Subj : Re: Opus-CBCS - any boards online?
To   : K9zw
From : AKAcastor
Date : Wed May 29 2024 10:10 am

 AK> Does anybody know of Opus-CBCS BBSes online?
 AK> 
 AK> I am interested in Opus for multiple reasons.  Maximus is inspired by
 AK> Opus.  The first BBS I called, and the one I picked up Fidonet mail
 AK> from, ran Opus (with FrontDoor).  And Pride Month is just around the
 AK> corner!
 AK> 
 AK> If there are any Opus boards online today, I'd love to check them out.

 k> Likewise so would I.

When we find that surviving Opus board, it's gonna be busier than it has been in decades!  :)

 k> In the day I found running an OPUS CBCS system rather 
 k> easy compared to the sysop-distancing of the 
 k> contemporary BBS software packages.
 k> Some may be that things were just that much simpler back 
 k> then, security largely on the "honor system", mostly a 
 k> bot-less world, and I had a different mindset of youth?

Do you recall the other BBS packages you would have considered at the time?  I get the impression that Opus was most popular with hobby/free board,s and sysops with commercial aspirations tended to use paid BBS packages.

 k> Whatever it was I found OPUS a more rewarding sysop experience than Fido, 
 k> and ran it until I shut the first version of SPOT down 
 k> about 1992/3 when sysops were being held responsible for 
 k> their user's mischief.

Would that have been the same era of the Secret Service raid of Steve Jackson Games (March 1990)?  I got online around 1993 and remember reading a lot of discussion on what sysops' liabilities were, by the time I was around I think it had started to calm and then soon the focus shifted to the internet and it was a whole new world.

 k> I had a couple unrepentent 
 k> trolls who thought it cute to upload bad files, troll 
 k> message threads and generally be about as aweful as they 
 k> could get.  Was an easy decision to cut out the costs of 
 k> a second phone line and shut down my OPUS board.  Let 
 k> someone else deal with the miscreants and foot the bill. 

That seems like a story shared by a lot of sysops.  Glad you returned later. :)

 k> I don't think there was much awareness of that gay 
 k> driver behind BBSes out here in flyover country.  To be 
 k> honest many sysops were chasing warze and junior hacker 
 k> things, low level smut and crap like that, or if they 
 k> were more into the technology they basically wanted a 
 k> way to communicate to away places.

I think that matches my experience when I was a teenager and sysop in the 90s - looking for warez, text files, and anybody to chat (message) with.

 k> Returning back to OPUS, was the code portable enough to 
 k> work today?  Don't think it was Y2K ready for a start.  
 k> If there a compatible FOSSIL driver today?  

I saw a page yesterday that said the older versions of Opus (1.03, maybe 1.1x?) were not Y2K ready, and it recommended to switch to Opus 1.79 which I think was the last version.  (I think 1.03 was the last version Wynn Wagner III wrote)

If I can find a copy of earlier Opus (1.03 sticks in my mind as the version I used to dial into, but I really am not sure), I'd love to try to get it running.  Maybe the Y2K problems can even be solved, or at least minimized enough to allow the system to operate.

So far the earliest Opus install package I found is 1.10.  I haven't given it a try yet.

 k> Secretely hoping there are running systems out there.

I have a dream of seeing the login screen of Technology Transfer BBS, an Opus system in Luseland, Saskatchewan, Canada in the 80s-90s.  Pretty sure I remember some roman-style columns drawn with high-ASCII block characters.  The sysop, Warren Kreick, passed away a few years back so I think this will stay as a dream.

Besides that specific system I have such fond memories of, it would be great to see Opus running today - those systems took a lot of calls back in the day!


Chris/akacastor

--- Maximus 3.01
 * Origin: Another Millennium - Canada - another.tel (21:1/162)

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