Birth of a new BBS - the origin story

[+DarkLord]

And...that one worked fine - thanks! 

 

[Lastic]

Thanks Darklord for being my only and regular visitor on my BBS LOL.

Here is a blog post on the HeinzNixdorfMuseum site about the event.

https://www-hnf-de.translate.goog/das-hnf/presse/pressemitteilungen/ansicht/artikel/2700-besucher-beim-retro-computer-festival.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

You can find some live video from the 2 days of the RetroComputerFestival here

Saturday

Sunday with a short appearance of yours truly at 00:30 , looking for a demo to load on AVG cart

to compete with the filmer's C64 SID tunes (shown first in the lasercut case)
On Sunday I was gone for 2 hours visiting the museum upstairs hence you will not see me anymore

apparantly in the later part of the video.

 

The 800XL in the thumbnail actually didn't work on Saturday.
His modded Commodore monitor would show a garbled screen.
He tried it at the ABBUC stand with another monitor and it worked.
I gave him another video adapter , still didn't work, until I got an AHA moment and swapped his Atari
brick PSU with my modern PSU , it then finally worked.

[+DarkLord]

Thanks, appreciate those...  

 

[Lastic]

For anybody who wants to check out my BBS

thecell.ar port 1040

@Tillek should I send you a seperate PM to add it to your listing ?

I've added it also to demozoo.org and .telnetbbsguide.com (awaiting approval).

Let's see if this generates more interest ?

[Tillek]

2 hours ago, Lastic said:

For anybody who wants to check out my BBS

thecell.ar port 1040

@Tillek should I send you a seperate PM to add it to your listing ?

I've added it also to demozoo.org and .telnetbbsguide.com (awaiting approval).

Let's see if this generates more interest ?

Not anymore.  I just put it up.

 

Your fTelnet link from the BBS list also is working.  The only other thing is if you have a separate website or your own ftelnet (or whatever) portal link you want to use, I can add that to the listing.. but many boards don't bother so it's up to you.

 

[moonlight_mile]

Apologies, I haven’t gotten a chance to get on. Hopefully I will have some time today or tomorrow to do some ST bbsing. 

[Lastic]

3 hours ago, moonlight_mile said:

Apologies, I haven’t gotten a chance to get on. Hopefully I will have some time today or tomorrow to do some ST bbsing. 

No worries, just trying to reach an European audience also, at the moment it feels like just me and Darklord are talking to each other in the Message Areas
And the same goes for me , I desperately need to logon to other BBSes also !
I think I'm going to follow Darklord's routine/habit of checking into BBSes at a certain moment of the day to keep up with things.

[Lastic]

5 hours ago, Tillek said:

Not anymore.  I just put it up.

 

Your fTelnet link from the BBS list also is working.  The only other thing is if you have a separate website or your own ftelnet (or whatever) portal link you want to use, I can add that to the listing.. but many boards don't bother so it's up to you.

 

Currently not but I am thinking of putting a blog sort of website up to expand topics that are more suitable for more than 80 columns by 23 lines

[Tillek]

1 hour ago, Lastic said:

Currently not but I am thinking of putting a blog sort of website up to expand topics that are more suitable for more than 80 columns by 23 lines

Sounds cool... when you get around to that (and I'm sure I'll see the link when you do) I'll add it to the listing.  But for now just let me know if I got anything wrong.

 

http://www.sfhqbbs.org/ataribbslist.php

 

[Lastic]

21 hours ago, Tillek said:

Sounds cool... when you get around to that (and I'm sure I'll see the link when you do) I'll add it to the listing.  But for now just let me know if I got anything wrong.

 

http://www.sfhqbbs.org/ataribbslist.php

 

I just noticed you also have your Michtron BBS up and running again ? But I seem to be unable to connect to it bbs.sfhqbbs.org (6800) ?

[Tillek]

1 hour ago, Lastic said:

I just noticed you also have your Michtron BBS up and running again ? But I seem to be unable to connect to it bbs.sfhqbbs.org (6800) ?

Actually no... the demos were supposed to "rotate" and I'm switching it over to that Hell's BBS.  I'll fix it later today.

 

[Lastic]

11 hours ago, Tillek said:

Actually no... the demos were supposed to "rotate" and I'm switching it over to that Hell's BBS.  I'll fix it later today.

