4 ms·

Found a higher res version of this image on the website for 3D Realms (formerly Apogee back in the day): https://3drealms.com/news/3d-realms-website-turns-20/ h

Found a higher res version of this image on the website for 3D Realms (formerly Apogee back in the day): https://3drealms.com/news/3d-realms-website-turns-20/ https://3drealms.com/news/3d-realms-website-turns-20/ Apparently they ran PCBoard [1] for their BBS software. I know a fair amount about BBS software, and had no idea PCBoard could support this many nodes. Typically high node count boards of this time ran MajorBBS [2] instead, since it did its own multi-tasking and allowed you to have a crazy number of nodes / modems on a single PC! However, that also meant it couldn't run typical DOS door games, instead opting for its own plugin/game SDK. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCBoard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCBoard [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Major_BBS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Major_BBS

xorcist 5y ago
Not sure about PCBoard specifically but most of the major BBS software supported DESQview and called the provided software interrupt to relinquish time. So it was usually possible to run more than one node per computer, especially when using 16550 UARTs which had a buffer and didn't spin the CPU for every character. It was great to have a local node too on the computer so the SysOp could log in at the same time as users. That was a great use case even if you didn't have multiple phone lines. OS/2 took over DESQview's role pretty quickly, after version 2.0 came out. Porting BBS software was easy and many did it. The was even FOSSIL drivers available (a better performing serial driver than what the BIOS provided).
- evanelias 5y ago
  For sure, but most of those multi-line boards running on top of DESQview typically maxed out at 2-4 nodes per machine. In comparison, MajorBBS could handle an insane 50+ nodes on a single machine running DOS, as the BBS software implemented its own event loop and multi-tasking. The company behind it (Galacticomm) sold specialized hardware so that sysops could hook up all those modems to one box. OS/2 never became very popular in the BBS scene in my area, at least by the time I got into the scene (~1993). My impression is that it had mixed success in the BBS world as a whole. For one data point, I do know the author of Synchronet invested a lot of time into a native OS/2 port and then his company promptly went bankrupt! Later in the 90s, BBS software started to be ported natively to Win32, including some commercial options: Wildcat WINServer, MajorBBS WorldGroup v3, etc.
  - justinlloyd 5y ago
    That's interesting about the insane number of nodes on a single box. I didn't know MajorBBS could do that. I suspect though that it wasn't handling full bandwidth file transfers for all 50+ connections simultaneously?
    - evanelias 5y ago
      Good question! I honestly have no idea. The handful of MajorBBS boards in my area were pay-for-access systems focused on multi-player gaming and chat, since those were the main features where a 50-line community BBS has a huge advantage over all the free hobbyist 1-2 line boards. The message base and file download sections of MajorBBS systems in my area were pretty sparse. Actually, your point likely explains why the BBS in the OP was set up the way it was: Software Creations BBS was a major shareware file distribution hub, so a much greater focus on file transfers.
      - justinlloyd 5y ago
        So here was an interesting anecdote from years past. During the heyday of CompuServe and its ilk, living in the UK where long distance calls, e.g. greater than about 7 miles radius, was prohibitively expensive, and with the introduction of a flat rate single payment of around 20p for a local call sometime in the late 80's or early 90's, no matter how long the call lasted, the trick to doing downloads was to call into a local compuserve number at 2400bps, which was charged at a lower rate than their faster lines, put all of the stuff you wanted into your "download basket", e.g. files, news, email, etc. Then hang up, and place a long distance call to one of their 9600bps lines to make the download as quickly as you could. There was also the trick of making every call a local call (when British Telecom still used the old crossbar systems rather than the newer switching networks) if you knew how to dial all the single digit area codes between you and the number you wanted to call. Pentyrch (the town) to Penarth (the town) was not a local call, at a distance of about 20 miles, but you could dial 5 for Radyr (about 2 miles), pause, then dial 3 for Fairwater (another 2+ miles), and so forth, until you reached the local exchange in Penarth, and then could send the actual phone number. Unfortunately each area, to dial another exchange, had different numbers, so Pentyrch to Radyr might be 5, but Taffs Well to Radyr might be 9. People on BBS's would exchange area code lists and exchange routing lists like they were precious commodities. Dialing through to London over a great distance using single digit exchange codes wasn't possible though, because London had a more modern telephone system, and you were limited by the number of digits you could send before the first exchange system would timeout and drop your call.
technothrasher 5y ago
> DOS door games I learned about programming DOS comms, interrupts, TSRs, etc as a young teenager by writing a shareware door support library for PCBoard and QuickBBS in Turbo Pascal called TriDoor. It was only mildly successful as shareware (I think I made a total of about $300) but it taught me a lot and I made a bunch of friends along the way. I later embarked on writing a MUD like BBS package, but went off to college before it was finished. As soon as I had access to the net, the BBS got way less interesting for me.
- evanelias 5y ago
  Very cool! I vaguely recall the name TriDoor. I became a door author in the very late days of the scene (late 90s into early 00s, as most boards started transitioning from dialup to telnet). I opted for C++ though and purchased a copy of the excellent OpenDoors door kit so I never had to worry about the DOS comms side of things myself :) My games were also multi-user, the most popular being a MUD that eventually ran on a few hundred boards. Developing a MUD that could run as a DOS-based BBS door game was pretty challenging, since each user had their own copy of the exe running (due to how doors inherently worked), but DOS didn't provide IPC primitives. So I shunted all real gameplay processing to a single one of those processes (whoever entered the game first) and the others just communicated with that one via shared append-only files. If that player exited the game, there would be a brief pause while the next lowest node number took over gameplay processing. I don't remember what happened if that next-lowest-node player also left at the exact same time, but probably the game froze/crashed, lol. I later ported my engine to Win32 using a more sane architecture (multi-threaded background process using real win32 IPC to communicate with the door processes), but like you I rapidly lost interest in the BBS world before doing much with it.

