Floppyshop 2/Floppyshop - 2.zip/Floppyshop - 2.iso/diskmags/0022-3.564/dmg-3557/news.txt/sysopjoy.asc

Text File | 1997-06-21 | 14KB | 232 lines

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                   ~                                  ~
                   ~    SO YOU WANT TO BE A SYSOP?    ~
                   ~    ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯    ~
                   ~         by Wally Byczek          ~
                   ~       WallyWorld BBS 1989        ~
                   ~                                  ~
                   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


     To start a BBS,  you first need a computer.  No matter what  computer
you currently have,  it won't be large enough or powerful enough for  what
you intend to do.  And since you can't take the board down (unless you run
a  kiddy  board  that bounces up and down or runs only  between  the  time
school lets out and Daddy comes home) to do your own work,  you will  need
another  computer  that you can ill afford.  Next you have to find  a  BBS
software package.  This can take months,  or you can write your own if you
are so inclined. This can take years.

     Next,  unless you are starting a kiddy board,  you will need a  phone
line  other than the one that you normally converse on.  Depending on  the
Telco's  mood,  personnel,  and the imminence of a strike,  this could  be
done in as little as 2 weeks or it may never happen.  Next, if you plan to
run  doors  on your board,  you must now spend long  distance  dollars  in
scouring  other  boards  for evaluation and acquisition  of  these  games.
Naturally,   your  external  file  protocols  don't  come  with  your  BBS
software,  so  you  have  to again scour the  countryside  to  find  them.
Utilities  for your BBS are also an afterthought and have to  be  obtained
in a similar fashion.

     All  of these external programs have to be registered after a  while,
since  most stop working after a while or have an annoying  feature  about
them  until they are registered.  All of the above items take  money!  and
plenty  of it!  While we are on the subject of money,  you must  obtain  a
modem.  Whatever modem you currently have will not be supported by the BBS
software.  This  is  some  sort of unwritten  law  pertaining  to  writing
communication software.

     Be prepared to open your wallet wide.  No,  your old Hayes 300  won't
be good enough.  People even hate 1200 baud these days,  and the teenagers
seem  to have USR HST's these days and will complain vociferously if  they
can't access you at 14.4.  Now you pick a name for your BBS.  Whatever you
choose  will  be ridiculed by 20% of those who see it.  Another  50%  will
offer  suggestions that are worse than the one you  chose.  The  remaining
30% won't care.

     Next  comes  the wonderful task of installing your  board.  You  have
your  machine.  If  you just bought it,  that means formatting  your  hard
disk,  installing DOS,  and ASNI drivers and Lord knows what else that you
need for your board.  If you already have the machine,  you may as well go
ahead and reformat it anyway.  Something will guarantee that you will have
to do this before you are done.  The manual for the BBS software was  most
likely  written by the author's 10 year old and was mimeographed.  It  got
wet  in the mail and smeared as well,  so at least 30% of the manual  will
be physically useless. The rest is just procedurally useless.

     Next comes the fun task of deciding on your board structure.  Who can
do  what and when can they do it.  You must design your menus and  opening
screens.

     You  have to get a pretty good stock of files,  because no  one  will
upload  to  you unless you have something there for them  to  take  first.
(not that it matters,  I suppose,  since even if you DO have  files,  they
won't upload much anyway.)

     Next  comes the security aspect.  You can leave your board wide  open
so that users with the name of Benny  Beanfart,  Dr.  Rape,  Crack,  Hack,
File Attack,  DR DEATH, etc can come in and do anything they like. Or, you
can lock it up so tight that no one will call.  There is no compromise  on
this.

     Next  you must build events or prepare to live at  your  keyboard.  A
BBS HAS to be backed up.  If you can't afford a high density backup medium
such  as  tape  or cartridge,  you will spend many  many  hours  per  week
flipping  floppies.  Events are designed to allow the sysop the luxury  of
having the board do routine tasks at odd hours by itself- Backups,  purges
and so on.  These never work as they come and will have to be  extensively
modified by you.  And since they generally only run at 3 AM, you will have
to be awake to see just how they die and then try to fix it.

