Subj : Ancient BBS Programs
To   : All
From : tenser
Date : Mon Jun 12 2023 01:47 am

It's been fun to play with truly ancient "BBS" programs
on retro systems.  Things like `BBOARD` on TOPS-20 or
`forum` or `xforum` on Multics are both very usable, and
also quite interesting in their own right.

`BBOARD` was built on top of the `MM` mail program
written at Columbia University and shipped with TOPS-20;
it's quite capable, and extant versions of TWENEX ship
with some old content (the infamous "Goodbye" message
from the SAIL PDP-10, for instance).

`forum` on Multics is similarly useful; there the metaphor
for a topic is a "meeting".  This was reimplemented for
Unix by the MIT Student Information Processing Board:
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.31.8576&rep=rep1&type
=pdf

One can understand why these did not become widespread
in the hobbyist community: the systems they ran on were
room-sized and cost millions of dollars.  Still, as
conferencing systems they're quite useful now.

And of course, there's PLATO on emulated CDC cyber machines,
CONFER on MTS, etc.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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