How were BBS’s made before pre-fab software packages? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I_hate_mahjong · 2023-11-27 23:24 I’m learning python, partially since I thought knowing how to program would give me some insight into how to script the BBS software I see out there. Loving it! But I’m wondering, if I were to make my own program that could basically do what a BBS currently does in my terminal, would it be possible for people to connect to running instances of it? How were BBS made before software like mystic came around? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Toothygrin1231 · 2023-11-28 00:12 Home brew coding, baby. The only way to fly. The citadel scene certainly was anyway. I was a dabbler in the citclone Inner Sanctum for the Atari ST. Never really got it to where I felt comfortable releasing it to the world, but I felt proud had my own details in my users’ world. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grixit · 2023-11-28 00:27 first bbs i had was WWIV. I got that by downloading the source code, which was pascal, from another bbs, and compiling it. Later i switched to QBBS, for which i just downloaded an executable. since python is an interpreted language, you'll need to make sure that your system has enough power to handle the number of instances you allow. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Otherwise-Willow6904 · 2023-11-28 00:57 I think very few people actually wrote their own BBS software. Most of us used a package such as Remote Access or such. Custom it to fit your needs. If you can write your own that's great. Enjoy the experience. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wndrbr3d · 2023-11-28 01:28 The BBS Documentary covers this in the first episode, with a portion focusing on Ward Christensen and Randy Suess with CBBS. The entire first episode is great, but reenforces what others are saying here in that the first BBS software back in the 70s and 80s were all home brew because nothing like it existed at the time. Episode 3, "Make it pay" covers the rise of commercialized BBS software packages (Wildcat!, Major BBS, etc.) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddbe9OuJLU&list=PL7nj3G6Jpv2G6Gp6NvN 1kUtQuW8QshBWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddbe9OuJLU&list=PL7nj 3G6Jpv2G6Gp6NvN1kUtQuW8QshBWE) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- headzoo · 2023-11-28 01:43 Happy (10th) cake day! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dperry324 · 2023-11-28 02:50 You think this is confusing? Wait until you realize that the first bbses weren't connected by telnet. We all had to have a dedicated phone line and a modem. Modem programming was a bitch. There weren't any libraries for it in those days so you had to write your own modem handling routines. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RolandMT32 · 2023-11-28 02:55 I don't know what languages Mystic is developed in, but it seemed to me that Mystic is just like any other piece of software I've used since the early 90s, in that you download it and set it up and run it.. I'm not sure what you mean by "before pre-fab software packages"? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RolandMT32 · 2023-11-28 02:57 Yes, I myself used Remote Access to run my original BBS from 1994 to 2000. There were a lot of other popular BBS packages in my area, such as WWIV, Wildcat, Spitfire, Maximus, Searchlight, T.A.G., and others. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PaulLee420 · 2023-11-28 03:50 Well - some did. WWiV started b/c he wanted software. And CBBS was the 1st bbs software. I think SOME legacy BBS softwares were written by folks who wanted their own - but I agree with you mostly. Synchronet was written to jump into the BBS market - and many others, too... whether monetary or PD. This is a good conversation - I'd like to hear what others experienced back in that day... and what this new wave is wanting to create today. All is valuable - OP, I hope you keep poking around the BBS bear. It's a fun community!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PaulLee420 · 2023-11-28 03:55 Also - its neat to see how many OG BBS rockstars are still right here in these replies. :P dperry, roland - its neat sharing with the newest gen... Keep writing, OP - maybe yer the next Mystic!!! :P ---------------------------------------------------------------------- grixit · 2023-11-28 04:34 oh? shoulda put it on my calendar. Thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wintrmte · 2023-11-28 04:43 Oh wow such great memories. My first BBS was one I wrote in Basic on the Conmodore 64 with a 300 baud modem, over time other software came out like HAL, 6485 zbBs but the ultimate for me was C-NET, I was 14 at the time it came out and had saved up lawn mowing money to buy my first commercial BBS software, C-NET DS2 on the Commodore 64. Damn.. good times. