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Trip Back on Memory Lane - Part 3 - IBM OS/2 and My BBS Tech History

Trip Back on Memory Lane - Part 3 - IBM OS/2 and My BBS Tech History

Posted on: 7/21/2009 10:36:00 AM

Welcome to part 3 of my mini-series "Trip Back on Memory Lane". This segment will talk about the 32bit operating system OS2 Warp by IBM, but also about the history of my bulleting board system "Closed Society".

 

Note: Correction to one of the statements that I made in the video. It was a Pentium 100MHz and not a 486/100 where I ran the BBS with OS/2 on. Sorry for that.

Part 3 - IBM OS/3 Warp 32Bit Operating System

os2warp After I had my BBS running on individual PC's that were connected with each other and a "file server" via Novel Lite and then Lantastic for a long while, I got around buying a single "power PC" (=new) that was capable to run all nodes of the BBS all by itself. 

But let me take you a bit further back in time to when I first got started with my BBS that eventually lead me to the use of OS2 as the operating system of choice to run my multi-node bulletin board system. 

A Brief "Technical" History of my BBS

I had not much money when I started my BBS. I was co-sysop at some other boards and also played around with local installations of Bulletin Board Software. I did not want to start a 1 node BBS (I had a U.S. Robotics 14.4 HST Courier with an "after market upgrade" to a full Dual Standard), which was kind of lame those days already (early 1994). A friend of mine, who was known as "Monday" (Martin) in the scene said to me one day when the subject came up in some conversation that I could use his Zyxel modem, because he is hanging out at my place all the time anyway. I first thought that it was a joke, but it wasn't.

Closed Society V1.0 - 2 Nodes

1x 14.4 HST/14.4 V32BIS & 1x V32BIS

I got a spare 386/25 without monitor around (the first PC that my dad bought in 1991 and that I used, when I was still living at my parents), but did not want to sacrifice my Pentium 60MHz for the BBS. The 386 had 4 MB memory, but that was not enough to run two nodes on it with QEMM/DESQVIEW (the cheap multitasking software solution for MS DOS). I did not have two COM ports with UART controller, which might would have done the job, but I got plenty of scene friends with spare computer parts.

It did not take too long and I had a second PC for the BBS together. A 286/10 MHz, 512 KB Ram+Memory Extension card (full 5 1/4 inch height and length) to get it up to 640 KB, a 75 MB 5 1/2 inch full height, full length MfM hard disc, COM port and even a huge monitor capable of EGA mode. I don't remember if the PC had a VGA card or not or if the monitor simply could not support VGA resolution. :)

I also got a keyboard and monitor switch somewhere and thus got everything that I needed to setup a BBS with two lines. Okay, the phone lines were missing, but I got the two lines within a few weeks rather than months, years or not at all as in East Germany. I don't remember for sure, but the fast availability of the extra phone lines (which surprised me a lot), might have accelerated the process and my efforts to get all pieces together.

I first wanted to use PCExpress instead of PCBoard, because I did not have much experience with it yet, but then decided for PCBoard, after their Version 15.x release, when they introduced the PPLC compiler and the PPL scripting language to customize the system (the compiled PPL scripts, also known as PPE's).

One day I had a serious dispute with Monday and he literally ripped his modem out of the BBS and took it with him. The BBS, which gained more and more popularity up to that point was at risk at that moment. Another friend of mine with the handle (and real name) "Jan" stepped in and loaned me an US Robotics 16.8 Baud Dual Sportster modem, where I could pay him the money back over the course of several months.

Closed Society V2.0 - 3 Nodes

1x 16.8HST/14.4 V32 BIS, 1x 14.4 HST/14.4 V32BIS & 1x V32BIS

Monday and I consolidated our differences a few weeks later and he offered his Zyxel modem back for the BBS. That was the point when I looked into an extension of the BBS to 3 nodes.

