Suite 16 BBS ============ Also listed as: Suite 16 "The Suite 16 BBS started on a Packard Bell 8088 PC, with 512k of ram, and a 10 megabyte hard drive. The hardware of the site grew over time, eventually running on a 386, with 2 20 megabyte MFM drives hooked to an RLL style card for a whopping 60 megabytes. Thanks to the magic of DesqView and QEMM, I was able to host 3 lines simultaniously, as well as a local terminal, which allowed me to chat with callers, and edit the site. Because using an MFM drive on an RLL controller was so unstable, it caused the system to go out of service frequently, until I got a Pioneer 6 disk CD changer, which lowered the need for drive space, and I converted back to an MFM controller. Does anyone besides me remember G=c800:5? The 6 disk changer was a huge addition to the system, as I was able to find shareware CD's cheaply. With 6 disks online, it was such a huge shareware collection that searching could last for hours. Looking for greater functionality for the site lead me to joining FIDONET, which was a huge challenge, and loads of fun. I remember working for hours to build the batch files that would load the FOSSIL (Fido-Opus-Seadog-Serial-Interface-Link) drivers, send/receive/parse the mail, and ultimatly load the BBS. But collecting mail over the telephone line was a costly and time consuming affair. The next step was purchasing a satellite receiver that transmitted the FIDONET national mail, as well as daily updates of shareware. The satellite receiver ran on a second PC, and twice daily the BBS computer would drop out of the local terminal session, gather and parse the mail from the satellite receiving PC. All in all it was alot of work, and much of the hardware was secondhand, found in a dumpster and wrapped into the system...or traded up for other parts. (Hats of to Jake Brim at Brim Computers for having mercy and taking my parts for trade! - He's still in business today.) "The advent of the internet eventually took my interests away from running a BBS, and I closed it. I feel very proud and lucky to have lived at a time between the beginning of home computing, and the internet as a global experience. The thousands of BBS operators made many contributions to the home computing experience, and raised awareness of the technology. The Internet has replaced the local BBS, which might seem sad, except that the people who ran BBS's have gone on to bigger and better things, and now almost anyone can build something like a BBS of their own as a web page. As for bigger and better, my brother and his wife, who ran the White Castle BBS, started out on a 286, knowing practically NOTHING about PC's, and have both gone on to receive degrees in IT, and help administer a network at a fortune 500 company...pretty good stuff! Other friends in the BBS world have similar stories, and as for me, I work in temperature control, and have a side role of IT. Cheers to Paul Bussa, Dave and Lori Brandt, and the Ottawa County 227 Fidonet Gang!" - Paul Brandt Phone : 616-895-5302 Place : Allendale, MI Years : 1990 - 1995 Sysop : Paul Brandt Software: Maximus Listed : Siute 16 BBS Listed by telephone number, as they all were. A few of these boards did reach the web: see recoveries-002.txt. Source : bbslist.textfiles.com, compiled by Jason Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------ gopher://hp84.com/ | https://ge97.com/ .