Atari ST BBS?

[twbrown]

ahhhhh those were the days.. locally here we had alot of C= 64 boards and i use to belong to most of em..met alot of really nice peeps and i was allways surprised to meet em IRL as it was usually 180 degrees of my mental pic of em.. never really saw alot of Atari boards here tho..either IBM or C=64/Amiga but would have been cool to find out more about the ST back then

[Sub-Zero]

I know this is an old post but...

 

I ran a RatSoft board back in the day (single line) -- I do remember a lot of the door games though (some are on the Grove):

 

Dark Lords Castle trilogy (a friend wrote it, gotta give him props)

Final Frontier

SEE (Space Empire Elite)

Cows

Assassin

Conquest

Galactic Empire

 

 

Did a web search and blam:

 

http://bbslist.textfiles.com/707/

 

707-485-1135

UKIAH, CA The Continuum BBS

(1994) Ed Salisbury

[+DarkLord]

I was Sysop over "The DarkForce! BBS" here in Prestonsburg, KY from the 90's through 2000 or so.

 

I ran BBS Express ST! software. It was a lot of fun and I still miss it a lot.

 

I think we had around 200 users or so, and since it was Atari based, a large percentage were long distance callers.

 

Man, those were the days! :-)

[Atari Smeghead]

All of us Michigan Atari heads should get together some time next year.  Lansing seems to be a central location to every one, maybe we could meet up there.

Tempest

 

Wow, apparently, I completely missed this post or neglected to respond.

I apologize for that.

 

Personally, I'd be very interested in a Michigan Atari reunion type thing. I still spend time with a couple of other Atariphiles around here. We'll have to discuss this more in the spring, for a summer thing.

 

Actually, I host a BBS Users Reunion Picnic (BURP) here in Lansing, for all the old timers. Our 5th annual BURP (or is it 6?) will be sometime in June.

 

Good thing Darklord revived this thread!

 

Smeg

[+DarkLord]

Good thing Darklord revived this thread!

 

Smeg

 

Actually, I'm trying to catch up with all the intersting/great stuff in these forums.

I had (sort of) dropped out of the Atari scene when Atari Corp. collapsed. Now I'm

slowly easing my way back in.

 

What is it the man said? "There's no such thing as an "ex-Atarian"... :-)

[Tempest]

I'd love to see some sort of Michigan area Atari computer users get together. Something that happened regularly would be great (like a bi-monthly thing), but even a once a year meeting would be nice.

 

Tempest

[skeezix]

As far as I know, I'm running the worlds only online Atari ST BBS; see http://www.codejedi.com/bbs for details

 

Most ST BBSes were single node; a very few (mentioned above) were multinode on one ST. A few were multi-noide with multiple ST's.

 

Sadly, most of the games were single node only of course .. simple GFA hacks et al. So you'd have to put locking in there so only one guy coudl run the game at as time or it'd munch the data files for most games.

 

I've been trying to build up an archive of ST BBS software/games slowly, since most people have forgotten it So if you have any door games etc, please fire them over to skeezix@codejedi.com and I'll stick 'em in my archive (its up for FTP), and put them onto my BBS.

 

(My BBS runs under an emulator I've built.)

 

I have often been tempted to modify BBS Express to be multi-node but in the end, it'd be easier to wriote a new bbs in perl over a couple days that modify the old Express to be multinode friendly. But we'll see

 

jeff

[+DarkLord]

Did anyone here ever run an ST based BBS?  The reason I ask is because I now have an Ethernet adapter for my ST and I thought I should put it to good use.  At first I wanted to do an 8-bit BBS (on my 130XE), but usage would be limited to one person online at a time (not good for games).  I assume the ST can handle more than one user at a time (especially with Ethernet). 

 

So what kind of games were available for the ST BBS's?  I'm looking for something like Trade Wars, L.O.R.D., Falcon's Eye, or Usurper (my favs from my PC BBS days).  Did they make games like this for the ST BBS?

 

I suppose I'll need some good BBS software as well.

 

Tempest

477902[/snapback]

 

Well, you probably have seen it by now but I've managed to get "The DarkForce! BBS" back online. Its using BBS Express! ST v1.98a, running on a Mega ST. I use the Lantronix UDS10, which acts like a modem emulator so anyone can telnet into my BBS. Check it out sometime, you can see the online games I have there. There are quite a few. Please excuse the mess!, I'm still trying to sort things out from the fact that the last time this hardware and software was used was in the late 90's... :-)

 

See ya!

[danwinslow]

Dark, do you mean that the ST thinks its talking to a modem but really its an ethernet NIC?

 

Speaking of modem games, I have a 16 player text MUD I wrote some years back that I would like to get hosted. It wants sockets on the inside but I probably could change that over to virtual serial connections or something. If you are interested, Dark, let me know.

[+DarkLord]

Dark, do you mean that the ST thinks its talking to a modem but really its an ethernet NIC?

849216[/snapback]

 

Er, sort of. The UDS 10 has a serial port connection on one side that the serial port from your ST plugs into. On the other end, you've got a standard RJ45 connection that the CAT5 cable from your LAN plugs into. When you first setup the UDS10, you assign it an IP address from your LAN. For example, I gave mine 192.168.0.104. I use a Dlink hardware router, so I use the port forwarding option in its setup to forward any telnet request from my IP address of 24.177.21.241 -> to the UDS10s internal address of 192.168.0.104. The UDS10 does modem emulation so that the BBS Express software running on the Mega ST just thinks its getting another modem call via the serial port. Works like a charm! :-)

 

Speaking of modem games, I have a 16 player text MUD I wrote some years back that I would like to get hosted. It wants sockets on the inside but I probably could change that over to virtual serial connections or something. If you are interested, Dark, let me know.

849216[/snapback]

 

Well, that certainly sounds awesome but I don't think it would do me much good. Unfortunately, BBS Express is like so many other ST BBS packages, its single user.

 

:-(

 

I sure do appreciate the offer though!

[danwinslow]

Gotcha, thats what I thought.

 

Well, if I get the game up and on the net on my TT I'll post the link. It's in kind of an unusual language that I will need to get ported over. I'll need to get GNU C++ moved over, and then use that to build the compiler from sources...in other words, don't hold your breath

 

ANyways, its great to see a BBS back in action and I'll be sure and stop by.