The computer for the third node was even cheaper than the one that I put together for the second node. It was a 286/16 MHz with 640 KB or 1 MB memory (I cannot remember) and no hard drive. I booted this node up from a floppy disk, which had the network drivers and the PCBoard start-up files on it. If I re-call correctly was that the reason why I switched from Novel Lite to Lantastic. I could not fit everything that I needed on a single floppy disc with Novel Lite. MS DOS Command.com, Himem.sys, Ansi.sys, PCBoard.exe, NE2000 drivers, autoexec.bat, config.sys and network Configuration files all had to fit too. There was little room left for the network software. Lantastic did the job.

Closed Society V3.0 - 5 Nodes

2x 64 KB ISDN, 1x 16.8HST/14.4 V32 BIS, 1x 14.4 HST/14.4 V32BIS & 1x V32BIS

As you can imagine, the 3 BBS computers running 24/7/365 (none of them energy efficient nor low noise by any means), plus my personal PC, which was also running several hours per day and almost all day during the weekends, sucked up a lot of power. It was also heating my one room apartment enough that I did not even had to turn on the heater during the Winter (not one-bedroom, one-room, also called studio). My phone and power bills competed both with my rent and succeeded (in case of the phone bill) or came very close to it (the power bill). It was not just practical, but also cost efficient to move to a different hardware solution for the BBS.

The Pentium processors became affordable and memory prices dropped as well. So I got a Pentium with 100 or 120 MHz (not sure) and 16 MB Ram, which was capable of running the 32Bit operating system OS/2 by IBM and all my nodes on a single machine. I also got around to buy the required UART chips for the COM ports, which were necessary for this as well. I did not use OS/2 before that and knew that I needed help to get it done right.

A friend, who worked in a computer shop and got me a deal for the custom build Pentium PC, helped with the OS/2 installation and configuration, specifically the configuration of the required COM ports for the modems. His name was "Gee", who was also a sysop. He ran the BBS "Skylight" where I created my personal favorite ANSI for.

Gee had a very good, who agreed to help with the installation and configuration of PCBoard in an OS/2 multi-tasking environment. That friend was Cyz, sysop of the non-pirate BBS with the name "Shogunat". Cyz would become also a friend of mine and the first Co-Sysop of my BBS (I did not have one until then and Monday did not count hehe). His BBS "Shogunat" would become also the Superior Art Creations (SAC) Application HQ. He would also become a SAC member, until the PPE division was split-up from SAC to form the new PPE release group "Peanuts".

A Teles ISDN card was also added to the computer, bringing up the number of nodes of my BBS to 5.  That must have been in 1996.

Closed Society V3.5 - 5 Nodes

4x ISDN & 1x 16.8 HST/14.4 V32BIS

During the years 1996 and 1997 the number of modem users declined significantly. Mainly due to the fact that the German Telecom was privatized, had the opening of the market looming on the horizon and used the remaining months it had left as a monopolist to increase (they called it restructuring) of the phone cost to a world-record high.

The phone cost during prime-time (day time) for a LOCAL phone call rose to 23 Pfennig/3 minutes (about 10-12 cents/3 minutes). BBS usage virtually shifted entirely to the off peak hours between 6 PM - 5 am for local calls (where the cost dropped to 23 Pfennig/6 and 12 minutes) and 2 am - 5 am for national long distance calls (I believe the rate dropped to the rate of the local prime during those hours, 23 Pfenning/3 minutes).

I kept one Modem node for the few remaining local callers who did not switch to ISDN yet and for international callers from mostly Israel and Canada, where Blue Boxing and other means of free calling still worked and ISDN was not commonly used.

I dropped two of the modem notes and replaced them with two additional ISDN nodes.

I cannot remember when the BBS ran any smoother than under OS/2. I never had any serious problem with it. Certain things I did not even touch or only once or twice, since the OS was installed with the help of my friends initially. Computer performance became an issue, when I had all nodes busy, which lead to the memory upgrade to take care of it.

I had a QIC-80 tape drive (120 MB capacity) for backups of all the data (warez mainly) that poured into the BBS and out every day and used the software DualStore for OS/2 with it. If more than 2 nodes were busy and I ran a tape backup at the same time, things could become critical, depending on what the users did in the BBS.

