Acorn / BBC based BBS systems

[brianmartin_2001]

It has long been an ambition of mine ( since I was about 13 )
to create and run a Bulletin Board on my ModelB.

Life and lack of money obviously got in the way back then but having returned to retro fun I again have the desire. Trying to assess how much interest there is among those who use dialup still and would find excitement logging on to a board running on original hardware. My feeling is sort of " if you build it they will come" sorta thing , however I could be fantasizing.

With systems like CCL4 (amazingly still around)
There are pages I ve found with ads from the many Viewdata or Acorn based Boards available back then from the late eighties onwards. I have even been astounded to find this link
showing boards in Hong Kong and Germany. There were several I think in the Netherlands also.

https://8bs.nerdoftheherd.com/8BS57-1/content/2-bbs/

Does anyone recall every visiting any of these. Many iof them likely Arch based but some maybe weren't. There were plenty that existed earlier obviously OBBS1, the Gnome at Home, Haven and several others.

This was a very lively seen and I regret I missed a lot of it. My early experience was really just with Prestel.

How many of you out there still have a nostalgia itch for this stuff and would a Viewdata board running on a Beeb be of interest to visit regularly if it began to thrive?

Viewdata has a sort of cartoon magic I think , seemed to cast a spell in my young mind at the time so I feel really drawn to it.
There is a large Teletext Viewdata community already I know. it's an oddity that there's not more boards and other places that exist considering the ( I believe ) latent interest.

Hence my question above.

Cheers

[brianmartin_2001]

lol... here's me thinking I would be inundated with interest from potential
visitors to my long hoped for BBS.

Seems I was kidding myself there was an audience... I have a few interested
contacts in the BBS world as is although they are not Beeb users (mainly RISC OS or PC guys).
I will soldier on .

[BigEd]

There might yet be interest. This is a new subforum, and a new thread with no replies might not show up for everyone - some people browse by Active Topics. Wait and see!

[Steamputer]

Hi,

I'd be interested as I'm vaguely thinking about doing something similar and I don't even have a Beeb yet! I'll be wanting to complicate things further by making elements of the board, specifically mail/messages, available over the air by packet radio. On the other hand, I've no particular notion about dial-up, primarily because I don't have a landline and if I've understood what I've been reading correctly, they're effectively going to be phased out in the UK in favour of VOIP hookups.

In terms of access, telnet would appear to be the solution, I realise it doesn't really fulfil the vintage aesthetic but if the infrastructure to support that is on the way out, what can you do? And please don't answer that with something concerning setting up local private exchanges using military fieldphone equipment (with potential for over the air links via radio) because you'll only give me more expensive ideas than I have already!

[brianmartin_2001]

thanks for your response ...I'd be interested in how you get with that..
I assume you've seen John Newcombe's recent effort with radio messaging ..
Is this the kind of thing you want to create?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wc62ZD7ZWI

Incidentally my landline has recently moved to VOIP and modem use is actually
fine and unaffected albeit having to alter some modulation settings on my modem.
I know several folk who still enjoy dialup so I have a guaranteed couple of visitors.
How frequent the visits will be is the obvious question though.

BM

[Steamputer]

I'll need to find a machine before I can do anything, and I'll doubtless be looking for help at every stage, but I usually (eventually) achieve what I want to with projects like this, even if only briefly!

[stuslayer]

I'm a novice when it comes to all this stuff - I was at primary school from 1985-92, and our school had one Beeb. I had a CPC464 at home that I played games on and printed out the occasional homework, before I got an A3010 for high school. So most of this stuff passed me by. Nowadays, I find it totally cool and fun, but I'm learning it as I go.

I have my Beeb (just this evening!) set up with a ESP8266 wifi modem, and have accessed the Telstar service (so cool, surfing a little corner of the 'net with a computer made in 1983!!!), so I don't even know if a BBS like you are thinking of doing would be accessible via the connection I have? If it is, and there are instructions on how to connect, I'll come and visit for sure

[brianmartin_2001]

Thanks for your response ... finding BBS software is the really difficult bit but there is a kind fella
who is working on that for me. Will initially be dial up for sure but I have a cunning plan
to try and engineer a Telnet setup .. I don't know if it is possible but I will hopefully discover
one way or another. And yes I agree, the Comms side of this retro stuff is really compelling. It really brought
me back to it with some energy. Congrats on getting setup and I will keep you posted on how I progress.

