mharmon Posted December 22, 2014 Share Posted December 22, 2014 I ran a BBS back in 1983 and 1984 using a highly modified version of FOREM XL. This was always my favorite software and offered a lot of flexibility to people with a slight knowledge of BASIC to really do some custom things. Underground systems at this time were really starting to do great things with ATASCII. As I started transitioning out of the 8bit world and to the ST, I do remember Carina and BBS Express started to become popular. It did seem in the later years that people did less customizing and just would put up a system without putting much thought or design into it. That's what really made the earlier years so great. This artwork variant would eventually happen in the PC world when ANSI designs became so popular. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari-Collector Posted December 27, 2014 Share Posted December 27, 2014 I ran an Atari BBS back in the 0s then switched to PC, then gave up on it after I got tired of the nonsense of stupid people causing problems.. I resurrected the PC BBS (focusing mainly on Atari files though) last summer for about 4 or 5 months but 1 or 2 callers a months just wasn't any fun to maintain.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wizardschamber Posted March 1, 2015 Share Posted March 1, 2015 Stumbled onto this thread--I ran The Wizard's Chamber BBS in Brooklyn, NY from 1984 through 1987. I ran it on an Atari 800 running FoReM XL, three Indus GT disk drives, and a Hayes Smartmodem 1200 (originally a 300, actually, and then I traded up). Very few callers lit up the extra red HS LED for "high speed." 718-648-1083. And no, the modem will no longer auto-answer, and I have no idea who has that number now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr DJ Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 The Music Box BBS Well Well Well, I finally stumbled across this forum. I'm Mr. DJ, sysop of 'The Music Box' BBS, Indianapolis, IN in the 80's. First year operation was 6pm to 6am 7days week. A year latter I went 24 hr/7 days with a dedicated line. Wound up living behind the Sysop of 'The Dog House BBS', who got me into Carina and Carina II. The music Box featured (what else) music files users could download and play, showing off the great musical abilities of the Atari 8 bit system and it's sound chip. I also featured a few on-line games, and wrote the Atari 8 bit on line version of the popular card game Skip-Bo. A user from California designed the opening ATASCII graphics of his vision of a Music Box (a boom box). Really Cool. I ran an Atari 800xl with 256K ram disk, modified my own version of Carin II. The core of the BBS ran entirely from RAM Disk. Lot's of users could not believe a BBS written in Basic could run so fast. 4 DSDD floppy Drives, and a 1200 baud (upgraded to 2400 baud modem. Those were the days. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon375 Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 I ran Crash City BBS here in the Detroit area for about 6 months until I had problems with a co-sysop and threw in the towel. I was running BBS Express Pro and even had some of the modules I wrote circulate worldwide. Was a great time whilst it lasted, but behind the scenes issues and ignorant folks who worked oh so very hard to crash my system just sucked all the fun out of it. It's a shame really. I had a great time running it, and if I could come across some stable TCP/IP BBS software I may even consider putting it up again. I do remember some awesome times, like all-nighters playing some of the door games I wrote, players (I had a 2-line system) would login, play for a while and when they logged off it became part of the game to entice any new logins to join the game. Like I said it was a blast. Defending against an Orcian Colo-Rectal Surgeon was almost as fun as it was graphic. Those were the days... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panther Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 I ran a few BBS's over the years in the L.A. area, in the 213 area code. Griffin's Lair BBS (modified FoReM software on Atari 800 with an 810 drive) West L.A. Atari User's Group BBS (further customized version of the FoReM software with an ATR8000, two 360K drives, and two 720K drives) Strange World BBS (Fully custom BBS software on an Atari ST and hard drive in GFA BASIC then an 80286 under DOS in ANSI C) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Sysop of a few and Co-Sys of a few... I co-sys'd Starship, Parallel Dimension, and Total Recall and was Sysop of BattleStar, Turbo Twin, SpaceDock, and Starship Five were Express! and then Pro! on the Atari 8 and one was Wildcat on an IBM... I ran also ran a BBS using Express on a Mega ST and hated that it had little resemblance to Express Pro and canned it...it was of little note and not worth naming...well It was called The Dungeon..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 got BBS Pro! 5.0b overhere node #471 or #472 I am not sure need to check... