BBS Doors - 8-bit and ST

[Bikerbob]

I think this should be in the Resource section. I am looking for doors that I can run on FoReM ST right now.

 

I have SEE  11.37 - is the last version.

FF 154 - again last I can find.

 

I think we can make this universal - doors for 8-bit and 16-bit. just specify in your post what your adding.. These 2 are for the ST BBS programs.

 

James

SEE11_37.LZH SEE1137A.LZH FF154.LZH

[+DarkLord]

Away from my 'Nix box right now and my Win7 box died 2 days ago (freakin' fried motherboard! Were we just talking about

Tillek's bad luck???) but I'll try to put up as many game archives as I can round up after while....

 

Edited April 16, 2021 by DarkLord
spelling correction

[Tillek]

Honestly, I think we need to have two.

 

The ST and 8-bit games are obviously not compatible, and there is a ton of ST games (not all of them are worth it or work right).  I'd say most can be run on most of the ST BBS packages if you try hard enough.

 

The 8-bit games on the other hand tend to be very BBS-package specific and if I recall, there are fewer of them (at least the ones worth bothering with).

 

[Tillek]

1 hour ago, DarkLord said:

Away from my 'Nix box right now and my Win7 box died 2 days ago (freakin' fried motherboard! Were we just talking about

Tillek's bad luck???) but I'll try to put up as many game archives as I can round up after while....

 

Sorry man... Didn't mean to pass it along to you.  I actually had a very good retro week (minus the time I was in bed with diabetic issues).

 

[+DarkLord]

Ah, no worries, just one of those things. 

 

[+DarkLord]

And btw, I agree about the 8bit and 16bit versions of door games...there

really is quite a difference between the two....

 

[+DarkLord]

Also, I went through DarkForce's archives a bit yesterday and unfortunately, it looks like I

didn't keep the *original* downloads of the door games I'm using. The files I have are all

either registered or modified for DarkForce so I'm kind of leery about zipping them up

and posting them.... 
 

[Bikerbob]

Well I have quite a few now for the ST.

Trying to install.

[+DarkLord]

Let us know if you have any problems - will help any way we can.

 

[Bikerbob]

Ok, so I spent a couple of hours trying to get the doors running last night.

 

I have  1. Wrestling F.W.F  

           2. ST Nationals (Drag racing)

           3. Spacer

           4. Darklord V2.0

           5. DDST

           6. Thieves

           7. Overlord 1.30b

           8. Empire (World War)

           9. Space Empire Elite V 10.2 (I have 17 as you see (sic) above but not setup yet)

          10. Chaos151

 

So not going to lie, these are the same 10 that Russ had setup on Forem when he tried to do Spy VS Spy BBS.  BUT how these are setup on Russ' install is a dogs breakfast. Some are setup in the \Doors directory, some in the main \forem directory and Chaos is run out of the drive root \chaos.

 

So the files he had seemed to be complete archives, with instructions on how to install. His drive which I have replicated from an archive he made of it, on STEEM or HATARI will run the games. My install bombs out (2 bombs) just as it is trying to run the MSH.tos (the mini shell) to run the games within the BBS. This happens on my MegaSTE or on a Laptop running Hatari. As far as I can tell I have installed the games exactly as per the instructions. The games run if I run them outside of the bbs - this is again what leads me to the mini shell. But what is different in how Russ did it, to how I am doing it I cannot tell.

 

James

[+DarkLord]

Can you contact him and ask?

 

[Bikerbob]

Tried, still working on it.

 

James

[+DarkLord]

11 hours ago, Bikerbob said:

Tried, still working on it.

 

James

 

Yeah, got your PM - sorry. 

 

[Bikerbob]

So I have about 20 games now that I can run.. some of them are unregistered. Is there a way to crack these old unsupported BBS games??

 

James

[+DarkLord]

6 hours ago, Bikerbob said:

So I have about 20 games now that I can run.. some of them are unregistered. Is there a way to crack these old unsupported BBS games??

 

James

 

Good luck. I've got a few registered, but many are not. By the time I got into running

a BBS seriously, a lot of authors had dropped out or just simply quit supporting the

titles they had released. 

 

[Bikerbob]

15 hours ago, DarkLord said:

 

Good luck. I've got a few registered, but many are not. By the time I got into running

a BBS seriously, a lot of authors had dropped out or just simply quit supporting the

titles they had released. 

 

kind of surprising for some of these, a bbs door game is really a labour of love - there was not real money in it. At the end I am surprised how many did not release the game open. It was a different world then, now most people would not only open it up but maybe even release the source. Matt Springer, for FoReM - in his Linkedin profile lists that he was the creator of FoReM for the atari 8-bit and 16bit computers - but he also says he has nothing remaining from it and has not looked at it or has interest in it. If your listing it.. you think its an accomplishment, but you dont care about your accomplishments to have something or answer a question.. or show interest?

 

Hmmmm

 

[+DarkLord]

Just the way of the world, I reckon.

 

Personally, what few times anyone has asked about how I did something on DarkForce,

I've always been glad to try and help. I try to show them how I did something (and perhaps

even more importantly, *why* I did something a certain way) if I possibly can.

 

After all, why use 1 line of code when you can accomplish the same thing with 10 lines. (it

looks more impressive to a lay person).  

