I think it would be good for BBS sysops to introduce themselves here. It would be a way for us to get to know each other; also, I'm curious who all set up on DeveloperNet. :) If you can take some time, please post here and tell us who you are, tell us about your BBS, and what you are looking for DeveloperNet. :)
I'm Art, the sysop of Fatcats BBS. Fatcats is a general BBS, resurrected fro ye-dialup-days-of-olde. It ran everything from System/X, Iniquity, and Mysti to Synchronet nowadays. I've also been running other private BBSes before fatcats, more interesting ones being on the old 68K Mac platform such as Pub Address, Hermes, Pancake (waffle), and even First Class.
As for myself, I'm a programming enthusiast. Sometimes my role at work requi programming, however I am mostly in it as a personal hobby. My current favourite language has got to be C#, ruby is a close second. Processing and boo are also very interesting to me.
case any of you other sysops haven't had the pleasure of introducing yoursel to nightfox yet--he's a great guy, very friendly and helpful... and naturall gives DeveloperNet a warm fuzzy atmosphere. :)
Fatcats is looking to DeveloperNet to support any development discussions, a we have no such local message boards (no need to re-invent the wheel). We're happy to be part of this network!
Nightfox scribbled to All <=-
I think it would be good for BBS sysops to introduce themselves here.
It would be a way for us to get to know each other; also, I'm curious
who all is set up on DeveloperNet. :) If you can take some time,
please post here and tell us who you are, tell us about your BBS, and
what you are looking for from DeveloperNet. :)
I studied software engineering in college and have been working as a software engineer since late 2003. I enjoy it. I created DeveloperNet for developers to share information and ask questions. I hope it will
be a useful resource. Nightfox
art scribbled to Nightfox <=-
Hey DevNet sysops,
I'm Art, the sysop of Fatcats BBS. Fatcats is a general BBS,
resurrected from ye-dialup-days-of-olde. It ran everything from
System/X, Iniquity, and Mystic to Synchronet nowadays. I've also been running other private BBSes before fatcats, more interesting ones being
on the old 68K Mac platform such as Public Address, Hermes, Pancake (waffle), and even First Class.
As for myself, I'm a programming enthusiast. Sometimes my role at work requires programming, however I am mostly in it as a personal hobby. My current favourite language has got to be C#, ruby is a close second. Processing and boo are also very interesting to me.
I decided to apply for Fatcats to join DeveloperNet because I like the idea of a focused developer QWK network, a little less crowded than usenet. Also, in case any of you other sysops haven't had the pleasure
of introducing yourselves to nightfox yet--he's a great guy, very
friendly and helpful... and naturally gives DeveloperNet a warm fuzzy atmosphere. :)
Fatcats is looking to DeveloperNet to support any development
discussions, as we have no such local message boards (no need to
re-invent the wheel). We're happy to be part of this network!
Right away, I was curious what it would take to set up my own BBS. I didn't know enough about it all to set one up then though. Before I settled on RemoteAccess, I had also tried WWIV, Wildcat, T.A.G., Ezycom, Maximus, and Spitfire. I think RemoteAccess was probably the most widely-used BBS software
around my area, and I enjoyed it too. But I think Synchronet is much more flexible and powerful, and I really enjoy using it. :)
That's cool.. I've done some C# and I've really enjoyed it too. I've heard
You've always been good to talk with as well. :) And you've just added to warm fuzzy feeling here. hehe
It's good to have you here. :)
Thanks for your introduction. It's good to see another user old schooler around these days. We gotta keep this alive. As I've seen lately, we've
I've been learning some C and C++ for a little while now. What main difference is C#? I might take up C# after I've caught on to classes with C++.
I'll have to try out Fatcats again sometime. I like the little less
crowded too, mainly because I forget who is who sometimes, but if we start here like we have been, everybody putting something in, everyone will benefit. Good going.
art scribbled to Jon Justvig <=-
Hey Jon,
Thanks for your introduction. It's good to see another user old schooler around these days. We gotta keep this alive. As I've seen lately, we've
Likewise, and I agree... keeping the spirit of BBSing alive is really important to fatcats. I have always taken the position of not
advertising my BBS anywhere--while I know many sysops would question
the sagacity of that strategy, I'm less concerned about the number of people calling than I am about knowing that fatcats is running.
That is, I'm happy just having my BBS up, listening and serving
requests to the few and far in between who stumble into the board. Apparently it's listed in various places, although I haven't sent one advertisement out on any subs, boards, etc. Go figure.