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ten-oh-four · 2023-11-28 05:23 Nice username! For the record Mystic is written in FreePascal ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-11-28 05:37 [removed] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2023-11-28 05:59 A Linux machine can run the standard telnetd to handle logins and then rather than running bash, can run any script you specify as the user's login shell. I'm not saying you should do this but if you want to mess around, this is the quickest way. Supposing you put /path/to/pythonscript.py as the login shell for a user you create -- This will run, rather than dropping the user to a prompt. Because the shell is not run here, any attempt to abort the script (you'd want to trap things like CTRL-C, but say you didn't), will dump the connection. The same thing will happen if the script shits the bed. Now, from here it gets tempting to build a whole BBS this way, and you get lazy and you say, well, for posting a message, let's use nano or vi, or let's use less as the pager. The problem is those apps - less is the best example - have ways of running a shell which are insecure. With nano, I think you can disable all of these by command line switches, but unsure if that is possible with less. Still if you wanted to make a "telnet to my server and play an online game" kind of thing, and you didn't rely on external apps, you could probably do this. I don't know what, if any security risks (beyond lack of encryption) exist by using telnetd this way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I_hate_mahjong · 2023-11-28 13:52 I’m glad to know it’s possible! And now that I’m seeing so much written about pascal, I understand why Mystic (made using python) has a pascal-like language used for its configuration script. I’m being a bit “idealistic.” But I’d love to write a program that could dedicate a pi zero 2 w into a telnet BBS host. I’m glad you listed these security and possibilities! I’m a “terminal Linux” guy, but not an expert. I’m in the early stages of learning python but a lot feels like it’s becoming possible. I have 4 months left on the class, but I’m enjoying it! Got a lot of small projects lined up; and I think this will be my “big” project for before I need to start writing GUI stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I_hate_mahjong · 2023-11-28 13:53 I’m a bit curious to play with the old software to understand it better ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nevarro · 2023-11-28 14:24 Great answer! I own the DVD set of The BBS Documentary and enjoy it :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AcornWhat · 2023-11-28 15:52 Most of the BBS software I used way back was written in Borland Turbo Pascal. Some of the in-between stuff like drivers for letting the BBS talk straight to the UART on the com port was done in C or assembly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- highedutechsup · 2023-11-28 17:26 Pre-fab? LOL BBS's were made from long hours of work coding. The only reason the premade ones became popular was because they did more and cost less (of my time.) The same reason why all software becomes popular. Back then everything was new, and people were basically doing the Robots movie quote, "see a need fill a need." BBS's became a thing when people were using phone lines to communicate, now we use the internet. A comparable thing today would be SSH. The problem is that people are abusive. Back when I started you didn't need a username or password, people were expected to act appropriately. Today we have layers and layers of protection to keep people from doing stupid stuff. The world has changed and there is no going back. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- globalchaosbbs · 2023-11-28 19:24 This is unfortunately true highedutechsup! But there is no real alternative if you want to continue your hobby. In the 90's there were a lot of people in the scene who were good at programming and the scene responded to that. Today we are all 30 years older and it is difficult to find such smart minds who might be able to help a Sysop (if he couldn't do programming). OK.. my fault hahahahahaha ​ But I still love that hobby! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Pinacolada459 · 2023-11-28 19:27 \+1 for mention of Image :) I'm involved (on and off) with its development, [writing documentation](https://pinacolada64.github.io/Im ageBBS3-docs.github.io/). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- globalchaosbbs · 2023-11-28 19:41 I give you a small example: I'm looking for my Wildcat Interactive Server (latest Version) for a Filechecker/File\_ID.DIZ Importer for the Amiga and Atari ST Files, maybe Apple, too. The Programmer of Wildcat has no interest in it. I've told him, that AmiExpress and PcBoard could do this since the beginning of the 90's. (That my first Sysop-time). And a BBS should offer different PC-Systems, besides MS-DOS or Windows, OS/2. Next example and that's what you descripe (the people). There exist from an other Sysop a tool which prevent these "Bad People" to login into the BBS by blocking the IP. And now comes the but... It makes sense to keep these list dynamic. If these people try to "hack" the BBS with the names ADMIN AdminHW and and and, this tool should block this IP for 1 or 2 months. So after this time the IP should be unblocked again. Sounds simple... but obviously hard to implement, cause the programmer didn't think of that as he programmed his tool. So I have to write every IP in the list by myself. I could continue this list ..... And so I say... in the 90's were everything better hahahahahaha The good old days! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- highedutechsup · 2023-11-28 19:56 We all had to be good at programming when you turned your computer on to a command prompt instead of a mouse. I reminisce the old days, I still do programming but it is certainly not as rewarding. I have been thinking about putting a BBS back up just for the retro scene, the problem is that a lot of the technology is still based back in the 70-80's, and suffers the same problems that got a lot of the cool sites shut down back then. _ _ ((___)) [ x x ] \ / (' ') (U) One of the reasons BBS's were so popular was that they had things you could not get anywhere else. Information was free, and the artificial rules society imposes didn't apply. I still remember being 13 and reading CDC publications. If I were to get serious about setting up a modern day bbs, I would setup the "dialup terminal" software to use port knocking, port shifting tcpip stack over tor, but I am not that motivated, as I have to work for a living now, back in my teens in my parents basement I would have been all over it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- highedutechsup · 2023-11-28 20:06 We had a diz checker for ftp sites on windows back in the 90's, I am sure you can find the old exe someplace and script it in. We always used /etc/hosts.deny I am sure it wouldn't be that hard to script something in windows... like turn the ip into a var. New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Block badguy address" -Direction Outbound –LocalPort Any -Protocol TCP -Action Block -RemoteAddress 146.185.220.0/23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dcpanthersfan · 2023-11-28 23:17 On the Commodore most of the BBSes were mostly BASIC with some machine language routines written in for managing modern communications. Color 64 and Supra 128 are two examples. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- scubascratch · 2023-11-28 23:20 In the early 1980s I had a 300 baud modem that couldn’t even answer or dial, it had to be used with a physical telephone. I wanted to run a BBS so bad a hacked up something with relays and resistors to detect the incoming ring signal on some GPIO port on the joystick connector on my Apple 2. It's a miracle i didn't fry the computer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Patient-Tech · 2023-11-28 23:51 I’ve run a headless DOSBOX with OG Renegade. I passed a port through for telnet and it worked great. I’m sure you could pass an actual COM port though if you wanted to hook up a modem and had the physical machine there rather than in the cloud. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Patient-Tech · 2023-11-28 23:54 You can find the Pascal source code for Renegade at http://renegadebbs.info/ It was free/shareware and all is 31337 kids ran it to share all our H/P/A/V and Warez files. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AcornWhat · 2023-11-29 00:05 I think I left the scene shortly before Renegade. I stuck to Fidonet- compatible stuff like Quickbbs and RemoteAccess, and the junk on top like frontends and doors and all that. Blows my mind that I learned Pascal just so I could write my own stuff for the BBS, but 35 years later can't be bothered with configuring much of anything. My development as a coder fell off the radar in 1992. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AtariBBS · 2023-11-29 00:06 Atari Basic - we wrote our own software- bbs programs such as AMIS, FoReM, Carina, Nitelite, Etc all basic code and modified by the SySop. And all still running today! Southernamis.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AtariBBS · 2023-11-29 00:07 https://preview.redd.it/ymbho0dzh63c1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto =webp&s=09d47319db881b175dcfee9def10af7015278166 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- scubascratch · 2023-11-29 01:08 This is way cleaner than me - I had a telephone deconstructed with wires hanging out of it. I may have used a breadboard, hard to remember after 40 years ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I_hate_mahjong · 2023-11-29 13:45 I’ll check that out! I’ve become a little curious about Atari lately! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sdboardgamer · 2023-11-29 16:23 I am doing this with JavaScript and Net. While I was looking around for connection protocols, I bumped into a few Python scripts, and tried one, so I know that it is possible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- raygduncan · 2023-11-29 16:43 Back in the day, I used PCBoard as our customer support BBS for years. It was great. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- myke113 · 2023-11-30 01:00 I wrote my own BBS on a TI-99/4A as a kid, but never released it. I also had one partially done on the Mac in the early 90's, that was never released either. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- myke113 · 2023-11-30 01:01 AT command set FTW! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jstormes · 2023-11-30 04:59 It is so great to walk down these memories. The first BBS I hosted was on a Commodore 64 with a RS-232 adapter card to a Hayse 1200 modem. Yes, I wrote that one in basic with some machine language to manage the serial adapter. The problem was the 1541 disks drives were constantly going out of alignment. Next I got my hands on a PC clone with a 10 Meg hard drive. That one ran a shareware BBS. Don't recall the name. Was big time when I got the second line... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I_hate_mahjong · 2023-11-30 23:35 I’m loving the discussion this has sparked :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AtariBBS · 2023-12-02 01:39 This one def better than the one I used with a 1030 modem.. 3 parts from RadioShack and hairy wires just waiting for that little current to flip the relay and the impulse to the Atari 800xl joystick port for the BBS to answer the call! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thisiszeev · 2023-12-02 17:33 There were a lot of free and commercial options to run your own BBS. I personally developed my own BBS using QBASIC at first and then later ported it to Pascal.