[Coco] Program Wanted (no more BBS's!!??)

[Merv Curley]

On Tuesday 02 January 2007 13:56, Leon Howell wrote:
> > Doesn't have to be a sad day, nor no more BBS's. The internet is faster,
> > but I bet if you had a real BBS running on its own phone line you'd have
> > people calling all day.
>
> I've thought about doing just that. There appear to be two huge bbs
> programs on rtsi and some little ones. Whitch one is best, and what are the
> differences? There's also a ton of support software there, but what bbs is
> it all for?
>
Well towards the end, RiBBS [OS-9} was the most used as far as I know. I may 
have had one of the last in operation.  The chap who maintained RiBBS, lived 
100 km down the highway from here and we had many conversations about his 
plans for it. I have a few mod's here which never made it to public release. 
I was working on updating the doc's, but finally there didn't seem any point.

A few years back, a chap set up a BBS which I think we tel'netted to, and 
after a short flurry I believe it died.  Sorry but IMHO the BBS idea has had 
it's day unless it is run on the Internet.  This forum gets more use than any 
BBS will, I do believe. Dennis is pretty lenient about what transpires here. 
The Forums at Coco3.com serve pretty well the same purpose. NO?

> > With flat rate long distance, calling from across the country wouldn't be
> > a problem at all!
>
> IMHO the hardest part would be affording a second phone line, but that
> shouldn't be too much. Then there's getting a second SCSI drive, then
> getting it to work...<grumble>...but that's for another thread.
>
Our Telco used to have an option where you could have up to 3 numbers on one 
line, cost me $4 a month for one # for the BBS. I had a nice little device 
which decoded the rings and directed the call to the BBS or the house phones. 
Not too inconvenient when the calls were only 1 or two a day. At the end 1 
per month.

> The second hardest part would be manitaining a high speed dialup
> connection. The electricity out here is about the worst I've ever seen,
> even in good weather. The phone lines aren't much better, probably worse.
> Of course we have 300 baud, and it should work, but shouldn't a 4.0 mhz
> 6309 handle 9600? Why settle for less because AT&T has forgotten us, out
> here in the woods?

That line noise will be a killer unless modems have drastically improved.  
9600 would be a minimum, have you ever sat and watched letters print to the 
screen at 300 baud?  A novelty in the early 1980's, now just impossibly slow.
The money we sent to Compuserve and Delphi for 300 baud would buy a lot of 
groceries.

Have fun talking about it tho'.
 
-- 
Merv Curley
Toronto, Ont. Can

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