The great application WatchCat was a savior on several occasions. The tool monitored all running processes, including the MS DOS and Windows 3.x emulation processes as well as native OS/2 processes of course. I could specify for each process (and application) a priority (in relation to one another). When system resources ran out and a crash imminent, WatchCat terminated processes with lower priority first to get the system stabilized again. It also prevented any process from going rampart and locking up the entire system and killed it, if that became necessary.

I miss a tool like that for Win32 operating systems and I am sure that you do to, every time when you have a process that brings your computer to a virtual halt, making it non-responsive to any attempts to load the task manager and thus impossible for you to kill the process. You end up with two options in this moment. 1) You wait and hope that the process returns to normal and 2) reset/turn off the computer and lose everything that you had open and were working on at that time. Since you don't know, how long it might take for option 1 to resolve the problem by itself, option 2 is more likely to win. This percentage increases the less patience and trust you have for option 1.

I packed the tools that I mentioned and some other tools and things that I used with OS/2 on my BBS machine into a single archive and made it available for download, including some custom made OS/2 program icon graphics that I designed for my own BBS.

Closed Society II V0.9Beta

2x 64KB ISDN & 1x 16.8 HST/14.4 V32 BIS

After my BBS was busted in 1998, I started a new BBS (the one that I was preparing for actually when I was busted). The old equipment was gone of course. I got my personal PC back, which had almost no pirated software on it and I had of course the original BBS software and OS etc. I did not get the BBS hardware back, because it was evidence for my case and would become part of my "punishment" when the case was settled without a conviction.

The new Closed Society was public and entirely DEMO, Art and PCBoard Tools oriented, the stuff that made up most of the software that I had on my private PC anyway. Things changed though and the BBS usage declined after an already  slow re-launch. The time was 1998. I used the Internet myself since 1994-95 professionally a little bit and 1996-97 intensively (privately), mainly IRC and FTP at first, but then also the World Wide Web (WWW) a little bit later. In 1998 I did most of the stuff on the Internet and rarely called other bulletin board systems anymore. Some sysop's hooked up their site to the Internet, providing limited ISP services to their users.

It was the last attempt to safe their BBS for many. I was thinking about it briefly, but realized quickly that those attempts won't change the direction where things were going already. Unlike many fellow sysop's who did not push the "off switch" of their BBS until some hardware or software failure that required some action to be taken in order to bring the system back up, I pushed it deliberately and concisely.

I heard the rumors about Clark Development working on some software to bring the bulletin board systems into the Internet age, but the company went out of business before it could finish a working and public beta version of it. The software was titled "Metaworlds". Clark Development released in October 1995 already tools to connect PCBoard to the Internet, but those were rather crude solutions that fall into the category "workarounds" at best.

They must have almost finished it when they went bankrupt in July 1997, because on August 1, 1997 was still an article published in "Computer Shopper" that announced it (source: Highbeam.com).

MetaWorlds for Windows 95 and Windows NT
Clark Development Co.
3950 S. 700 E., Ste. 203
Murray, UT 84107-2173
800-356-1686
801-261-1686
Fax: 801-261-8987
www.metaworlds.com

Support: Live phone support, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays (MT); free for first 90 days, annual renewals available; Web; BBS; e-mail

Requires: Windows 95 or Windows NT; 8MB of RAM for Windows 95, 16MB or more for Windows NT; Ethernet network card; TCP/IP networking protocol

Direct Price: Two-user version, $99; eight-user version, $249; enterprise version (unlimited), $499

More BBS functionality and power are hitting the Web with the latest ...

I never saw a copy of the software anywhere though, nor saw any installation of it.

Unfortunately, IBM's OS/2 would follow the route that bulletin board systems went as well. It's a big shame, if not an outright scandal. OS/2 had many short comings compared to Win32 OS solutions by Microsoft, specifically in regards to multi-media support and un-easy installation process, but it had several core advantages that Microsoft has not been able to get right up to this date. Windows 7 looks at first glance promising to deliver on a few aspects of what OS/2 was famous for, 10+ years later.

