VTUG-BBS
========

"Noticed that my BBS wasn't in your list! I think its story is
mildly interesting, so... here's a brief summary. I ran VTUG-BBS
for somewhere between 2 and 3 years, starting in the fall of 1982,
first on a VIC-20 and then on a C-64. I wrote the software,
RAVICS, which was -- I believe -- the first BBS available for
these machines. VTUG stood for VIC Technical Users' Group,
although I never really got a user's group off the ground - the
BBS was all there was to it. The BBS was initially fairly simple -
a single message base and "chat with the sysop" - but rapidly
developed into a reasonably interesting system with multiple
message bases, private mail, tree-structured conferencing, and
uploads/downloads (which were, however, a relatively unimportant
part of the BBS's culture - this was long before the warez days).
I think the user base was a couple hundred and the system was
off-hook pretty much 24 hours a day at the peak. I wrote the
software on a VIC-20 shortly after obtaining the VICmodem (for my
13th birthday - I'd received the VIC for Christmas a few months
before!) and hacking up a simple autoanswer device for it. I'm
sure it was the first, and possibly the only BBS on a VIC-20.
Without really setting out to do so, I sold a few copies of it and
I bought the C-64 with the proceeds shortly after its release. Of
course I promptly "ported" the BBS to the 64, so RAVICS was
probably the first BBS software available for the C-64 as well -
this was at a time when virtually all BBSs, at least in 212, ran
on Apple IIs, TRS-80s, etc. In the next couple of years I ran VTUG
and sold a reasonable number of copies of RAVICS to sysops around
the country (despite having no advertising other than the BBS
itself).
"In 1984 I sold the C-64, sold the rights to RAVICs, and bought an
IBM PC XT. I made some half-hearted attempts to write a BBS for
the PC, and ran some third-party software for a while at 534-3149,
but I was in high school by then and I was spending too much time
thinking about girls and mathematics. I relinquished the title of
sysop and became instead a user: a denizen of the legendary
Ailanthus Tree. Thanks for a site that brings back some memories
from nearly 20 years ago - although my BBS is far from the only
interesting one from those days that is missing from your 212
list! Let me know if you're interested in any of the others I
remember... BTW I posted a message to Usenet in 2002 requesting
info about the later life of RAVICS (after I sold it) - archived
at
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/software/COMMODORE/VIC-20/RAVICS/adam.txt
and
http://mail.textfiles.com/pipermail/cosysops/2003-February/000046.html,
but note that the email address I gave in the message is no longer
active. That message gives a few more details about VTUG/RAVICS. I
never received any replies, unfortunately, so I still don't know
what happened to RAVICS later on, though I know that there were
BBSs running RAVICS for at least a few years more...." - Adam
Jacobs

Phone   : 212-534-3149
Place   : New York, NY
Years   : 1982 - 1985
Sysop   : Adam Jacobs
Software: RAVICS

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

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