     Alright...  the big day is here.  Your board is ready,  your modem is
ready,  Telco finally hooked you up,  and then you start up.  This is when
after  2 days of no one calling,  despite your ad in Computer Shopper  and
having  placed your number on every other BBS in existance,  you  discover
that  the  init  strings for the modem are wrong.  You  discover  this  by
calling yourself from a friend's home.  This takes calls to the author  of
the software,  the manufacturer of the modem and finally gets resolved  by
asking another sysop how to do it.

     Oh  Boy!  Now we're in business!  During your first  caller's  visit,
someone  will  hit a telephone pole and you will  lose  power.  Naturally,
since the board is new,  you didn't back it up.  The power surge when  the
electricity  was  restored roached your hard disk.  Go back to  low  level
formating...

     Finally,  you're  up  and working.  After about a week  of  gleefully
seeing  someone call,  you will encounter Benny Beanfart or  his  ilk.  He
will  leave public posts (always in caps and terribly  mis-spelled)  about
what  a  really  lousy board this is and that the sysop is  a  three  eyed
twit.  You  automatically kill his account.  But do you leave the  message
for  the world to see?  hmmm...  dilemma number 1.  Killing Benny does  no
good  because  he will be back with another account such as SYSOP  SUX  or
some such thing.  Eventually he will tire of the game and go away,  but he
has  given ideas to 30 of his friends who will also visit you sometime  in
the  next week.  Then you will be visited by the "smart kid" who can  tell
you  everything that's wrong with your machine,  your  software,  etc.  It
doesn't  matter that he's calling you on a Timex Sinclair.  He knows  more
about your 386 than Intel.

     By  now,  your  name  has spread around.  Probably,  if  you  are  in
Worcester,  the college kids have your name and number. If it is Spetember
or  January you are in trouble.  You will probably be bombarded with  file
requests for commercial software.  Some will assist you by uploading Lotus
123 ver 3 that has the copy-proofing removed.  Whoever uploads this to you
will  then  call  Lotus Development Corp and tell them  that  you  have  a
pirated version on your board (anonymously of course)

     If  you imposed an upload/download ratio such that users must  upload
one  file to get x numbers of files in return,  then you will  recieve  2K
text files from them.  They will download 2Mb of Gif files in  return.  By
now,  you are disappointed with your message bases.  You perhaps have  (if
you  are  fortunate)  two  or three users who  post  messages  outside  of
private mail.  These three users are symbionts who, if one of their number
does not call for 2 weeks,  will not post because they miss their  friend.
Your message bases will starve.  You set up many areas for  messages,  all
carefully listed by topic.  No public post will ever go into the area that
it should be in.  You will find a raunchy joke posted in the Bible  topics
area,  technical  questions  asked in the political opinion  area,  and  a
message  from  one of Benny Beanfart's cronies in the  technical  section.
You  will  next encounter the user who can't do anything  right.  He  will
make you feel terribly guilty that you are running this system that  seems
to  rudely  exclude him from enjoying it,  because he  cannot  master  the
concept  that M means Message,  F means Files,  D means download  etc.  He
DOES  however know how to leave comments to the sysop.  At first you  will
be  responsive to all the user complaints and will make a  valiant  effort
to obtain the special game that was requested as a door.  You discover  it
on  a board in the Fiji Islands and the off peak call cost you 32  dollars
to download it.  You find then that the game was written for a board other
than  the BBS that you run.  You search the countryside for  a  conversion
interface.  You find one in Omaha.  Add another 40 dollars in phone  bills
from  the search.  You discover now that the game must be registered  with
the author.  This is another 69 dollars. You discovered this because after
the game was installed,  you called from a friend's house to test it.  You
find  out  that while the console looks wonderful while it is  being  run,
the user sees a screen that informs him that the sysop is a cheap bum  who
didn't  even bother to register this wonderful piece  of  software.  Since
the sysop is such a creep,  why do you call there? Naturally, you register
it so the annoyance screen goes away.  After it has been on the board  for
2 months you discover that only 1 person ever used it and he only went  in
there  once,  dropped  carrier  and hung up the board  because  you  later
discovered  that  this  "wonderful"  piece  of  software  doesn't  monitor
carrier.  Do  you now register Watchdog so this won't happen again  or  do
you just scrap the game?