I am not a Linux guy and admit that I did not even install ANY available Linux distribution yet.  That's why I won't make any comments to that in regards to how Linux compares to OS/2, especially in regards to performance, reliance and system stability. I would only guess and repeat what I heard from someone else, but that does not provide any value to you or me. 

The Banks were some of the last users of OS/2 who did not want to let go of it, so they also did with Windows NT/4. Banks knew why. Reliability and Security are two of the core competencies of a bank. They know what software delivers best on those two things when it comes to general main stream software in the market place.

I am looking forward to the time, when system crashes and blue-screens will become the exception rather than the norm once more. I enjoyed the short period when I was able to experience this myself first hand and won't forget that the things that Microsoft operating systems lag to this day are not impossible to do. OS/2 was not just a proof of concept, but a full-fleched reminder that it is possible to do and therefore possible to do again.

Note: I missed in this episode of my series the user manual and license for my original Windows 98 operating system software. I found it today, but won't spend the time to work it into the video. I just publish it here in this post that you can also see it.

cc20090717c-Pictureaaa

 

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 7/21/2009 10:36:00 AM  .oOo.  0 comments

Trip Back on Memory Lane - Part 2 - PCBoard BBS Software

Trip Back on Memory Lane - Part 2 - PCBoard BBS Software

Posted on: 7/21/2009 10:28:00 AM

Welcome to part 2 of my mini-series "Trip Back on Memory Lane". This part is about the famous bulletin board  software called "PCBoard" by Clark Development Company, Inc.

Part 2 - PCBoard Bulletin Board System by Clark Development

pcboard I am a former Sysop of the BBS called "Closed Society" in Berlin, Germany. You can learn more about my BBS in great details (including a video of a captured login session) at my regular web site here.

I had a pirate board running, but I ran it on licensed software, including licenses for the BBS software PCBoard and the OS were it ran on (IBM OS/2 Warp). The cops where surprised about that when I got busted, but more to that at the page about my BBS.

I recently recovered the original installation/setup discs of PCBoard and decided to make them available publicly. It's not like a clean warez/crack installation, because there are also some update steps required to get the version of the BBS to V15.22, capable to run on a 32bit OS like OS/2 or Win32 and to increase the number of node licenses from 3 to either 5 or 10.

Here are my notes as well as some comments to how this affected my own BBS etc.

Floppy Discs 1-3

PCBoard V15.2/2 & V15.2 Setup Disks 1 - 3  = PCBoard Professional Bulletin Board Software V15.2/2 Install Disks (3x HD 1.44 MB). Serial Number: 042421 (License for 2 Lines plus Doors and PPLC) (c)1994 Clark Dev.  Co., Inc.

Floppy Disc 4

PCBoard V15.21 - 5 Lines plus PPLC Lic files provided by POB Support BBS, Ser.# 042421 (As result of license transfer and upgrade), 1xHD Disk, about 991 KB, includes only the upgraded Pcboard.exe. The Pcboardm.exe and PCBoard.ser was supposed to be on there too, based on the ReadMe!.POB text files with installation notes in German by the German distributor for PCBoard,  where I purchased the License Transfer to my Name, the # Lines Upgrade from 2 to 5 Lines and the Print Manuals for PCB and PPLC 15.2.

He did include however, a PCBTEXT. File, translated from English to German, which he did not mention, but I did not care about that one, because I kept the language within my BBS, with exceptions to One-Liners, Personal Messages and funny phrases that  I put out  with the command prompt every time, to the original English Language Version. I had some callers from abroad after all, mainly from Israel and Canada.

The BBS worked fine withe the existing (2 Lines) Pcboard.ser file and the updated Pcboard.exe.

I then got a cracked version of the software anyway, if the cops would have compared the serial numbers used for the running BBS and the printed on my original setup disks and invoices, they would have found out, that they did not match :).

I removed the display of the serial #, the PCBoard version and credits that are usually displayed to a user who connects to the BBS with a HEX editor, because I did not want to rub it under the nose of a stranger who got my BBS phone numbers somehow, that I was running a BBS on PCBoard.

