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I hosted a lot of those Mustang Software BBS systems back in the day. Bakersfield, I think was where the company was located. I was one of the biggest BBS hosting facilities in the Los Angeles area at the time, as many folks didn't actually have the resources, but wanted to have their own BBSes. Personally, I never really cared much for Wildcat, or TBBS. Ah, I recall w/fond memories... In one guest on VirtualBox, I'm actually running an old Yggdrasil GNU/Linux installation LOL. A few months ago I fired up my two favs in virtual machines: UltraBBS (written by a guy named Craig in Colorado as I recall), and Searchlight - - which support[s/ed] RIP protocol at the console - unlike Wildcat, which you had to log into one of the nodes to actually see the RIP. Being a collector (and hoarder) of old software, like IBM TopView, LOL, this is how I've built my current BBS network, which I fire up in VirtualBox Guests every few weeks or so for kicks, it's not actually production of course, but it is functional and could be - keeps me sharp! And then the BBS software I'm running for the nodes consist of UltraBBS (a great, fast, and very stable ANSI BBS system), and Searchlight. Had a bit of an issue w/Searchlight at first, coz I had to do a bit of scouring of the net to find an old copy of Telegraphix's RIPterm - the one thing I didn't actually keep a copy of. A lot of fun really. The systems run on DR DOS, with Artisoft Lantastic's AILANBIO running - no SERVER.EXE's though (All you need is NetBIOS) - all that is handled by DesqviewX, which provides the TCP/IP and X-Windows for the multiple nodes and networking across what the virtual machines see as separate machines. It wasn't theoretically possible to do this back then in the 386 days (Artisoft said it couldn't be done) - everyone ran Desqview (Not DesqviewX) to provide as many nodes on a single machine as possible, and Netware for most serious BBSes, but we were able to smash through the ceiling of what DOS based software could handle by adopting and integrating X into our networks. But we were already powering many of the smaller car rental agencies around LAX with this networking technology, even those with several remote offices. Novell was really the only other game in town if you didn't want UNIX. It also provided some of the earliest actual ISP operations we were involved in by using DesqviewX and BBS Doors to provide direct access to UNIX hosts (an old VAX machine, but mostly SCO Xenix and JOlIX until I created Linboard Linux), and some pretty clever Tcl/Tk and Perl for a primitive GUI. In fact, later on, I fired up and am still maintaining and old Gopher server of mine, which runs on IIS 2 - the last version that still supported the gopher protocol (Yes, there was an IIS 1.0, which I was certified on as an instructor, but it never went to market - Microsoft released IIS 2.0 instead). But alas, in one of the only MAJOR incorrect predictions I've ever made, we banked on souping up the GUI (At the time based on RIP and our custom Tcl/Tk/Perl) instead of seeing the light of that.... "HTML stuff" ;) You can't always be right :) //////// On another note, there's been a BBS system which I fire up once in a while on Linux boxes that has been pretty much maintained and modernized over the years - prolly the only serious production platform still available.... http://www.synchro.net/ Digitalman (Rob Swindell) has done an excellent job of maintaining it, and there are a few hundred live nodes around the world running on the Synchromesh network. I fire that up every now and then, but as is prolly obvious, I don't have much practical use for it, although there has been somewhat of a (nostalgic?) resurgence in this software. What I haven't done, it set up D'Bridge or gotten involved in any FIDOnet tossing since there's no network anymore (At least I don't think there is), But it's kinda kewl when you have all your licensed software and can still manage to get that rickety stuff running again LOL. Heck. I've got a collection of old IBM 5150 machines, a System 36, some various "Hot-Rodded" XTs, and a couple of 3270 ATs - including refurbished MFM and RLL formatted HDDs and old SCSI towers taking up space in my offline museum (One of my sea containers). got piles of old NDIS and NE2000 NICs (Even 8bit ISA NICs, which are impossible to find now), and modems from 300BAUD acoustic couplers all the way up the scale. Someday.... I'll make a killing on eBay (yeah right). On 6/3/2010 9:31 AM, RickG wrote: > Was running Wildcat from '90-'92! Those were fun days! -RickG > > On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Butch Evans <but...@butchevans.com> wrote: >> On Thu, 2010-06-03 at 08:31 -0400, Jeremy Parr wrote: >>> You can only count Wildcat if it was multinode. >> >> So I guess I'm WELL over 15 years, then. I ran a 10 line RA board from >> '88-'92. Well, it was 10 lines when I shut down in '92. I tried >> WildCat, but never really liked it. >> >> -- >> ******************************************************************** >> * Butch Evans * Professional Network Consultation* >> * http://www.butchevans.com/ * Network Engineering * >> * http://store.wispgear.net/ * Wired or Wireless Networks * >> * http://blog.butchevans.com/ * ImageStream, Mikrotik and MORE! * >> ******************************************************************** >> >> >> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> WISPA Wants You! Join today! >> http://signup.wispa.org/ >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org >> >> Subscribe/Unsubscribe: >> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless >> >> Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ >> > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ > - -- Bradley D. Thornton Manager Network Services NorthTech Computer TEL: +1.760.666.2703 (US) TEL: +44.702.405.1909 (UK) http://NorthTech.US -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEcBAEBAwAGBQJMCDGUAAoJEE1wgkIhr9j3Z9MIAKcVFs3JlQtk+fFZqd/zmLnY nOIkcJM/0s4DCSPge7oebo279qxJ6qmD/MSRAyNCiHZ+qQR6qmj8Eg+iubdU5RnP JvS87inYhAM0Hn6iZZOiCW81xo3ZmmR50zuvzwoph/t4MkIq7CJOCJmXDuMgsYjI 05p+r82mCAI7WvWwk0/YuaozUQwAIV3ExYJdj9Msbi7HNkCL4TZZ1/84PYxuAm7I 7eyt4irNU8JoqflBego3wYiZHlvoKvUH3Gyh7gpl7feey4ulzRAMbOaUpS7TKld2 8KUh/MlPH/NG25YzAhhC5mvG8KQm7g1Om4JJTVUQoDkq0FcL0lQMBvIgsJCAGFs= =JGop -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