 

Hell's BBS ? Now I'm intrigued ?
BBS software from Hell ?

[Lastic]

A bit of more specific to telnet BBSes related GEMTOS report.

I went to France, Saint-Juste-en-Chaussee this weekend for the GEMTOS Gathering .
Saint-Juste-en-Chaussee is near to Paris if you want to situate it on a map of France.

I had brought my Wimodem232PRO with me along my 520ST+ .

Quite a lot of people who visited my desk were wondering what the device was .
In General it boiled down to

• they were unaware of the BBS scene so understood it as file-server or like what the French had in the past - MINITEL (look it up)
• they had a previous BBS experience of back in the days with actual modems and analog phone lines but were unaware BBSes still existed
• they knew vaguely of BBSes being brought online nowadays using Telnet but were unaware of ESP - Wifi Modem devices
• a few people actually used SLIP or a PC or Raspberry Pi to use telnet but specifically to access a modern PC/fileserver

So I happily demonstrated my BBS and the WimodemPRO and informed quite a lot of people about the Zimodem firmware and open-source ESP devices.

Some of the guys are hosting Atari events in France and were quite pleasantly surprised when I showed them my event calendar on the BBS , listing their event.
Sadly enough with the strict program GEMTOS needs to be run at , I didn't end up giving my presentation on Sunday but I guess out of the 50-60 people who
were present , about 10-20 of them did get a live demonstration by me using my setup.

I guess mission accomplished and since I am still visiting a lot more events this year , I hope this trend continues.
Will have to wait and see if there is a benefit to it in terms of long-time BBS users/visitors .

[+DarkLord]

Hey, every little bit helps. Those people will tell other people, who... Well, we can hope it works like that.

 

Thanks for going the extra mile and  presenting the retro Atari BBS scene so well. I hope you had a really

good time as well - that picture sure looked like everyone was...

 

Oh btw - some of our eagle eyed comrades noticed a Tandy computer in that picture. Hmm...      

 

 

[Lastic]

Full report will be coming soon, I did post a short summary in the Message area on thecell.ar

The mind wants to accomplish a lot of things but the back doesn't agree today with sitting down in a chair.
Went to a chiropractor for the 2nd time last week , first time I felt 10 years younger again, this time the magic only lasted 1 day.

[Lastic]

I decided to do some small changes to the BBS , 2 hours later LOL here is the summary

I added some more files, a TTRAK song which was released for the GEMTOS competition and the new SNDH files that I missed since March 2024.

Since a lot of of people in France asked me what is exactly available from files , I decided to do a quick fix.
In the Main Menu there is a news bulletin which actually shows all listed files per category when I added them.
But probably nobody looks there for that information so I added it after the logon procedure.

Same story for the Events calendar which is a bit buried in the Message menu , added it after the logon procedure.

Regarding complete file-listings , I will need to take some time to look at that python script that Techman had provided just before I was preparing to go to France.

Still a lot of todo's in my head but that's it for today.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to setup a blog website ... having absolutely no experience with the web ...
I only used websites at work back when we had the big INTERNET boom so I totally missed out on HTML,CSS,JAVA , webdesign in general.
Heck I was running DigitalResearch DOS 6.0 with GEM on an 386DX up to 2001.

But well I already have a good idea/roadmap on how to tackle it so ... to be continued.

[+DarkLord]

On 5/6/2024 at 12:44 PM, Lastic said:

Full report will be coming soon, I did post a short summary in the Message area on thecell.ar

The mind wants to accomplish a lot of things but the back doesn't agree today with sitting down in a chair.
Went to a chiropractor for the 2nd time last week , first time I felt 10 years younger again, this time the magic only lasted 1 day.

 

Ouch - sorry to hear that. Hope you get to feeling better soon.

 

Looking forward to the full report. 

 

[+DarkLord]

On 5/6/2024 at 3:45 PM, Lastic said:

I decided to do some small changes to the BBS , 2 hours later LOL here is the summary

I added some more files, a TTRAK song which was released for the GEMTOS competition and the new SNDH files that I missed since March 2024.

