[attach=1]
I started using computers way back in 1981 when I received a Commodore VIC-20 and 1530 C2N-B Datasette for Christmas. I was only 11 at the time.
I taught myself BASIC and wrote a ton of programs. For my birthday in 1982, I got my first modem - a 300 baud 'acoustically coupled', manual modem plus a starter subscription to Compuserve.
[attach=2]
By Christmas 1983, I begged my parents to buy me a Commodore 64 and a 1541 floppy disc drive. For Christmas of that year, there was three big boxes under the tree - they got me both - plus a 13" color monitor! I was so happy.
I was obsessed with learning everything I could. I dug deeper into programming and bought every book I could find on assembly language for the 6502/6510 CPU. I bought an assembly language compiler called 'Pal' and started writing programs with a mixture of Basic and machine language. I learned every peek and poke address and eventually, I knew that machine inside and out. I bought a used Commodore 1650 modem and began calling local BBS's. The modem was a big step up from the VIC-20 modem since it was a direct-connect modem (no acoustic coupler needed) and it could pulse dial the phone using software.
[attach=3]
By January, 1985 - the Commodore 128 was introduced. A few months later on my birthday, my parents brought one home as a present.
There was a promotion going on where you get a free 1660 'auto modem' with the purchase of a C128. I sent the rebate card in and the modem arrived a few weeks later. I had some experience with using the Commodore 64 to call BBS's, but at this point I decided I wanted to run a BBS of my own. I had a lot of programming experience in Basic and assembly and I didn't like the BBS software that was out at the time. Some of the software I tried was ARB BBS written by Arthur Brock, Color 64 by Greg Pfountz, 6485 Exchange by Ivory Joe, All American BBS by Nickolai Smith, C-Net 64 by Prospective Software, EBBS by Ed Perry, Ivory BBS by Bill Jackson and maybe a dozen others. None of them was exactly what I was looking for, so I decided to write my own. I called and talked with most of those programmers and spent hours on the phone discussing
[attach=4]
programming techniques and ideas.
In the summer of 1986, before I was about to start writing my own BBS software, I cut the tip of my finger off in a riding mower accident. I stuck my pointer finger on the main drive chain and sprocket under the seat to see if the transmission was engaged. I let the clutch out but the mower wouldn't move. I was trying to feel if the chain was moving or not. It was. Turns out the weld where the rear sprocket meets the rear drive shaft broke and the sprocket was turning freely on the shaft. The chain ended up pulling my finger around the sprocket, slicing off the tip of my finger. Ouch! After an operation to attach the finger tip back on, I was left with my right arm on a cast. I could still type, but I had no use of my pointer finger on my right hand.
[attach=5]
I was still determined to write my own software. I spent the majority of that summer writing Norad BBS software and started my own BBS. It was a combination of Basic and assembly language. All of the input/output routines, disk access, text editor, terminal operations, transfer protocols (X/Y/Z Modem and Punter) were all written in machine language and called from inside the Basic program with SYS commands. I managed to use every spare byte of the Commodore 64's memory to fit it all into 64K of space. I had a dedicated phone line installed and when I started, I had three 1541 floppy disk drives, each holding roughly 170K of data.
In the summer of 1987, I got my first job at a local Kentucky Fried Chicken as a cook. I saved every penny of each paycheck and six months later, I had enough to buy a 20MB hard drive for my Commodore called the 'Lt. Kernal'. It cost $900! It used a special cartridge that allowed the Commodore 64 or 128 to use SCSI hard drives for storage. Back then, 20MB was HUGE. I thought I could fit everything in the world onto it. I rewrote parts of my BBS software to take advantage of the hard drives speed (a whopping 38k/sec!). As far as I knew, I was one of the first people on the East coast to run a 24/7 Commodore BBS with a hard drive. A year or so later I upgraded to an external Avertec 2400 baud modem. From the summer of 1986 until 1993 or so, I ran my BBS on my trusty, dependable and fun Commodore 128. Man, those were the days! I had close to one thousand users from all across the globe, my BBS became quite popular and I met a lot of new friends.
Once my software was pretty much bug-free, I started getting requests from people to use it for their BBS's so I started selling copies of 'Norad BBS' for $39.95. Yes, I got the name from the movie Wargames.
There was quite a few people running my software and supporting them was becoming a full time job. I was always upgrading and expanding the software, adding new features, fixing bugs and the like. It kept my busy since I dedicated all of my free time to it. One of the more advanced features my software had was the ability to schedule exchanges between two BBS's running my software, so people could post a message on one BBS and it would automatically be forwarded to another BBS and vice versa. It was amazing to watch my little 1Mhz Commodore 128 call, handshake and transfer messages back and forth across the modem using software that I wrote. I was really proud of that feature.
As time marched on and interest in Commodore computers dried up, I moved on to an old IBM 5150, then a 12Mhz 286 PC, 386, 486 and on and on up to now. By early 1994, I shut down my Commodore BBS for good and moved on to IBM PC's. I ran an IBM based BBS for a while, but it was never as popular as the Commodore BBS was. A few years later, the internet gained popularity and I stopped running a BBS altogether.
[attach=6]
BBS's back then were an early form of the 'internet', so to speak, where people could post messages in a forum, send private messages between users and share software in the download section. Basically, this forum is really a modern version of what BBS's were 30 years ago. Maybe that's why I'm drawn to running one now?
Share Topic
