I interviewed Rob Sherman the gent behind Southernamis and other Atari BBS's on my podcast a few months ago. He's running emulated Atari 8-bit systems in AWS for these BBS's. Rob also has written some articles on telnet-access retro BBS's in the newly revived Compute's Gazette magazine.
Visiting BBS's that run on actual or emulated hardware can be a nice trip down memory lane for those who were part of the 8-bit BBS community in times past.
For those who still have original hardware, FujiNet is a great way to get it online. Just plugs right into the SIO port and it doesn’t need any external power.
I forget which Atari BBS it was that I used to dial in a lot to, but a buddy of mine ran one and I got to look at the BASIC source code.
IIRC, a large number of single digit constants were stored as variables to save memory since each use of one took up more memory than referencing the variable, and further it used something along the lines of Peano numbers and the fact booleans were represented as numbers to create them. Something like:
10 LET D0 = 0
20 LET D1 = (D0 = D0) <== some boolean that evaluated to true/1. I may have this backwards
30 LET D2 = D1 + D1
40 ...
I forget the details, but when all was said and done, when you ran the BBS there was zero free memory; not a single byte.
BTW, this is about the 8-bit Atari machines, not the more advanced 16-bit Atari ST computers that came later.
I had an Atari 800XL as a kid but had absolutely no access to a dial-up data line. BBS for Atari 8-bits sounds like a nice future-retro to me. The guys who had access to this were very lucky.
It would have been cool to see at the time. I missed this era of BBSing, coming in around 1992-1996 or so as I finished HS and into my early 20's. I also have run a telnet BBS since 2002, but it's in a very broken state for a couple years and just haven't had the time and motivation to get it fixed. Mostly around DOS-based CP437 usage.
I've been wanting to get a generic door service with versions to at least support DOS as well as Commodore 64 (to start) doors with connections over WSS. I'm so green on Commodore emulation though, so that will be fun by the time I retire in a couple decades, I might have something working.
Accessed my first Atari 8-bit BBS as a kid in 1985 with my Atari 800 and 300 baud modem, lucky to upgrade to an Atari 130 XE soon after (also 8-bit). It was a whole different world.
Aside from the glacially slow connection speed, virtually every BBS back then was single line. This meant constant busy signals and endless redialing (pulse dialing, not touch tone!) in an attempt to get through and connect. Daily login time to each BBS was limited so that others could get on. Most BBSs used an upload to download ratio for files/warez in order to block leechers. Phone calls were very expensive back then too! Even calling numbers within your area code (which was subdivided into sections with different rates) carried a per minute charge. The more selective boards required referrals and/or references to have your account accepted.
It was the Wild West back then and truly a great time.
I bought an MPP1000C 300 Baud rate modem for my Atari 800 which connects via joystick port, as a teen, after saving up for months. Some amazing BBSing memories were had.
I interviewed Rob Sherman the gent behind Southernamis and other Atari BBS's on my podcast a few months ago. He's running emulated Atari 8-bit systems in AWS for these BBS's. Rob also has written some articles on telnet-access retro BBS's in the newly revived Compute's Gazette magazine.
Visiting BBS's that run on actual or emulated hardware can be a nice trip down memory lane for those who were part of the 8-bit BBS community in times past.
For those who still have original hardware, FujiNet is a great way to get it online. Just plugs right into the SIO port and it doesn’t need any external power.
This story triggered my recollection of purchasing and reading Boardwatch magazine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardwatch https://archive.org/details/boardwatchmagazine
I forget which Atari BBS it was that I used to dial in a lot to, but a buddy of mine ran one and I got to look at the BASIC source code.
IIRC, a large number of single digit constants were stored as variables to save memory since each use of one took up more memory than referencing the variable, and further it used something along the lines of Peano numbers and the fact booleans were represented as numbers to create them. Something like:
10 LET D0 = 0
20 LET D1 = (D0 = D0) <== some boolean that evaluated to true/1. I may have this backwards
30 LET D2 = D1 + D1
40 ...
I forget the details, but when all was said and done, when you ran the BBS there was zero free memory; not a single byte.
BTW, this is about the 8-bit Atari machines, not the more advanced 16-bit Atari ST computers that came later.
I had an Atari 800XL as a kid but had absolutely no access to a dial-up data line. BBS for Atari 8-bits sounds like a nice future-retro to me. The guys who had access to this were very lucky.
It would have been cool to see at the time. I missed this era of BBSing, coming in around 1992-1996 or so as I finished HS and into my early 20's. I also have run a telnet BBS since 2002, but it's in a very broken state for a couple years and just haven't had the time and motivation to get it fixed. Mostly around DOS-based CP437 usage.
I've been wanting to get a generic door service with versions to at least support DOS as well as Commodore 64 (to start) doors with connections over WSS. I'm so green on Commodore emulation though, so that will be fun by the time I retire in a couple decades, I might have something working.
>The guys who had access to this were very lucky.
Accessed my first Atari 8-bit BBS as a kid in 1985 with my Atari 800 and 300 baud modem, lucky to upgrade to an Atari 130 XE soon after (also 8-bit). It was a whole different world.
Aside from the glacially slow connection speed, virtually every BBS back then was single line. This meant constant busy signals and endless redialing (pulse dialing, not touch tone!) in an attempt to get through and connect. Daily login time to each BBS was limited so that others could get on. Most BBSs used an upload to download ratio for files/warez in order to block leechers. Phone calls were very expensive back then too! Even calling numbers within your area code (which was subdivided into sections with different rates) carried a per minute charge. The more selective boards required referrals and/or references to have your account accepted.
It was the Wild West back then and truly a great time.
If Amiga is more your style, there is a wonderfully maintained Amiga-hosted BBS at absinthebbs.net.
I bought an MPP1000C 300 Baud rate modem for my Atari 800 which connects via joystick port, as a teen, after saving up for months. Some amazing BBSing memories were had.
ATASCII animations FTW!