Running PCBoard was a pretty clear indicator that you had a pirate board running. It did not matter if you used a cracked version of PCB or owned licenses as I did. Nobody would believe you anyway.

Well, there were for sure places in the binaries left where the serial number could have been found, but the cops didn't bother anyway. They had still a hard time believing that I ran my software pirating BBS on legitimate software where I paid a considerable amount of money for.

It was also for the first time that they got to see the manuals of the software. The government had obviously not the money to pay for this kind of material that  law enforcement could have learned more about the tools used by their "foes" and thus better able to work against them. Well well.

Floppy Disc 5

PCBoard V15.22 - 10 Lines License File (Pcboard.ser) and Executables (Pcboard.exe & Pcboardm.exe) - cracked/pirated version. 

I only got it because of convenience. I never had more lines than 5 (where I had purchased the license for).
The problem was that I wanted to have a local node for myself (e.G. reading and writing messages, check how the system looks,  develop and test PPE's and upload files).

The 5 lines license did not allow me to setup a sixth "sysop & local only"  line. This is how Clark Development was able to sell stacked licenses (for 1,3, 5,10,25, 100 & 255+ lines). Without a crack for the software was it impossible for a sysop to exceed the number of lines where he had a license for.

The second reason was the missing 5 Lines version of the PCBoardM.exe, which became an issue for me after having my BBS up for a long time and after my free Version upgrade and support agreement had expired already (I believe it was always good for one-year after acquiring a new license for the software.

I used the PCBoard.exe as long as I had also a PC for each line, which were hooked up in a Netware Lite and later Lantastic to a token ring network.

When I got my new Pentium100MHz "power PC" with 16 MB (later 32 MB) RAM and an OEM License for IBM's OS/2 Warp operating system, I could not use the Pcboard.exe anymore, because it didn't run properly in a 32 Bit / Multitasking environment such as OS/2 (or later also Win95). Clark Development provided for this purpose a modified and optimized version of the executable with the file name PcboardM.exe (where "M" stands for "Multi-Tasking Support". They charged extra money for the M version at first, but then changed their pricing model again, providing the M and Standard version for no extra fee.

The was no instant support or Internet around and used for this type of things  back in the days and I simply did not want to get through all the hassle again, like long distance phone calls to the distributor; explaining everything in detail, providing physical proof that I own a licensed copy of the software etc. I was sitting at "the source" after all.

I did bend my licensing agreement a little bit, but did not feel anything wrong with what I was doing.
I saved everybody time and money, that would have been spent otherwise. 

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 7/21/2009 10:28:00 AM  .oOo.  0 comments

Trip Back on Memory Lane - Summary and Intro

Trip Back on Memory Lane - Summary and Intro

Posted on: 7/21/2009 10:14:00 AM

memorylanethumb2Welcome to my mini-series "Trip Back on Memory Lane". Make sure to keep tissues handy and enjoy a trip back to times when the computer world was still "intact" and a lot of fun. I hope to bring back some enjoyable memories back for one or the other of you.

I will go beyond the simple nostalgic parts, which are clearly an important part of this and try to make clear and suggestive cross-references to things, mostly problems, that we did or did not have back then, but sill/again have today, in this advanced day and age.

I created a video where I show some buried treasures of mine and talk about them a little bit. You can watch the combined video, which includes all of them, the Gravis Ultrasound (GUS) sound card, the PCBoard BBS Software, the IBM OS/2 operating system and my ACE Demos Collection CD-ROMs below.

Note: Correction to one of the statements that I made in the video. It was a Pentium 100MHz and not a 486/100 where I ran the BBS with OS/2 on. Sorry for that.

The video is a bit less than 13 minutes long and provides visual images that will bring back memories for many of you, if you shared some of my own personal history of course.

I have actually a bit more to say to each of the treasures and started writing content. What I have written so far is way to much to publish in a single blog post (it might sound strange to hear that from me) so I decided to make it also an article series.

ACE gravis os2warp  pcboard 

I cut down the full video and made individual episodes out of it as well, which I will use as introduction to each of the posts. Last but not least would I include some resources and download links that are related or directly connected to the things that I either mentioned in the video already or will talk about in more detail in the upcoming articles of my series "Trip Back on Memory Lane". 

