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MajorBBS could handle multiple lines on its own, but you had to handle ALL of the lines with one box. That meant a serial port interface like DigiBoard which pr
by ghewgill 7mo ago
MajorBBS could handle multiple lines on its own, but you had to handle ALL of the lines with one box. That meant a serial port interface like DigiBoard which provided some number (8 or 16 or more) of serial ports that you would connect to modems.
- icedchai 7mo agoI remember DigiBoard from my early ISP days. We attempted to turn a mid 90's-era Linux system (Slackware) into a terminal server. The Linux drivers for DigiBoard weren't quite up to it so we wound up going with Telebit Netblazers, I think.
- kstrauser 7mo agoI think we used RocketPorts for a while until switching to Livingston Portmaster 3s, which you plugged a T-1 into.
- icedchai 7mo agoPortmasters were very popular. Later on the ISP I worked with moved on to Ascend boxes which had digital modems (T1 / PRI lines.) PRI was a huge step. The "individual modem" days were a mess. Each modem had a serial cable, phone line, and power brick. I remember doing some maintenance in one of the POPs. There were at least 100 modems, stacked on a cheap plastic shelving unit. The shelving unit was sagging from the weight and heat of all the modems. This early POP was haphazardly built, so no cable management. I remember a river of phone cables coming out of the wall. The power bricks were also crazy. We had power strips 2 or 3 levels deep, making it a hazard to even get behind the rack without tripping on something.
- kstrauser 7mo agoThey'd already switched to PRIs before I started so I missed out on that "fun", but I can personally vouch to the younguns here that every word you just wrote was completely plausible and likely.
- jacquesm 7mo agoPortmasters were a godsend. They turned piles of gear into clean boxes at a fraction of the heat and mess.
- jamroom 7mo agoYep - I ran a 16 line Major BBS back in the mid 90's in Seattle - used what was called a "Bocaboard" - had 16 serial ports on it - plugged in 16 external USR 28.8 modems. It all ran off of one PC.