727746.png

post-53052-0-90076100-1524727753.png

post-53052-0-64289000-1524727768_thumb.png

post-53052-0-40529000-1524727790_thumb.png

post-53052-0-62328700-1524727811_thumb.png

Edited by Nezgar
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My BBS ran a few years past 2000, but the leading up to it there were concerns from us SysOps about how the BBS would handle things post apocolypse... A couple posts I came across in the "time capsule" message base "NET_IMR-SysOps" :)

 

Cheers-Ryan

post-53052-0-21777800-1524727963_thumb.png

post-53052-0-24825900-1524727968_thumb.png

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My BBS ran a few years past 2000, but the leading up to it there were concerns from us SysOps about how the BBS would handle things post apocolypse... A couple posts I came across in the "time capsule" message base "NET_IMR-SysOps" :)

 

Cheers-Ryan

 

With regard to ULPURGE (the user log purge event utility)...

 

The version I'm using (which is from version 2.1a of BBS Express Pro!) will not delete users that last called in 1999 or earlier. ULPURGE is obviously doing a simple date comparison without knowledge of the century. It does work correctly for anyone who has called after 2000. Of course, I see this more as a feature than a bug. My old users have been able to use their old accounts again because they did not get deleted the first time ULPURGE ran. :)

 

By the way, it's nice to see another Atari 8 bit BBS with PC-ANSI graphics. One surprise I had when I brought the Basement back online was that it has a PC-ANSI graphics welcome screen. I had forgotten that I created a PC-ANSI welcome screen. To get it to work on version 2.1a of the software, I had to write a little module that temporarily sets the user's translation mode to ATASCII, displays the PC-ANSI file to the modem/screen, then changes the translation mode back to PC-ANSI. If I did not set the translation mode to ATASCII, many of the PC-ANSI characters would get filtered by the underlying ASCII mode.

 

Since putting the BBS back up, I discovered that the version utility is not Y2K compliant. It thinks years after 99 (i.e., 00, 01, 02, ... 18) are not valid, so it does not display the version information for any module written after 1999. Perhaps post-2.1a versions of the BBS do not have this issue. To work around the issue, I wrote my own "Y2K compliant" version utility. It just displays the "version date" regardless of what's in the 2 digit year field.

 

 

-JP

Edited by JohnPolka
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Pro's 5.0 version.cmd can deal with that. No idea what the advantage is of the added validity check in the older versions. It's just a 1 byte field.

0190     JMP STARTCODE ; Skip header

0200 ;

0210     .BYTE $02   ; Version (0.2)

0220     .BYTE 3     ; March

0230     .BYTE 9     ; 9th

0240     .BYTE 4     ; 2004
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