     The work load is getting heavy on the board.  Wow!  It takes at least
2  hours  per day to stay up with things.  Answering  mail,  hunting  down
Benny Beanfart's latest account,  changing screens,  moving messages  back
to the areas that they truly belong in,  adding new things,  paying Telco,
arguing  with  your spouse,  etc.  You decide that perhaps  it's  time  to
enlist  some help in the form of an assistant sysop.  This is  a  mistake.
The  assistant will pay little attention to the needs of  the  board,  but
WILL  experiment with things like remote drop to dos.  hehehehe!  I  think
this needs little elaboration.

     By now,  you are conversant with the many user complaints. WHY aren't
you  around  to answer the sysop page at 2:45 AM?  Why does  your  message
editor  use A for abort instead of Q for quit?  How come there aren't  any
nice  ANSI  screens?  How  come these crummy ANSI screens  slow  down  the
board?  Why  can't I stay online for 3 hours at a time?  Why can't my  C64
see your graphics..  It must be your crummy board!  I never post  messages
because  no one else ever does!  What do you mean you killed my upload  of
Dbase  IV?  I  did  upload something a year ago..  so  how  come  I  can't
download more than 100 files now?  How come my friend has access level  50
and I only have level 40?  Boy..  do you have a bad attitude!  I think the
Silicon  Sarcophagus is 100 times better than this board!  This is a  free
country..  I  can say ANYTHING I want in public messages.  What are  you..
Hitler  or something?  How come nobody ever sends me mail?  I used  a  bit
editor on Procomm and now it won't work..  tell me how to fix it. That GIF
file I downloaded didn't run...  this stinks... you really must be a lousy
sysop if you didn't check to see that it would work for me.

     Then  you  will  discover the wonders of sysop  to  user  interactive
chat.  You will find this to be a most opportune time to get things  done.
Since  the  majority of users who will page you into chat  type  at  about
.000001  baud,  you can have a conversation with the user and  get  things
done like mowing the lawn,  making a three course meal,  and cleaning  out
the  garage before the user has stated his request.  Generally,  the  chat
request  was for something such as How do I get out of a file  listing  or
something  similar that is well covered in the user manual that  you  have
both as a file for downloading and as a bulletin for online reading.

     One  admonition is to not get angry about carrier drop by  the  user.
Remember that the user is calling you through the telco.  Chances are that
no matter how malicious or inept the user may be,  the telco probably  did
it anyway.

     Next comes BBS software upgrade time!  Such fun!  You will find  that
the  author no longer supports your version.  You have  to  upgrade.  This
means  once again opening your wallet.  The new version will not have  the
same reserved file names,  nor will the file structures be the  same.  The
author generously supplies you with a conversion program.  This program is
designed to assist you in making all the little changes needed to  perform
the upgrade.

     It will automatically convert your file names and  structures.  There
are two type of these programs.  One that requires that you have 5Mb  more
free  space than you do,  and the other that will abort half  way  through
the  conversion  because  of  a bad disk sector read  and  didn't  have  a
corresponding   error  trap.   Of  the  two,   the  latter  is  the   more
catastrophic,  because  now your data can't be read by either  version  of
the software.

     Since you successfully upgraded your software,  you now discover what
the word Beta Site really means..

     Now  since  you've  done so well to this point,  it's  time  for  the
hardware  to  find  something  to compensate for  all  this  good  effort.
Generally,  the  hard drive controller is the most likely device  to  make
this decision to fail.  It will not however abruptly die. It will instead,
gradually mis-write to disk over a period of several days before  deciding
not to work at all anymore.  This has the advantage that your last backups
will  be no good at all once you replace the controller and  reformat  the
drive. hehehe!

     Still want to be a sysop?



                              ~~~~~eof~~~~~