I've been learning some C and C++ for a little while now. What main difference is C#? I might take up C# after I've caught on to classes with C++.
I would say it's a bit of an evolution: C -> C++ -> C#. Now there are those that would disagree with me, and rightly so... that's just one
way of looking at it--my way. Of course, the main difference between C
and C# is OOP. And the big difference in C++ and C# (bear in mind I'm comparing the Visual Studio compilers, not gcc, etc) is mostly in the syntax.
C and C++ have great classical libraries. By that, I mean
long-maintained, widely-ported and hugely supported libs like ncurses
and libc. On the Visual Studio side of things, C++ and C# are pretty
much the same--.NET has the same API framework exposed whether you wish
to code in C++, C#, VB, etc... all CLRs are created equal!
The other "big thing" for me is that C# takes care of memory
management... big advantage in my opinion. Call me a futurist, but
manual garbage collection belongs... well... in the garbage!
Personally, I think C# is easier to learn than C++. It is higher level,
so if you are doing a lot of abstracting, C# is definitely my poison of choice. If you are relying on a lot of low-level code, C++ may be
better. C is only good if you are compiling for your 286... well that's just my opinion anyways... I'll warn you all that I'm an extreme
OOPer... :)
I'll have to try out Fatcats again sometime. I like the little less
crowded too, mainly because I forget who is who sometimes, but if we start here like we have been, everybody putting something in, everyone will benefit. Good going.
Agreed. I would like to see more activity on DeveloperNet, but I'd definitely prefer to read 5 quality posts a week, rather than wade
through 5000 messages of junk to find 5 to read... let's hope the
quality and spirit of DeveloperNet continues, and thanks for your
feedback Jon!
RA was very popular in my area as well, along with Renegade and Major BBS. I
agree that Synchronet is far more powerful, however given the 20-year gap... it's had plenty of time to catchup and surpass these products from the Juras period! :)
C# is great, what kind of things have you done with it? I've done everything
from an interactive voice response system for a medical centre (Lync + Excha UM + Outlook calendar integration) to BBS software, and it's pretty robust i my opinion. I'll caveat that by saying that most of the stuff I code runs in Windows exclusively as I generally rely heavily on the .NET framework...
I've tried mono, the unix variant, and I have to say that unfortunately, it quite inferior to .NET API and feels pretty amatuer. :(
because it covered so much. I will look up more on OOP later, maybe learn
a little bit.
Maybe that's where I turned the wrong direction. It seems like the more I do advertise, the less active my board is. It all started with an e-mail requesting a board to play TW2002. I was happy to start one back up. Everything was going smoothly, then it was like everyone dropped off the earth. I'm still curious to what happened. I advertise to try to reach
new people and to remind those that have called that the board is still running. I thought it was a good idea, but in realization, when I see an
ad myself, I usually skip past it. Maybe that's what people are doing.
I've heard that Object-Oriented Programming is the way to go with C and C++. It's been a struggle to catch on for me. I'm sure I would enjoy it if I could catch on. I need to better understand data structures. I can write
a basic void function without parameters with a long list of commands, but that's easy now. What do you recommend the next step be?
I'm not that familiar with CLRs either. How about breaking it down in to
a snip of code for me? :)
You know they say quality is better than quantity. :) Thanks to you too for your short article. It seemed intimidating at first to reply. Probably because it covered so much. I will look up more on OOP later, maybe learn
a little bit.
Ah yes, I forgot to mention Major BBS. There were several of those in my back in the day.. I liked chatting on those systems sometimes, although I noticed they seemed to attract a**holes, and after a while I got tired of the
drama in the chat rooms there and tended to avoid MajorBBS boards.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/CSharpWAVClassAndMixing.aspx
That's cool.. Sounds like you've done quite a bit with C#.
hmm.. that sucks. :( I thought I've heard from some others that Mono is fairly mature now though. Someone I work with at work really likes C# and Linux guy, and he said he has developed a lot of stuff in C# for Mono.
100% agree. I don't expect people to read the BBS "Advertisements" section. general I think that's a bad idea which is an artefact of ye olden days. Tha like the classifieds--do we not just generally skip that section in the newspaper unless I'm looking for something to buy/sell/hire/rent/work in particular?
I think it would be good for BBS sysops to introduce themselves here.
