Found an old machine running an Excalibur BBS -- best way to preserve? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrKsoft · 2017-09-24 19:19 Hi guys, young fellow here who got online in the post-BBS era so I don't really know much about the world of BBSes. I recently picked up a grimy old system with an Am386DX/33, 8MB of RAM, an old Cogent EM100 Ethernet card and two ~330 MB Seagate hard drives. Upon poking around the hard drives I discovered a big archive of shareware and gifs (interesting enough in itself) and upon getting into Windows 3.1 found that it had actually been running an Excalibur based BBS called "Win- dy City Windows". Records online show this BBS operated in Illinois from 1989-2000 and appears to have been accessible by dialup or telnet (given there is an Ethernet card). I managed to figure out what to run to fire up the BBS and get it to a local sysop login. The files appear to be dated around 1995, so this must have been a previous system running it before a later upgrade. The files on here look to be mostly software and... lots of gif porn. Took a couple pictures of the login from the Excalibur client: [here](https://i.imgur.com/2EKtuDH.jpg) and [here](https://i.imgur.com/Lzbi6in.jpg). Anyway, I figure that it's not often that a BBS essentially frozen in time pops up like this and I want to preserve this somehow for anyone interested. The drives sound like they are probably on their last legs; they're making some really nasty sounds. Should I just image the drives and throw them out there? Any morality concerns of that? (even 22 years later it's still got people's messages and stuff stored on it...) I'll image them regardless, but I'm curious how best to share this time capsule... Maybe a VM setup or something. Let me know your thoughts, thanks! PS. I noticed it seems to think the SysOp's access has expired, probably because the CMOS battery is dead and I set it to the current date before I noticed what was on the drive. The client is counting down the time/bandwidth remaining. I have no idea how to administrate Excalibur, any ex-SysOps remember? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AstralSurfer · 2017-09-24 21:38 I would contact Jason Scott at textfiles.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrKsoft · 2017-09-25 00:30 Might be too late... I lost the first hard drive when setting it up for imaging. I can see the drive itself, but no data whatsoever, neither on my bench machine nor the original 386 now. I knew I was cutting it close given that you could hear the heads scraping against something when the drive was first powering on. I was hoping it would hold out just a few more hours. On the other hand, I did get the second drive imaged. Just seems to contain some of the downloads-- probably not all based on a file on the drive root advertising the BBS which claims they have 7.5GB of files. Those were probably on an external SCSI setup of some sort, since when the system booted it did try and load some Adaptec EZ-SCSI drivers. There are some file lists -- not sure how they match up. Oh well... I tried. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mikeleemm · 2017-09-25 15:51 Google finds this as the Sysop: Chuck Erickson | Win-dy City Windows(tm) 1-630-595-1894 Sysop | Chicago's First Excalibur BBS! 8 bits forever | InterNet Address: sy...@wincity.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrKsoft · 2017-09-25 16:01 Can confirm that the software on the system was in fact registered to his name. Still trying some things to see if I can get the drive running long enough to image it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mikeleemm · 2017-09-25 16:05 Would be interesting, Chicagoland BBS history is always cool. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2017-09-25 19:04 Totally cool though. Where did you happen upon it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrKsoft · 2017-09-25 19:12 I bought it a few weeks ago at Vintage Computer Festival Midwest from a vendor that had a bunch of random untested PCs. To be honest I actually picked it up just for the massive AT case, since they are getting harder to find, but the boards seem solid so I will probably fit new drives and run it mostly as-is (I did have to add a video card as it was missing one, and a sound card was never fitted judging by Windows having a PC speaker sound driver installed-- scared the crap out of me when it went off!). I'll have a nice bit of history to go along with the system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2017-09-25 19:24 Very much - if you feel like it (or I could if you don't), try contacting Chuck on Facebook. I did a quick search and found a few with his name on it, including one in IT but living somewhere else. (God, I AM a stalker). Even if he doesn't care about his BBS anymore he may want to know random internet people are talking about him. lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2017-09-25 19:28 > Win-dy City Windows I also found this slashdot comment. lol https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=22332&cid=2396696 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mikeleemm · 2017-09-25 19:30 I think that was a different BBS that existed earlier, lol... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2017-09-25 19:49 heheh Could be. Maybe why the difference in spelling? Win-dy City vs Windy City :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2017-09-25 21:38 if there's people's personal info and emails on it i wouldnt include it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dirkt · 2017-09-26 07:09 If it is a *really* old MFM drive (unlikely with 330MB, but who knows, it's a 386): I learned recently that if the stepper motor has an exposed bearing, you can "repair" the problem with a few drops of oil on the bearing, see [here]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UJ0YE1a1Fs). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eclectro · 2017-09-26 11:20 >I lost the first hard drive when setting it up for imaging. I can see the drive itself, but no data whatsoever, Don't throw it away, the data is very likely recoverable and could be put on another similar (likely ide) era hard drive. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eclectro · 2017-09-26 11:23 I think IDE was becoming prevalent in 386 systems, with MFM generally of the XT or 286 generation. Ahh a lot of memories. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrKsoft · 2017-09-26 11:26 IDE drives. The problem drive is an ST1400A. The arm seems to be slightly off alignment, it is grinding up against the spindle when it parks in the center so it back some ungodly awful noise. Everything seems to be moving ok other than that. It is identified by the system and everything but it can't get anything off the drive, no partitions or data or anything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eclectro · 2017-09-26 11:27 >Anyway, I figure that it's not often that a BBS essentially frozen in time pops up like this and I want to preserve this somehow for anyone interested. Truly the case. This may be a once in a lifetime find considering how nearly all old computer equipment is thrown out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrKsoft · 2017-09-26 12:13 I'm keeping it around just in case. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kirkman14 · 2017-10-04 03:00 Yeah, I second this. No matter what state you think the drive is in, your best bet is to get it to Jason. He's already added some preserved BBSes to archive.org in years past.