Since a lot of of people in France asked me what is exactly available from files , I decided to do a quick fix.
In the Main Menu there is a news bulletin which actually shows all listed files per category when I added them.
But probably nobody looks there for that information so I added it after the logon procedure.

Same story for the Events calendar which is a bit buried in the Message menu , added it after the logon procedure.

Regarding complete file-listings , I will need to take some time to look at that python script that Techman had provided just before I was preparing to go to France.

Still a lot of todo's in my head but that's it for today.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to setup a blog website ... having absolutely no experience with the web ...
I only used websites at work back when we had the big INTERNET boom so I totally missed out on HTML,CSS,JAVA , webdesign in general.
Heck I was running DigitalResearch DOS 6.0 with GEM on an 386DX up to 2001.

But well I already have a good idea/roadmap on how to tackle it so ... to be continued.

 

It's just one of those processes. When I installed BBS Express! ST the first time, it was such a bare-bones setup!

 

Over the years, I've made multiple, multiple changes and adjustments. That continues to this day. Part of the fun

of being a SysOp, IMHO. 

 

 

[Lastic]

On 5/6/2024 at 6:21 PM, DarkLord said:

Hey, every little bit helps. Those people will tell other people, who... Well, we can hope it works like that.

 

Thanks for going the extra mile and  presenting the retro Atari BBS scene so well. I hope you had a really

good time as well - that picture sure looked like everyone was...

 

Oh btw - some of our eagle eyed comrades noticed a Tandy computer in that picture. Hmm...      

 

 

Off - on topic

Regarding the name of that new Lynx title , it remains a mystery, I think I got a picture from it and even a sticker but I cannot decipher what the name was.
The author is still keeping it secret also so I will too

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/362861-gemtos-2024-a-mystery-limited-exclusive-release-is-coming-but-preorder-is-possible/#comment-5462323

 

[+DarkLord]

Ah, okay - no problem. Good things come to those who wait, eh?  

 

[Lastic]

@Tillek can you add www.thecell.ar also to your BBS list please ?

After 10 hours I can now finally report that my blogsite is up and running at www.thecell.ar and my report of my visit to GEMTOS in France has been published there also.
Another milestone reached.

And now dinner-time  ( 18:30 PM here)

[Lastic]

And the first release from the Outline 2024 event this weekend has also been uploaded to the BBS.

[Lastic]

Currently the blogsite is not hosted on my own server , that is something I'm looking into

Edited May 13 by Lastic

[Lastic]

On 5/12/2024 at 6:40 PM, Lastic said:

@Tillek can you add www.thecell.ar also to your BBS list please ?

After 10 hours I can now finally report that my blogsite is up and running at www.thecell.ar and my report of my visit to GEMTOS in France has been published there also.
Another milestone reached.

And now dinner-time  ( 18:30 PM here)

@Tillek I noticed today that using fTelnet via sfhq doesn't seem to work anymore , not for my BBS nor Darkforce fnor SFHQ ?

On another note does anybody know how to get whitelisted for fTelnet on telnetbbsguide.com 
I've send my details via the contact form already 3 times I think but no luck yet.

[Tillek]

8 hours ago, Lastic said:

@Tillek I noticed today that using fTelnet via sfhq doesn't seem to work anymore , not for my BBS nor Darkforce fnor SFHQ ?

On another note does anybody know how to get whitelisted for fTelnet on telnetbbsguide.com 
I've send my details via the contact form already 3 times I think but no luck yet.

My machine rebooted and the proxy didn't auto-start like it was supposed to.

 

I'm moving it to my WS2022 machine tomorrow so that shouldn't be a problem. I'm also working on adding a health check so if it goes down I'll get notified.  But it should be fine now.

 

If they have their own proxy for the telnetbbsguide you're probably out of luck since they'd have to add you (as in, you'll have to wait for them).  If they're using the fTelnet public proxy, you'd probably just have to contact the fTelnet author who runs it (but if that's the guy you're reaching out to, again... sorry...)

 

Just to mention, I had tried to get the guy to fix ATASCII for years.  I was even going to offer to pay him, but alas... he never responded to a single message in all that time so (shrug)... wish I could help more with that.

 

That said, I don't know if anyone really uses their fTelnet client since probably most of the BBS's on it that don't use the standard port were never whitelisted.  I don't think mine ever was and that's been since like 2013.