 

[Bikerbob]

LOL.. I did buy a GFA book set from ebay  I think even though I am getting FoReM ST running the plan will be be to modify ForeSight the way I want.. and eventually get it up. I think I can do more with it.. ITs a circa 96 board as opposed to FoReM which was about 90 the last time Matt Singer did work on it.

 

James

 

[Triads]

I spoke with Matt Singer many years ago and got the  same reply.. How do you not keep some copy, somewhere... I got the feeling from him that the past is past and doesn't care about it.

Updates continued for FoReM ST & PC. PC would get a refresh and renamed to FoReM Professional, with Single & Multi-line versions.
Sometime in late 89 with later revisions of 2.4 and early 2.5 builds, Matt started to get help with FoReM ST from Bill Henderson and STeve Ryder from Full Moon BBS, taking over support. The last official FoReM ST build released with Singer attached to my knowledge is 2.5.1c.

Matt sold the rights FoReM ST in mid to late 1990 to William Miller. FoReM ST  was then renamed to Turbo Board.. Since FoReM ST was written in Turbo C, I guess Miller couldn't come up with a more original name.

[Bikerbob]

1 hour ago, Triads said:

I spoke with Matt Singer many years ago and got the  same reply.. How do you not keep some copy, somewhere... I got the feeling from him that the past is past and doesn't care about it.

Updates continued for FoReM ST & PC. PC would get a refresh and renamed to FoReM Professional, with Single & Multi-line versions.
Sometime in late 89 with later revisions of 2.4 and early 2.5 builds, Matt started to get help with FoReM ST from Bill Henderson and STeve Ryder from Full Moon BBS, taking over support. The last official FoReM ST build released with Singer attached to my knowledge is 2.5.1c.

Matt sold the rights FoReM ST in mid to late 1990 to William Miller. FoReM ST  was then renamed to Turbo Board.. Since FoReM ST was written in Turbo C, I guess Miller couldn't come up with a more original name.

Hmm thanks.. thats helpful. Now the version I have is 2.3  - do you know where I could find any later revisions? Bill Miller, or William is in Canada I think. I have not been able to find any contact for him.. or STeve Ryder or Bill Henderson. Seems they all left the Atari scene.. even facebook. Now I do have copies of Turbo BBS - should I look into that then.. if it is a more modern updated version of FoReM?? ALso the version 2.3 I have I have a 2.0 manual.. which for all I know is the ONLY full manual ever made.. says it was written in GFA basic 3.0  Maybe it got a re-write later??

 

James

[Triads]

I do not have any updated manuals past 2.0 as well.. I do have 2.5.1c with updated TXT files i can post.. As for Turbo Board, i would assume its a better alternative with bug fixes and such.. Haven't messed with it much.

As for GFA, there may have been portions written in GFA and compiled, but to my understanding it was in C.. With that said , info passed to me may have been incorrect..Both used? We'll never really know.

[Bikerbob]

21 minutes ago, Triads said:

I do not have any updated manuals past 2.0 as well.. I do have 2.5.1c with updated TXT files i can post.. As for Turbo Board, i would assume its a better alternative with bug fixes and such.. Haven't messed with it much.

As for GFA, there may have been portions written in GFA and compiled, but to my understanding it was in C.. With that said , info passed to me may have been incorrect..Both used? We'll never really know.

please I would love to have the 2.5.1C and updated files.. That would be helpful. 

 

I will look into Turbo as well.. I have not touched that one yet. 

 

I still have the hope that I can learn GFA to the point of making the changes I want to ForeSight.

 

James

[Tillek]

5 hours ago, Bikerbob said:

kind of surprising for some of these, a bbs door game is really a labour of love - there was not real money in it. At the end I am surprised how many did not release the game open. It was a different world then, now most people would not only open it up but maybe even release the source. Matt Springer, for FoReM - in his Linkedin profile lists that he was the creator of FoReM for the atari 8-bit and 16bit computers - but he also says he has nothing remaining from it and has not looked at it or has interest in it. If your listing it.. you think its an accomplishment, but you dont care about your accomplishments to have something or answer a question.. or show interest?

 

Hmmmm

 

Well, in some cases it might be that they got rid of everything, or it got lost in the sands of time.  If you ask me about some of the software stuff I did 20-30 years ago... hell.. I barely remember what I had for dinner last night.

 

Often even things at work that I worked on a year ago, I might have to go back and look at it to answer someone's question (I had to actually do this many times with one of my projects at the last job since the mobile team didn't implement the feature until a year later so they were constantly asking questions and I was constantly going back to the source to try to remember the answer).

 

Now you take that and add a few decades, on a computer you don't own anymore, with source that is long gone... and now you're busy with life and career... I can see how they'd not have the time.  Also, it wouldn't be likely just one person... I'm sure they get approached often about it (or may have/would have before putting something out there saying "please don't").

 

 

[Triads]

i think Turbo Board suffers from a date "one day behind" issue, other then the 19121 bug.. Give it a shot and let me know.. Even entering date/time manually comes out weird for me.

[Bikerbob]

2 minutes ago, Triads said:

i think Turbo Board suffers from a date "one day behind" issue, other then the 19121 bug.. Give it a shot and let me know.. Even entering date/time manually comes out weird for me.

I did find a newer version of Turbo board 2.2 - looking at that.  please post up the 2.5.1c when you find it.

 

James