Sysop archaeology reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cap811 · 2014-01-24 13:37 Cleaning out the basement and uncovered my MajorBBS time capsule. Everything is as it was the day I boxed it when I moved on from the BBS :^( - boxes, manuals, all the third party goodies like MajorMUD, the awesome Doom IPX encapsulator (laggy but still awesome in the 90s to play 4-way Doom remotely back when Netware Was King). I am filled with some weird almost-loathing as I peer over the Doom multiplayer diskettes at Halo on the XBox360. While the thought of rebuilding a DOS box from scratch to almost- entirely-pointlessly run this again is intriguing, I am faced with the reality that will never happen, because life. SO... is there anyplace/one/where this would be of interest? I'd hate to see it become more slightly magnetic landfill, but I grumpily acknowledge that time, like Khan, has moved waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Zahne1977 · 2014-01-24 13:57 [SynchroNET](http://www.synchro.net/) may provide a good solution for you if you want to start a BBS with a newer computer. Unfortunately, trying to run old BBS software on newer computers/operating systems is very problematic. The "Run Time Error 200" issue which I think is caused by a bug in Pascal will render quite a bit of your older software useless without a patch or update. The challenge of running my BBS was really finding workable copies of all this software that wasn't impacted by this bug. Development on SynchroNET is fairly recent, so at least it'll easily work over TCP/IP and play nice with the files once you're able to find them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- commiecat · 2014-01-24 14:16 Scan the docs and copy the disks if possible. There are archive sites like [Textfiles.com](http://www.textfiles.com/) that might have a place for them. You can run Worldgroup (MBBS) on Windows XP, as I've set up a local system to play some old games, e.g. MajorMUD. Every few years I'll feel nostalgic and want to set it up, and now it's pretty easy to just build a VM with everything configured. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-01-24 15:19 Oh man, I'm VERY interested in the doom multiplayer stuff... I feel somewhat confident that I could get all of this running again... I run an [old synchronet 2.x system](bbs.superglobalmegacorp.com) on OS/2 in a VM... with fake software modems and everything... Let me know! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-01-24 15:21 I'm sure archive.org will take everything as well... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ILikeBumblebees · 2014-01-24 21:43 You could image the hard drive of that system, and attempt to boot it up in DOSBox. It's relatively trivial to map DOSBox's emulated modem to a telnet server, so you might be able to bring that BBS back online just as it was previously. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2014-01-25 06:29 I just set up a dos box yesterday in minutes. And it's all installed on a USB stick that I can plug into any other machine, and it's fully networked. I downloaded FreeDOS, and put one of the images onto a USB stick. Then I got a packet driver for my network card, and [mTCP](http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/). Packet driver and mTCP's dhcp run from autoexec.bat. So I use that box to telnet to BBSs. :) But shouldn't be too much work getting an old BBS running on it, even just for your own amusement. Or under Windows, you can get [NetFOSS](http://pcmicro.com/netfoss/). From their site: *"NetFoss changes FOSSIL-based applications to network-based without modifications to software."* On a side note. If you've got message areas backed up anywhere, especially of echo networks like Fidonet, then I'd be interested in getting copies of the files. I'd like to add a historical archive section to my BBS. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-01-25 15:02 I wrote something a while back on how to run a BBS using rlfossil [here](http://virtuallyfun.superglobalmegacorp.com/?p=1130). It's pretty straightforward, as long as your software supports FOSSIL. If you want I'm sure me or anyone else here could get your old setup running in a virtual manner. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-01-31 07:43 So, uh, any updates? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cap811 · 2014-01-31 09:24 Sorry, this has been a busy week. I'll take pictures of it all and post the links here (I guess imgur will be good enough for this?) I'll try to be as comprehensive as possible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-01-31 10:11 no problem, imgur is always a reddit staple. then just post some TIL "people ran a internet like thing on *THIS* in the 1980s", and watch the karma come rolling in... Im wishing I scanned my old crap.. that I hope is still in storage... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cap811 · 2014-02-02 17:52 Here are some pics (finally) - they aren't going to win any BBS swimsuit competitions but they are mostly viewable. :^) Let me know if you want any other photos - I wish I could pull off my Holodeck BBS from those QIC tapes and show some screens from that, I think I did a pretty good job of capturing the essence of LCARS using the ancient LCARS acronym ancestor, ASCII. I think the 1970s Mediterranean carpet pattern lends verisimilitude to the pics and gives me an excuse to use "verisimilitude". [Ye Olde MajorBBS](http://imgur.com/a/Q4XJv) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Beef_Blastbody · 2014-03-14 13:33 Oh god... The feels right now.