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 got BBS Pro! 5.0b overhere node #471 or #472 I am not sure need to check... You have node #472 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Ah I thought so for 99% wasn't 100% sure .... Sent from UMI hammer with Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 My old 130xe tower with blackbox and 600mb scsi hdd is eating dust. Still no space to clean and start it up again I wonder if it still works but I got two more Blackboxes aswell so that should not be a problem I found my 8 mux interfaces to setup 8 node BBS pro I need only the modded waitcall for the lantronics hw anyone can help me withit. Also a copy of ramjet would be cool loved that ramdisk driver with antic off function. Sent from UMI hammer with Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 Will put this higher on my todo list lets get online again this year :-) Sent from UMI hammer with Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MacRorie Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 This was in the Bay Area, like Livermore? If so, I remember using it. It was one of the better ones while you were up. I ran one rather late in the game for a little while when I lived in Cupertino. Wouldn't have been before 1986ish. I still have my 'Free Software for Your Atari' book around here somewhere. It was the what booted me into telecommunication. By the time I got the book, maybe 1984 or 1985, 90% of the numbers were no good anymore. I remember Itsy Bitsy and Compucat were two that worked and everyone had a BBS list that you could look at to get more numbers. I remember calling a lot of non Atari BBS too. Citadel which I think ran under CPM was popular back then. Fidonet, Wildcat, forgotten or never known by most of today's users but a really important part of what we have become. Just an FYI Free Software for Your Atari is online if you want to get a memory lane refresher to BBS scene in 1983. CIS was really important back then too. I remember several names here as well as well known Atari people like Mat*Rat, Bill Wilkinson, Tom Harker, Bob Puff, that used to hang out there. Necro reply. Just saw this message. Not sure if it was ricortes BBS you were on or mine. I ran the Bates Motel BBS from 89-95 or so. I was in Stockton (209) right near Livermore. I just resurrected it and, if I can get the Black Box diagnosed this weekend, I can actually make it good again! Come on by! Showers are nice and warm . . . (info is below in my sig) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted March 8, 2016 Share Posted March 8, 2016 Also a copy of ramjet would be cool loved that ramdisk driver with antic off function. Ramjet (aka Mega XE Ramdisk aka RM 6.5/6.6/6.7) http://mixinc.net/atari/download_a8/sdcom.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen J. Carden Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 Anyone run an Atari 8-bit BBS back in he day? I ran the APL (Atari Pirates Local) 130. It had a union theme to it. Ran the AMIS BBS software that I added a lot of customization too. I really liked BBCS but it had so many bugs in it. Great idea, just wished it worked better. I wrote BBS Express Professional after We purchased it from Keith. So Pro versions after 2.1a to 5.d I wrote all the code for throes versions. I am working on a new Atari 8-bit BBS called TCPIP Express that will put the Atari 8-bit on the internet. Take care! Stephen J. Carden http://www.realdos.net 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tillek Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 I wrote BBS Express Professional after We purchased it from Keith. So Pro versions after 2.1a to 5.d I wrote all the code for throes versions. I am working on a new Atari 8-bit BBS called TCPIP Express that will put the Atari 8-bit on the internet. Take care! Stephen J. Carden http://www.realdos.net So just out of curiosity, since I've seen it bounced around in other threads...... Is it available for purchase (and if not, is it coming soon?) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TXG/MNX Posted April 2, 2016 Share Posted April 2, 2016 I wrote BBS Express Professional after We purchased it from Keith. So Pro versions after 2.1a to 5.d I wrote all the code for throes versions. I am working on a new Atari 8-bit BBS called TCPIP Express that will put the Atari 8-bit on the internet. Take care! Stephen J. Carden http://www.realdos.net Whats new in tcpip express compared to 5.d and is there a way to get an upgrade version when people own 5.d Sent from UMI hammer with Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fres Posted April 3, 2016 Share Posted April 3, 2016 The Music Box BBS Well Well Well, I finally stumbled across this forum. I'm Mr. DJ, sysop of 'The Music Box' BBS, Indianapolis, IN in the 80's. First year operation was 6pm to 6am 7days week. A year latter I went 24 hr/7 days with a dedicated line. Wound up living behind the Sysop of 'The Dog House BBS', who got me into Carina and Carina II. The music Box featured (what else) music files users could download and play, showing off the great musical abilities of the Atari 8 bit system and it's sound chip. I also featured a few on-line games, and wrote the Atari 8 bit on line version of the popular card game Skip-Bo. A user from California designed the opening ATASCII graphics of his vision of a Music Box (a boom box). Really Cool. I ran an Atari 800xl with 256K ram disk, modified my own version of Carin II. The core of the BBS ran entirely from RAM Disk. Lot's of users could not believe a BBS written in Basic could run so fast. 4 DSDD floppy Drives, and a 1200 baud (upgraded to 2400 baud modem. Those were the days. Yes, I believe we met back in the day when I was probably about 16 or so. I also met Butch Luca who lived behind you and ran the Dog House BBS. I remember remarking to my friend who was with me when