I'm Dimitri Papadopoulos, 36 SysOp of Trans-Canada BBS. I was very active BB
user in my privileged teenage years and I always dreamed having a BBS. As a matter of fact I still have some 5.25" diskettes with several BBS packages that I wanted to install on my 20Meg MFM drive of my Tandy 1000SX (Intel
8088)... but never convinced my parents that "my computer needs a telephone line to talk to other computers".
...till 2008 when I stumbled over an article that BBS still exist, but being "modernized for the Internet". Long story short, This year I realized my 22-year-old dream to have a BBS. It's been up and running for more than a month.
Being an amateur archivist myself, my goal is to make a BBS that carry's as many Message Networks & Files as technically possible and Make some sort of BBS Archive, and possibly find older message archives to import.
100% agree. I don't expect people to read the BBS "Advertisements" section.
I suppose that's true. But I remember looking at BBS listings a long time ago looking for new BBSs, and I feel like it still serves a purpose.
In early 2007, I found out about this BBS Documentary DVD:
That's cool. If you are interested in BBS-related files, these sites might be useful:
http://archives.thebbs.org
http://www.bbsfiles.com/main.html
overall quality level goes up). I don't believe that BBSsing is "mainstream like it used to be in the dial-up days so that we can speak of "users". (Users in the strict sense of the term, without being a SysOp or Cosysop elsewhere). If there are any users out there, the percentage must be very lo to negligible.
All to say, I believe that we all scroll through "our brother's" Ads.
I applaud the initiative of the producers to make BBS: The Documentary 3 DVD
I watched it twice (and I'm sure the entire BBS community did see it). I loved it. I just wish there was more! I hope that if there are plans to release a fourth DVD, to include things that were not covered at all. They spoke about BBS Art, mainly ANSI and ASCII, without any word for RIPscrip!
They spoke about Message Networks, mainly Fidonet, without any word of the many other FTN/QWK networks out there.
(they even spoke about the Internet
and how it took over BBS (!) but not a single word about "the modern BBS"
http://archives.thebbs.org
http://www.bbsfiles.com/main.html
Do the above links have any sort of ISO images I can download and import to Synchronet?
I recall there was a CD collection called "The Night Owl" and
"Gigabyte". These were a "must have" for any sysop.
Are there any sources
where I can get them via FTP? I know that texfiles.com (The producer of the
if people simply scroll past your ad, no harm done, but if someone sees your ad and decides to call your BBS, then your ad has served its purpose.
I remember those. I always liked providing files on my BBS, but these
days, I feel like it's far less important because many files are easily available to anyone via the internet. I provide files on my BBS, but I don't feel like it's totally important for me to "mirror" what is 99%
likely to be available elsewhere on the internet. I do feel that it's useful to provide things such as BBS-related files and other stuff that may be rare on the internet, but there are some sysops these days who might argue that a filebase on a BBS is not very important at all.
It looks like the files on archives.thebbs.org are available on FTP.. When I hover over the file links, they look like they start out with ftp:// .
You are welcome to browse the files on my BBS and download what you wish.
:) They are available through the web interface as well as on telnet.
outside of Bulletin Board Systems. I also respect the decision of our other fellow Sysops that believe that a filebase is not important any more. And th
do have a point, hardly anyone will download, say, "ANSIdraw for Windows 3.0 or "Telix for DOS". My argument to expand into a full blown filebase is mor of a historical preservation value, than practical per say.
Having said this, I don't believe to the school of thought advocating that there's no need for BBSes to offer files that are "readily available on the internet", as I find it incorrect to separate the Internet from the BBS. (a this is where I patently disagree with 'BBS: The Documentary.) for overlooki THE most important thing as it pertains today:
BBS is now part of the Internet.
And as far as I'm concerned, I look at the Internet as a highway capable to accommodate all types of TCP/IP-certified vehicles of all brands, makes and shapes on it: WWW browers, FTP, Skype, E-mail, IRC, Gopher, Telnet BBS, flas web based telnet, etc).
Thank you for the link, I'll look into FTPing to archives.thebbs.org! Also thank you for your offer to download any files on your board, it's being muc appreciated!
| Sysop: | KJ5EKH |
|---|---|
| Location: | Siloam Springs, Ar. |
| Users: | 4 |
| Nodes: | 4 (1 / 3) |
| Uptime: | 11:46:34 |
| Calls: | 3 |
| Files: | 1,164 |
| D/L today: |
2 files (15K bytes) |
| Messages: | 8,786 |