BM

[Winston]

I'm pretty sure the Gnome@Home ran on a network of BBC Micros back in the day - I wonder if the software is available that ran that?

[brianmartin_2001]

Gnome at Home I believe ran on Autonomic Systems , which I was kindly given
a copy of by a notable BBS software creator from yesteryear.
Yeah it utilized Econet so you could have multiple connections. The software I have
you can also set up for a standalone Beeb as well as a network ..
I've played around with it but I haven't gotten very far.. It's hard to tell how it's
built up in terms of what the directories do etc. I would need some expert help
to get to the bottom of it ... I have been hoping to contact Glyn Phillips or Mel Pullen
from Soft Machinery but I haven't had any success so far.

[josgrp]

I also received a copy from someone.
But it is a running system and there's no documentation.
I want to use it to revive Girotel. This was a viewdata-based online banking system from the Dutch Postbank.
With CommunITel I can do something similar. But I am looking for support for Response Frames.
I guess your copy is not exactly the same as mine. So I suggest to exchange our copies.
But I don't know how to do this on this forum.

[brianmartin_2001]

I have sent you a PM ...

Brian

[brianmartin_2001]

Let me know if you are able to read the PM.

[BigEd]

(A very new user will be able to read a PM but not able to reply)

[danielj]

I'd really strongly encourage you to share these with the community - otherwise they just end up lost on people's hard discs. We can ensure that they remain available for people to study in the future.

[brianmartin_2001]

That is not a problem especially if it helps advice or documentation to surface that would enable
getting it working.

[danielj]

Absolutely - you can post a zip on the forum or email me and I'll get it up somewhere sensible.

[gavinlew]

I also have a boxed copy of Communitel here , as I wanted todo the same (time permitting)

[danielj]

I also have a boxed copy of Communitel here , as I wanted todo the same (time permitting)

Lots on communitel on flaxcottage, including source code:
https://www.flaxcottage.com/educational ... efault.asp

Communitel speaks to a tandata or communitel modem, which isn't hayes compatible. I have uploaded what I've got to archive.org:
https://archive.org/details/tandata-tm-512

[marrold]

Hi Brian,

I'd be interested in using such a system, I just don't check the forum as often as I should! If you make it available over the internet I'm sure people would end up using it. From what I see online Telstar gets a fairly steady stream of people checking it out.

I've started gathering the bits for such a system ( Namely the co-pro and SCSI adapter to get a Model B to act as a Level 4(?) File Server ) and put things on hold whilst looking for suitable modems. I've recently acquired some modems from 1990 which is a little late but the closest I've got so far, and they look the part.

Progress is slow, but the long term aspiration is to demo a BBC Micro based Viewdata BBS at event, over proper phonelines with proper hardware.


Cheers
Matthew

[brianmartin_2001]

"Slow progress" being all pervasive in this particular project.

It still astounds me how what was a lively, thriving scene in the 80's to early 90's
has just effectively shrivelled up and almost died.

The software , (nevermind any that still works) is at an availability level below scarcity and compatible working modems even more so.

I expect that is the core reason why no one has kept the standalone Beeb based BBS going
when there were so many around in yesteryear. When dialup internet arrived everyone moved
onto the new hardware almost overnight and the 8bit comms stuff was just jettisoned without sentiment .. It just all happened so fast no one seemed to care about what they'd built
before. They were all just too excited by what had newly arrived.

Obviously I am biased as I still have great memories from that time and early the Internet (although exhilarating) wasn't as earth shaking for me as my first phone call to Prestel. It's kind of tragic we are effectively rummaging through the bins trying to resurrect something that shouldn't have been lost through thoughtlessness all those years ago.

It's really great that things like CCL4 and Telstar are still here to remind us of things but even they had to move on to newer hardware. An artisan BBS is what would really get the juices flowing for me anyway , hopefully through perseverance we can eventually get there.

[nelgin]

While not running on a BBC, my BBS does have an experimental, in development viewdata interface.

endofthelinebbs.com port 6502

Or you can try one of the dialup lines.

https://www.endofthelinebbs.com/?page=0 ... &thread=25