Don't be surprised, if the articles will be published in wrong order. This is because I will publish them in the order that I write them and I did already write much of the stuff for other parts than 1. (GUS) :).

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I hope you will enjoy the full series of mine. Feel free to share any personal stories, comments and opinions in the comments section of this or the other posts in this series to share them with me and others who are reading this blog post. Thanks and Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 7/21/2009 10:14:00 AM  .oOo.  0 comments

FILE_ID.DIZ Stories... A Trip Down Memory Lane

FILE_ID.DIZ Stories... A Trip Down Memory Lane

Posted on: 2/10/2009 11:51:00 PM

I remember the days when there was no such thing as "file_id.diz" and users had to enter a description for every single file that you uploaded manually. A pain in the ass and often causing poor descriptions of your file directory, because most users (especially in the "Warez Scene" or "Software Pirates Scene") did not have the time to enter very long and descriptive details to every file.

Remember, there was no copy-and-paste nor multi-tasking at that time either.

I know that the AMIGA guys had tools that worked similar to the Windows Clipboard. For that reason was the Amiga scene also the first that introduced the mini ASCII logos of release groups that AMIGA couriers used for the BBS file descriptions to make the files more prominent.

Oldskool (AMIGA style) file_id.diz ASCII design for the Elite Warez PC release group Razor 1911 
.
                                                           .
     Quake III (c)Id–Software final CD–Rip            
      __________                 .
     /________  \ –============– : –[01/99]–
     :    |  _\  )__/|______ ____|\  __
    _/––– | /___/  _____   / __  \ \/  \ ––\_
     \––– |  .  \ <  |/   /____\  | .\_/ ––/
      – – |  |\______|___________/  | ––– –
        – | / .:.nineteeneleven.:.\ | roy                  
      –== |/ ===================== \| ====–

                                                           .

Logos were adapted by the PC scene after file_id.diz was introduced by Clark Development Corporation (I believe that was with PC Board V14.5, but I am not 100% sure, it could also been V15.0).

The first ASCII (file_id) logos for PC releases were Amiga style designs, often even the same logos used by the Amiga section of the group, if it had any.

I don't want to show off, but I truly believe that I was the first one who created and used a Block ASCII (PC) style file_id for releases. It was the file_id.diz design for my first PC group that I co-founded called Cardinals in early 1993 and merged entirely into TRSI/Faith in 1994.

Quick Info: What is File_ID.diz?

File_ID.diz is a file name for a small text-file that is added to a compressed archive file (such as ZIP, the de-facto standard for distributing programs via Bulletin Board Systems). The file_id.diz is added by the creator of the program archive file and contains the name of the program and maybe some additional useful information. The sole purpose of the file was the use on bulletin board systems. After a file was uploaded by the user, the BBS software looks for the existence of a file_id.diz file in the archive and uses its content automatically for the description in the file listings, if it finds one. If no file_id.diz was included in the file, the user had to enter a description for it manually.


Cardinals released awesome trainers for PC games with an amount and quality of options never seen before (or after)... Fuck "Dread"! They were "lamer" hehe.


The Cardinals File_ID.DIZ design in Block ASCII Style from early 1993. The First of it's kind? (proof me wrong!)

Also see this and here. 

.
                             ▄     
        ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▐██ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀
         ██▀█ ██▀█ ██▀▄ ██▀▄ ▀  ██▀▄ ██▀█ ██   ██▀█
         ██ ▀ ██ █ ██ █ ██ █ ██ ██ █ ██ █ ██ ▄ ██▄▄       .
         ██ ▄ ██▀█ ██▀▄ ██ █ ██ ██ █ ██▀█ ██ █ ▄▄ █
         ██▄█ ██ █ ██ █ ██▄▀ ██ ██ █ ██ █ ██▄█ ██▄█
          ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄ ▓█ ▄▄▄▄▄trained▄▄▄▄▄▄
         ▀                   ▓▒                   ▀
         █                   ▒░                   █
         ▄                                        ▄
         ▀▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▄▀
.
                                                           .

