MBBS v6.25 and Tele-Arena 5.6d Gold on 486/66DX2
reddit / bbs

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gaetanzo · 2022-10-06 13:49

I have been working to bring my old BBS back on close to original
hardware.   When loading Tele-Arena 5.6d the "System Loading" for from
\~2% to a consistent 70+ percent.  I know this is a long shot but has
anyone else run TA on older hardware?  I don't believe I was running a
Pentium class machine when I was running TA so I'm a bit surprised
that TA is using so much of the system processing.   This is MajorBBS
v6.25 on DOS 6.22, 486/66DX2 w/64MB of RAM.

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OrganicPrinciple130 · 2022-10-06 14:10

I used to run a Wildcat 4.x, I miss it.

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soobardo · 2022-10-06 14:14

I recall having the same issue with Vmware, you might want to run the
TSR [FFCLOSE.COM](https://FFCLOSE.COM) or DOSIDLE.EXE prior to
spawning the BBS (not sure which is best)

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wndrbr3d · 2022-10-06 17:30

Could be a bad sector on the disk. When TA loads it parses a TON of
data from the msg files. If not a bad sector, something with parsing
the data would be my guess.

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gaetanzo · 2022-10-06 17:32

Yeah, it takes a VERY long time to load  up which has always been the
case.  The strange part is how it is the only piece of software that
slows the system down to the point where it's almost unusable.  It
sits at the SYSOP screen at +75% with no one logged in.

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Wizardlander · 2022-12-02 08:37

I used to administer a MajorBBS setup in Columbus, Ohio. Tele-Arena
was absolutely famous for being a very poorly written resource hog. A
guy who used to help run it with me commented (I think correctly) that
Tele-Arena relied very heavily on -- I forget the name of it now, but
the resource/style files that MajorBBS meant to be used for simpler
and leaner purposes. Probably because, my C programmer friend noted,
the author of that game just did not know how to program nearly as
well as design. He noted that most of the game content was actually
stored in those darned files. I believed him, too, because that game
dragged the system down every time there was a reset. Took bloody
forever. So I'm not surprised to hear TA is doing that still.

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gaetanzo · 2022-12-02 11:34

Thank you for this reply!  What a cool bit of history.  I was shocked
at how poorly it performed with a 486 66DX .. the system becomes
almost unusable.  Having only generally used MBBS in emulation you
forget for fast everything is now.  It really takes forever to load
and like I said was crushing the system.  I ended up moving to a
Pentium II and it is now playable without crushing the entire system.

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Wizardlander · 2022-12-10 06:11

Glad that worked out for you! Yes, Tele-Arena was like a crack
addiction to a certain portion of the user base at that time. Once the
system was up/rebooted, it didn't slow the system down. It was just
that TA murders the boot sequence.