[Coco] Are there any CoCo BBS's out there?

[Mike Pepe]

George's Coco Address wrote:
> 
> 
> Yes, they can and under OS9, the DC modem is /T1 and the Deluxe RS232 
> pak is /T2. I wouldn't try to use the bitbanger. Besides, it's great for 
> printing out data from the BBS useage file.
> 
>  Sometime in the early nineties I attempted to get some interest in a 
> BBS in the Texas Highland Lakes area. I lived in a telephone exchange 
> that allowed me to have direct dialing to two areas that could not dial 
> each other without paying long distance.
>  I used a 512K coco3 and "OS9 Level Two BBS" by Keith J. Alphonso. I had 
> two modems connected to the coco. My RS232 board was/is home brew and 
> has three ports. It would have been four, but I ran out of space on the 
> board I had on hand. The address space to the RS232 ports has room for 
> four. Depending on what's available in your system, you could address 
> some more. However, I seriously doubt that you would need more than two 
> after the surge of curious users  visit a new BBS for the coco. I expect 
> there would be a lot of cocoers trying it out from their PCs and then 
> the interest would drop to only the ones that really enjoy this sort of 
> thing. The internet is hard to beat.
> 
> The objective was to attract the folks from both areas to use my system 
> to communicate without paying long distance.  Should each modem have a 
> user from different areas they could find out who was online and page 
> them. They then could conference. I suppose it could handle more than 
> two users but I only had two phone lines and two modems..
> 
> It did work, but only in testing with a friend. I never was able to get 
> anyone interested.
> 
> I could put it back up for testing and see what would develop. I still 
> have several 2400 baud modems and a 9600 baud modem I can connect to 
> that coco( I have no idea if any of them still work). I still use that 
> coco, including one of the com ports, /T1 to this PC. However, I only 
> have one phone line right now and this PC uses it on a dial-up 
> connection. However, I could make some time available for the BBS for a 
> little fun. To prove if the coco can handle up/downloads on two ports at 
> the same time can be done using this PC and a modem on the phone to 
> another user.
> 
> I could get into this.
> 
> George
> 

Hey, that brings back memories. I hacked together an board with 8 2661 
chips and wrote software to emulate a Ddial system with a CoCo 3. It 
worked. Yes, the CoCo can handle more than one user. However the TCP to 
Serial port idea doesn't necessarily mean one can have "infinite" users 
on the CoCo- it would be one user per physical serial port.

But, regardless, it was fun building a multiuser chat system out of a 
CoCo 3.