Commodore Free 13/Commodore_Free_Issue_13_2007_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.village bbs

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 8KB | 236 lines

uThe Village BBS, & its History
By Lord Ronin

At this moment in time. We can't
welcome you to The Village "where you &
your days are numbered" <G>. As it
isn't up & running for the  reason that
the HD mech is in the hands of Maurice
Randall for data recovery.Since that is
taking a spell <fire ball spell would
be nice> We are recreating the BBS from
Scratch. Was only up in one form or
another for 11 years.

Lets back up a bit on this one. A quiz
I made for members of the local users
group, asks the question of "What is
the name of our first BBS?" Really this
is a trick question. The first BBS was
on a 64c with jiffydos, one 1571 & a
1581. Running the PD release of
Color64.

At the most it lasted one month. Called
the  MicroSkirt. A reference to a skirt
I bought for a girl in London on
Carnaby <sp?> street in 1969ce. Don't
ask any more about that, or the rating
of this mag will go up to "R" for
certain if not "N-17" <VBG>.

The next BBS ran Omni 128 & was a part
of the Omni World Hub, with even a
contact to the German Omni 128 board.
Now that one was called the  2 10s 6d
Vacuum Tube.

Pronounced as "Two Pound ten & six
Vacuum Tube". A tribute to my recently
deceased Brit Cit mother & my time in
electronics tech. Ran that bugger on a
500 MB CMD HD, with a 14.4 US Robotics
modem. Had a few games, as that was All
there was to install.

Created the message bases for C=,
Amiga, Geos, User Group & of course for
the Role Playing Games crowd in the
users group & through my shop. When
that died in January of 2000ce, ah
because the author of the prg did a
split on us & left us high & not so
dry. And no I never did get all I paid
for in the distribution. I needed
something else. Dr. Video had for a
time been pushing the Centipede system.
OK I DLed the version from the site, &
then...

Welcome to the Village. A vastly
superior system than Omni. 300 files
per file area rather than 100. 1,000
line for msg over the 200. One frelling
lot more games for the players. Right
then, lets compare, ah around 20 on
Omni & most where CG only. 105 on
Centipede <10 more if  I can refund a
disk that was given to me by the old
HubOp> 85% of them are playable with
C=, Ansi & Ascii.

Hey even non C= users can change colour
& use reverse video. OK I don't follow
the RAW part for sounds. But I iz jist
da dum ork lamer in any case.

Lets not get into the problems of
bringing over the files from one system
to another. OK it is easy to take the
mess in Mcopy. But now things have to
be catalogued in sub partitions on the
hard drive. Not too big of a problem
right? You don't know me & Subdividing
things into their smallest bits. <VBG>
No the big problem is that in Omni in
regards to The code for the  up loaders
comments for the file it starts off
with the pound sterling symbol. Great,
except that is the MCI code thingy for
Centipede.

Guess who has to rename all the up
loader comments from the Omni system to
the Centipede system that uses the "@"
symbol. Ah like 2500 files had to be
renamed. Thankfully it was done in
JiffyDos. Using the@r0:newname=oldname
method. Was a nice BBS, I was learning
more things as I went along. Got many a
fixed PAL to NTSC crack from the MHI
crew & Mad Max. In fact we hadaround
3,542 files  for downloading.

Must tell you that the regular callers
were in the Empire games more than any
other game section. Message bases where
a direct port from the old BBS. Before
the close of theBBS. We had 4 PBEM
<Play By Electronic MAil> games
running. Doing weekly turns. Was
getting about 3-5 calls a day.

Not great, but as the last BBS in the
entire county. Pretty frelling good.
Had more long distance callers than had
local callers. Add to that, they
weren't all just members in other
states & countries who were a member of
the ACUG.

But in December of 2005ce. The HD
stopped working. In January 2006ce
Maurice Randall said he could give it a
look see, after his first test. Said
that one of the heads had locked in an
unused space. Data should be intact.

He was going to strip out an exact same
model for the heads & then data
transfer to another HD. I am still
waiting for that to be sent to me. Only
has the BBS, my Geos, Whels, Wave,
PostPrint, user group library & other
such non important things. Like all the
SceneWorld diskmags. Since we were/are
the official SceneWorld BBS.

That brings us to today. A great guy
who goes by the handle Eddie the One on
the IRC, has upgraded my BootRom to the
latest version. I  had been using a
4.5GB mech at the time. He replaced
that for me. Sadly it went out on me.

He was able to find out in some sort of
verification trip. That 25% of the mech
thingy had gone bad. So I am getting
another one, well it takes time to ship
from the east coast of the states to
the west coast. He was able to save all
the work that I had started upon in the
recreation of the HD.

Oh what he is getting for all of this,
well nothing was asked for. But he is
going to be a long time member of the
Anything Commodore Users Group CBM Reg.
#447

When it is back in my hands & work
reaches a point that I can open the
board to callers. The Village <yes it
is a reference to "The Prisoner" show
from the 60s> will be open again at the
same number. But lets Leave that till I
can offer something to the callers. Ah
but will it have you may ask. As much
as I can recreate from the last one.
Same PBEM games in The message bases.
Most of the same msg bases, as I had
them on a scratch paper that I found,
mind you can't find what I am looking
for, just other stuff. <BG> Games will
be set up again & the different menus
for them created.

A few pretty pretties will be added.
Most of the regular members I remember
their numbers. These will be reset for
them. File area is what will take the
longest. As every file must be tested,
& these are coming form a large
collection of over 3,000 41/71 disks a
few hundred 81/FD disks & a handful of
about a dozen CDs. Some are from other
boards that have folded.

Most come from disks that I have bought
in lump sums over the years. Disks will
be catalogued, UL comments written down
for them, & then in some form
compressed. Large ones are usually in a
.D64 & then I use the pasi system to
zip them. In order for a caller <we
term them decker> can put that file on
a 1541 disk for storage.

Long process that must be done again.
But it is a labour of love & I am just
a bit peculiar in the head anyway.
Board will be open 24/7, well unless
there is another caller on line. Only
takes one at a time. Have a dedicated
number for it & at this point in time
for my Inet work. Runs or will run on a
1084S monitor, along with a 128Dcr that
has Jiffy Dos, coupled to the SCPU with
a full 16MB or Ram. Tied into a CMD HD
controller with the 4.5GB mech. Plugged
into a FD-2000, mixed with a 1581.
Through the HD controller I will again
be able to look at CDs with the CD Rom
Commander. And now we will be running
at least at 28.8bps with the option at
the moment of going to around 33. That
last part isn't stable.

Sure at this time it isn't up & will be
weeks of work to make it barely
presentable to the public. However it
may be the last know dial up C= BBS in
the states. For certain it is the last
one in Oregon that I can find. Yeah we
could go to telnet as well.

But that isn't at this time something
that I can afford, financially or
mentally. When it is ready I will be
announcing the re-opening on the
different lists. Theme is of course C=
but also Role Playing Games. Mind you
that the head SysOp is an
overtalkative, exceptionally biased
guy. <VBG>