RATSoft/ST
reddit / bbs

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braxbrax · 2017-02-07 09:00

Back in the mid-90s, a friend and I ran an Atari ST based bbs running
RATSoft/ST. It was a truly fun experience that I have a lot of fond
memories of. Unfortunately, as the bbs was starting to pick up daily
traffic, the bbs suffered a hard drive failure and an angry parent
confiscated the external CDROM drive. Being broke teenagers, that
abruptly ended the bbs.

A while back I came across the original disks for RATSoft and the
nostalgia took hold. Since then I've been planning to put up another
bbs with RATSoft on real Atari hardware.

As I've been slowly collecting the hardware and software, I discovered
that there is not much online about RATSoft. There are mentions of it
in old newsgroup postings, and some occasional talk of it on [Atari-
Age](https://atariage.com/forums/forum/20-atari-stttfalcon-computers/)
and [Atari-Forum](http://www.atari-forum.com/).

So, I've made a bit of a repository for everything I'm able to find.
So far this is from old disk I was able to recover from back in the
day, along with the few other pieces I could find online. [Check it
out.](http://dfunct.net/atari/ratsoft)

If you have anything to contribute, please pm me. I know there is a
lot more that was available years ago, so i can only hope someone
still has old copies of updates, scripts, etc.

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NuSkooler · 2017-02-10 05:32

This is awesome - I've never heard of RATSoft. Thanks for sharing.
Please keep us posted as to when you get a board up and running!

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nolageek · 2017-02-15 14:43

Interesting - I haven't heard of RATSoft either - hopefully some of
the vintage/atari guys here will have some more information. You may
also want to try posting on the BBS facebook group (not affiliated
with /r/bbs) - you may get some replies there as well:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/bbsfans/

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NFGman · 2017-04-10 02:55

This is amazing.  I used to run a Ratsoft BBS, until I came home one
day and my mom says "Your computer's been making a funny noise all
day..."

The Syquest 44MB drive it was running on had crashed its heads, the
disc was scored with concentric rings and the caddy was full of metal
filings.

RIP my BBS, and RIP my Mega 4 ST.   Always remembered those times
fondly.  ^_^