3 ms·

> Imagine how much power those things used. 286s or 386s didn't need heatsinks, and since the rear side of shelves are up against the wall, there isn't much he

by yobbo 5y ago

> Imagine how much power those things used. 286s or 386s didn't need heatsinks, and since the rear side of shelves are up against the wall, there isn't much heat generated, or else they would have had problems. > If we ignore the fact that the actual BBS software Actual BBS software (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteAccess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemoteAccess) had "ability to run multiple nodes under Microsoft Windows, Quarterdeck's DESQview and OS/2. RA could also operate over a network or even a combination of network and multitasking operating systems to provide multiple "nodes per station" capabilities." It's possible they could have handled hundreds (maybe thousands?) of simultaneous users and actually needed this capacity.

evanelias 5y ago
The pictured BBS (Software Creations BBS) used PCBoard as its software, and reportedly had 134 nodes: https://en.everybodywiki.com/Software_Creations_(US) https://en.everybodywiki.com/Software_Creations_(US) It was a major shareware distribution site for the biggest shareware game publishers such as Apogee/3dRealms, id software, etc. So a disproportionately high amount of their usage was likely file downloads, which would lead to a different setup than a large BBS dedicated to multi-user text games. Setups depicted as in this photo were extremely rare, and only made sense for highly specialized purposes (e.g. major file distribution hub as in this case). There were very few BBS's with over 100 nodes. I'd wager none with "thousands", that was absolutely unheard of with any traditional commercial BBS software that you could purchase. By the 90s, large US metro areas tended to have hundreds of hobbyist boards with 1-2 nodes, and a small handful with 50-100 nodes. The large ones were typically either pay-for-access text game/chat/community hubs, or occasionally commercial systems run by companies (file hubs, customer support systems, etc). Sure, you could run multiple nodes of RemoteAccess or PCBoard or whatever on a single PC, if using a multi-tasking OS. But "multiple" here means like 3 or 4 nodes max per PC, at least in the early to mid 90s. Beyond that you'd run out of RAM, because each node was a separate copy of the BBS software exe, relying on file sharing/locking for coordination. It was wasteful of system resources -- the OP's point is absolutely correct here! In contrast, MajorBBS (popular for large text game BBS's) implemented its own multi-tasking / event polling loop, used efficient btree-based storage, etc to handle 50-100 simultaneous users on a single PC in a single process on DOS. In theory it could handle up to 256 nodes, although I don't know of any BBS's that actually got that large. Maybe Metropolis GamePort's BBS, but I vaguely remember they split it into multiple separate systems.
- grujicd 5y ago
  Did these machines had modems inside? That would limit theorethical concurrency to a number of modems that could fit and work together in a single box.
  - yobbo 5y ago
    They almost certainly had expansion cards with multiple serial ports, one for each modem. I imagine there were something like rack-mount modem boxes too.

by yobbo 5y ago

evanelias 5y ago

The pictured BBS (Software Creations BBS) used PCBoard as its software, and reportedly had 134 nodes: https://en.everybodywiki.com/Software_Creations_(US) https://en.everybodywiki.com/Software_Creations_(US) It was a major shareware distribution site for the biggest shareware game publishers such as Apogee/3dRealms, id software, etc. So a disproportionately high amount of their usage was likely file downloads, which would lead to a different setup than a large BBS dedicated to multi-user text games. Setups depicted as in this photo were extremely rare, and only made sense for highly specialized purposes (e.g. major file distribution hub as in this case). There were very few BBS's with over 100 nodes. I'd wager none with "thousands", that was absolutely unheard of with any traditional commercial BBS software that you could purchase. By the 90s, large US metro areas tended to have hundreds of hobbyist boards with 1-2 nodes, and a small handful with 50-100 nodes. The large ones were typically either pay-for-access text game/chat/community hubs, or occasionally commercial systems run by companies (file hubs, customer support systems, etc). Sure, you could run multiple nodes of RemoteAccess or PCBoard or whatever on a single PC, if using a multi-tasking OS. But "multiple" here means like 3 or 4 nodes max per PC, at least in the early to mid 90s. Beyond that you'd run out of RAM, because each node was a separate copy of the BBS software exe, relying on file sharing/locking for coordination. It was wasteful of system resources -- the OP's point is absolutely correct here! In contrast, MajorBBS (popular for large text game BBS's) implemented its own multi-tasking / event polling loop, used efficient btree-based storage, etc to handle 50-100 simultaneous users on a single PC in a single process on DOS. In theory it could handle up to 256 nodes, although I don't know of any BBS's that actually got that large. Maybe Metropolis GamePort's BBS, but I vaguely remember they split it into multiple separate systems.

grujicd 5y ago
Did these machines had modems inside? That would limit theorethical concurrency to a number of modems that could fit and work together in a single box.
- yobbo 5y ago
  They almost certainly had expansion cards with multiple serial ports, one for each modem. I imagine there were something like rack-mount modem boxes too.