Cardinals trainer releases did stick-out on the boards, because the big and bold block ASCII logo was hard to miss among those oldskool ASCII logos and regular text.

Hey, If you don't believe me that the Cardinals file_id was the first one using a Block ASCII logo, fine. If you can show me BBS listings from before that where block ASCII was used, I'd appreciate it (actually not, but for history sake, I'd rather proven wrong than making a false claim).

Anyhow. I used Block ASCII for the Cardinals file_id, because I wanted it to stick out. I also used extensively Block ASCII for the Cardinals NFO ASCII that was also not very typical at that time.

Well, the coders had to learn the ALT + numeric ASCII character code combination for 4 block characters... not too much to ask. ALT-176, ALT-177, ALT-178 and ALT-219 :) It wasn't for long that other groups followed suit and also used Block ASCII for their file_id's and I was thinking about even better ways to make file descriptions stick out more.


Block ASCII Codes 101 :)

                        ░  = ASCII character 176
                        ▒  = ASCII character 177
                        ▓  = ASCII character 178
                        █  = ASCII character 219

In order to generate those characters, you had to press the "ALT" key and enter the ASCII code 
on the numeric keyboard (while holding the ALT-Key pressed) and then release the ALT-Key at which 
moment it would render the character that represents the entered ASCII value.

I thought about ANSI and created the designs that you can see here in my deviation for testing. They were never used of course. First of all, the ESC sequences would have been a problem in many cases.

Also the length of File descriptions (per line) ... I believe it was 42 characters for most BBS systems, would have posed an issue. The color formatting of the ANSI codes (or PC Board color codes, if you would have used those) limited very much the characters that would remain for the logo itself.

AMIGA-Sysop's and traders would also had have some problems with those... It was an interesting concept for a moment, but failed for very practical reasons.

ansi_file_id_concepts1993 Long, but nice story eh?

I almost forgot about this, but then I found my ANSI file_id.diz designs and it all came back to me :).

I started a collection of file_id.diz artwork that was used by scene groups for their releases. My collection still has a bunch of holes, but it had a good start and already includes over 240 file_ids. I also made the whole collection available as a single ZIP archive for download which includes the ASCII files in original format. You might want to check it out. Enjoy!



Cheers!

Carsten aka Roy/SAC



Roy/SAC Homepage

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 2/10/2009 11:51:00 PM  .oOo.  0 comments

Software Piracy, Abandonware and Today's Messed up Copyright Laws

Software Piracy, Abandonware and Today's Messed up Copyright Laws

Posted on: 2/17/2008 10:45:00 PM

I was browsing in the Defacto2.net document archive of the PC scene and found a reference to an interesting article written by Stephen Granade titled "Warez, Abandonware, and the Software Industry".

The article discusses in detail the subjects software piracy, copyright with a few on it from a perspective of a new type of software piracy called "Abandonware".

Abandonware provides access to games that are old, out of print and not supported anymore by the software company who created it or owns the copyright. It provides multiple functions; one of which is to provide support for rightful owners of the software to get a replacement, if their copy was damaged or the disk where it was stored on is not readable anymore. It also provides people access to historic games that cannot be acquired legally anymore, since they are not being sold anymore. The third function is to provide current game designers with an archive to study how other game designers in the past worked and how they did things that worked or not.

Abandonwares sites often provide also the means to play the old games, especially if they are for hardware platforms that are also unavailable today, such as Apple II, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Super NES and other old Nintendo consoles, Sega consoles, old Sony Playstations, Atari game consoles and home computers. This means are emulator programs for modern computers (mostly Windows PC) that emulate the old hardware platform and load old game code to run on your computer. Even old PC games for MS DOS that don't run on modern Windows PC anymore require an emulator to make them work.

The problem is that this activity is illegal.

Copyright is valid for 75 years. No computer game has reached this age yet, because computers are not even around that long. 75 years are an eternity in the computer market where virtually nothing survives more than 5 years before it becomes obsolete and unavailable to purchase.

