On Tue 29 Nov 2011 19:44:24 GMT, Tony Firshman <[email protected]> wrote:
My BBS main disk died today.
I am mightily glad that the system boots primarily off romdisq - it made life
so much easier.
The 23 daily backup partitions on a separate HD should have all been OK, but
some were not.
I found one that was and all is restored with a 296mb partition on a 20GB HD,
although probably with quite old message databases.
I now use it online really only as an incoming fax machine, which accumulates
loads of junk faxes!
It has been running pretty continuously on only two sets of computer hardware
since the late 80s. It originally used a black QL with GC and Astracom modem.
It is now in a boxed QL with Aurora, SGC, superHermes, Mplane and a 56k USR
faxmodem.
I used to link to Fidonet, and shared data with four or five QL BBSs (two or
three in the UK, one in Holland and one in the USA) and the rest of the Fidonet
community.
Fidonet is long dead - killed by email and the internet. There are also no
other QL based BBSs. Are there *any* dialup BBS systems still going?
In the very early days, I remember connecting to it from Northumberland via a
300bps acoustic coupler connected to a Tandy 200 portable.
I know Roy Wood used it regularly to to test modems.
I also had a phone call from a lecturer in Glasgow who used it as a
demonstration and reported it down!
Does anyone use the BBS now?
If not, it probably makes sense to retire this machine and use a modern multi
function laser printer.
The QL machine will still be used as the source of all my commercial software.
It will be the end of a very very long era.
Tony
I used to have a BBS in the North East... 2:256/65, called QuantaNE,
then reanmed later to be called, Fluffy Owls.
The BBS ran on a 20Mhz 286 PC using Remote Access BBS software, but I
moved it to a QL using Pbox. I must to of admit to hasstling Phil Borman
to deveoping Pbox to the same level as Remote Access BBS System. To some
extent Pbox, really got sophiscated.
I used to route most of the BBS mail from the main hub in the North
East, but alas, not many QL users managed to logon tothe system.
The majority, of BBS Sysops, converted their BBSs to Internet Web Site,
not nothing really has chnaged, only thety now get concurrent users,
rather than 1 user per logon,
Derek
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