I met you that you had the voice of a DJ. Turned out you were actually a radio DJ? Good to see you around here. There is still a (semi) active atari 8-bit scene in Indianapolis. Do you still live in town, and do you still have any of your old equipment? John (Fres) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfollett Posted April 3, 2016 Share Posted April 3, 2016 (edited) Has anyone here ever heard of or used Night Light BBS by Paul Swanson. He was from the same town (Billerica, MA) where I grew up. If I recall the bulk of his program was written in Basic. At least in my area there were quite a few people running his BBS software. I can't find much reference to it on the internet. (Edit - I actually found more info on the web by spelling the name correctly. It's Night Lite, not Light) Bob Edited April 3, 2016 by bfollett Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_x Posted April 13, 2016 Share Posted April 13, 2016 Very cool thread... I ran Blitz BBS ... 90 percent hacker bbs and very few binaries other than hacker tools for the atari.. Ran it on dual floppies (another reason it was mainly a text bbs LOL!!!) with a MPPxxxC then an XM301 with phone flasher auto answer rigged up, then an SX212.. Ran from about 1985 till 1990 at which time I switched to PC then ST then back to PC .. I ran the bbs on Marshware first - then me and a friend modified it so much it just wouldn't really run anymore without crashing.. We were not economical coders... Then I went to Forem 1030 and then to BBS Express.. I didn't really like the way BBS Express looked so "generic" or at least based on what I was able to uncover about modifying it - but it most certainly ran very stable.. Would love to talk to anyone who was into the pirate/hacker/phreak scene back then and relive memories... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bikerbob Posted April 13, 2016 Share Posted April 13, 2016 Well if pirate/hacker/phreak ment were we the local hub of the pirate crack bootleg scene.. then yes we were. Looking back I am not proud, on the otherhand I am not sure without it, how much of the atari 8-bit software would have survived. We used to have a bank of floppys going, with happy enhancements and another one.. cant remember which. Indus Gts and Rana 1000s and of course 2 810s and 4 1050s. we were making theme disks with the menu system. We would do deals out side in the parking lot of the usergroup meetings. LOL.. yeah.. memories. We also had 2 car batteries in the studio, near the floppies that we had hooked up to a big diy magnet that was supposed to.. never tested it.. wipe everything out if we connected the ground!! James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quantum Mechanic Posted April 14, 2016 Share Posted April 14, 2016 I ran a couple of BBSes on my Atari computers. The first one was ultimately a trial run while I was living with a buddy of mine for about 6 months. It was called S.N.O.B.B.S. (Sacramento's Nonpareil Online BBS). I ran a slightly modified AMIS and learned what it meant to be a SysOp. Later, I took over a well-established BBS in Sacramento called City of Grey. I ran that for a number of years before taking it down when I was out of town for college. That BBS had an AMIS core, but was heavily modified. When I took ownership, it was running on Basic XL, bore almost no resemblance to the original AMIS, and used every scrap of free memory on the Atari XL. I switched to Basic XE to gain some coding room, then added/modified/rewrote many parts of the BBS until even Basic XE was out of space. I've still got my Atari equipment out in the shed and have a goal to unpack it, set it up, and maybe even restore the BBS with a Lantronix device. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmitry Posted April 14, 2016 Share Posted April 14, 2016 (edited) I ran a BBS (The Free World BBS; no relation to any organization by that name today) around 1985. 300bps, 1030 modem, ring detector on the joystick port, RAM disk (had the Byte magazine 256k upgrade installed on an Atari 800XL) and 1050 floppy drive for backups. Edited April 14, 2016 by Dmitry 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fultonbot Posted April 14, 2016 Share Posted April 14, 2016 My brother and I ran an Atari 800 BBS for exactly 4 hours. We had one caller, but we had more fun visiting all your BBS systems instead, so we took it down. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen J. Carden Posted April 20, 2016 Share Posted April 20, 2016 Anyone run an Atari 8-bit BBS back in he day? I ran the APL (Atari Pirates Local) 130. It had a union theme to it. Ran the AMIS BBS software that I added a lot of customization too. I really liked BBCS but it had so many bugs in it. Great idea, just wished it worked better. I ran inside the 8-bit BBS from 1984 till 2014. I am working on bringing it back on line. I wrote versions of BBS Express Professional 3.0a to 5.3d When I sold my Right to the BBS. I am currently working on a new BBS Program called TCPIP Express which will be a multi-node Atari 8-bit BBS that uses a Multiplexer so that the different BBS Nodes can talk together. So if you liked BBS Pro this one will knock your socks off. I am hoping that this rapidos board will allow the multiplexer to run faster. Will see. With the other stuff out there. Stephen J. Carden http://www.realdos.net Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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