xorcist 5y ago

Not sure about PCBoard specifically but most of the major BBS software supported DESQview and called the provided software interrupt to relinquish time. So it was usually possible to run more than one node per computer, especially when using 16550 UARTs which had a buffer and didn't spin the CPU for every character. It was great to have a local node too on the computer so the SysOp could log in at the same time as users. That was a great use case even if you didn't have multiple phone lines. OS/2 took over DESQview's role pretty quickly, after version 2.0 came out. Porting BBS software was easy and many did it. The was even FOSSIL drivers available (a better performing serial driver than what the BIOS provided).

evanelias 5y ago
For sure, but most of those multi-line boards running on top of DESQview typically maxed out at 2-4 nodes per machine. In comparison, MajorBBS could handle an insane 50+ nodes on a single machine running DOS, as the BBS software implemented its own event loop and multi-tasking. The company behind it (Galacticomm) sold specialized hardware so that sysops could hook up all those modems to one box. OS/2 never became very popular in the BBS scene in my area, at least by the time I got into the scene (~1993). My impression is that it had mixed success in the BBS world as a whole. For one data point, I do know the author of Synchronet invested a lot of time into a native OS/2 port and then his company promptly went bankrupt! Later in the 90s, BBS software started to be ported natively to Win32, including some commercial options: Wildcat WINServer, MajorBBS WorldGroup v3, etc.
- justinlloyd 5y ago
  That's interesting about the insane number of nodes on a single box. I didn't know MajorBBS could do that. I suspect though that it wasn't handling full bandwidth file transfers for all 50+ connections simultaneously?
  - evanelias 5y ago
    Good question! I honestly have no idea. The handful of MajorBBS boards in my area were pay-for-access systems focused on multi-player gaming and chat, since those were the main features where a 50-line community BBS has a huge advantage over all the free hobbyist 1-2 line boards. The message base and file download sections of MajorBBS systems in my area were pretty sparse. Actually, your point likely explains why the BBS in the OP was set up the way it was: Software Creations BBS was a major shareware file distribution hub, so a much greater focus on file transfers.
    - justinlloyd 5y ago
      So here was an interesting anecdote from years past. During the heyday of CompuServe and its ilk, living in the UK where long distance calls, e.g. greater than about 7 miles radius, was prohibitively expensive, and with the introduction of a flat rate single payment of around 20p for a local call sometime in the late 80's or early 90's, no matter how long the call lasted, the trick to doing downloads was to call into a local compuserve number at 2400bps, which was charged at a lower rate than their faster lines, put all of the stuff you wanted into your "download basket", e.g. files, news, email, etc. Then hang up, and place a long distance call to one of their 9600bps lines to make the download as quickly as you could. There was also the trick of making every call a local call (when British Telecom still used the old crossbar systems rather than the newer switching networks) if you knew how to dial all the single digit area codes between you and the number you wanted to call. Pentyrch (the town) to Penarth (the town) was not a local call, at a distance of about 20 miles, but you could dial 5 for Radyr (about 2 miles), pause, then dial 3 for Fairwater (another 2+ miles), and so forth, until you reached the local exchange in Penarth, and then could send the actual phone number. Unfortunately each area, to dial another exchange, had different numbers, so Pentyrch to Radyr might be 5, but Taffs Well to Radyr might be 9. People on BBS's would exchange area code lists and exchange routing lists like they were precious commodities. Dialing through to London over a great distance using single digit exchange codes wasn't possible though, because London had a more modern telephone system, and you were limited by the number of digits you could send before the first exchange system would timeout and drop your call.

technothrasher 5y ago

> DOS door games I learned about programming DOS comms, interrupts, TSRs, etc as a young teenager by writing a shareware door support library for PCBoard and QuickBBS in Turbo Pascal called TriDoor. It was only mildly successful as shareware (I think I made a total of about $300) but it taught me a lot and I made a bunch of friends along the way. I later embarked on writing a MUD like BBS package, but went off to college before it was finished. As soon as I had access to the net, the BBS got way less interesting for me.

evanelias 5y ago
Very cool! I vaguely recall the name TriDoor. I became a door author in the very late days of the scene (late 90s into early 00s, as most boards started transitioning from dialup to telnet). I opted for C++ though and purchased a copy of the excellent OpenDoors door kit so I never had to worry about the DOS comms side of things myself :) My games were also multi-user, the most popular being a MUD that eventually ran on a few hundred boards. Developing a MUD that could run as a DOS-based BBS door game was pretty challenging, since each user had their own copy of the exe running (due to how doors inherently worked), but DOS didn't provide IPC primitives. So I shunted all real gameplay processing to a single one of those processes (whoever entered the game first) and the others just communicated with that one via shared append-only files. If that player exited the game, there would be a brief pause while the next lowest node number took over gameplay processing. I don't remember what happened if that next-lowest-node player also left at the exact same time, but probably the game froze/crashed, lol. I later ported my engine to Win32 using a more sane architecture (multi-threaded background process using real win32 IPC to communicate with the door processes), but like you I rapidly lost interest in the BBS world before doing much with it.