Old stuff is not profitable enough for companies to care about, but when it comes to copyright, some of them actually do care, even though they do not provide anybody the option to obtain the usage rights legally. There is no official body for the preservation of old software. There are some non-profit organizations that concern themselves with the preservation of old computer hardware.

If it wouldn't be for enthusiasts and Abandonware sites, many of the software from the past would already be lost forever and forgotten by most people. Maybe the name mentioned in a magazine and some eyewitnesses who actually played the game in the past would be the only thing that remains. This reminds me of my previous post, which is also about copyright, but specifically about an issue with music and the impossibility of an individual to get the required licenses necessary for a legal re-distribution on a small scale.

The copyright laws need to change IMO.

They are fuzzy when it comes to software anyway. Stephen explained that nicely in his article, quote:

"Intellectual property rights are more nebulous than traditional property rights. If I own something, it's easy to see the harm if my rights regarding it are infringed: I have lost something tangible. Intellectual property rights deal with intangibles, and as with all intangibles it's harder to see the direct harm. If I copy a game you wrote, you still have the code and can sell your game. What exactly have you lost?"

Who is enforcing the copyright anyway?

The two major industry groups are the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) and the Business Software Alliance (BSA). Both organizations take software piracy seriously. And they will continue to enforce the current copyright laws as long as its members want them too.

Another good article for further reading about this issue is "New Front in the Copyright Wars: Out-of-Print Computer Games" by Greg Costikyan from May 18, 2000, published at the New York Times Technology Circuit.

Stephens article also talks about Warez and what the difference is between Warez and Abandonwares. When it comes to Warez, I feel that I am also a bit qualified to say something about it. Stephen brought some examples up that were provided by the SIIA and BSA about the damage that software piracy Is causing for the software industry.

Here are some quotes:

Each year for the past six years, the SIIA and BSA have compiled statistics on business software piracy. Their figures show that world-wide piracy has declined over the past six years, from a rate of 49% in 1994 to 36% in 1999. Despite this drop in the piracy rate, the calculated cost of this piracy has remained nearly the same, from $12.3 million in 1994 to $12.2 million in 1999.

How are these figures determined? According to Peter Beruk, the Vice-President of Anti-Piracy for SPA Anti-Piracy, a division of SIIA, the figures are compiled by International Planning and Research (IPR), a Washington, D.C. firm. IPR calculated how many computers were being sold into a country for business purposes and how much software was being sold. IPR then compiled statistics of what software was being used in office settings. From this they could calculate how much software should be sold to match the number of business computers in the country. The deficit between the ideal sales rate and the actual one is the piracy rate. By multiplying that number by the street price of the software in question, they arrive at the figure for lost revenues. This is done on a country-by-country basis.

Peter rejects the argument that, even if you eliminated piracy, software sales would not increase, at least in the business realm. "We believe that actually all of that number [of pirated copies] would have turned into [legally-bought] copies. Why would a copy be made and sitting on a computer if there was no intention to use it?"

This calculation is BS and of course in favor of the software companies. Software licenses are in most cases outlasting the life of a computer. Many software companies also offer free upgrades to existing customers. There is no statistic for the average life time of software and hardware, but I can backup my claim with my own real life experience. Not just computers and software that I purchased, but also friends, families and companies I worked for or provided computer support.

Needless to say are claims that are made in court, if somebody is persecuted for warez distribution, also often totally absurd. Figures like number of downloads or copies made of the software are sometimes used as if everybody who gets a copy for free would (or could) actually buy the software, if no access to the pirated copy would have been available.

Most wouldn't buy the software if it would not be free, many also cannot afford to buy it. Stephen suggests that maybe 1 of 20 would have maybe bought it, but this figure is only an educated guess. I know that this figure is definitely lower when it comes to individual within the wares scene itself who are often not even interested in most of the software they swap around.

The free copies that are spread around also do not harm software companies in every case. The lost sales due to illegal copies are sometimes offset and exceeded by sales that were made thanks to the existence and wide spread of the illegal copy of it. I would like to know how many sales of let's say Adobe Photoshop are a direct cause of somebody using privately a pirated version of the software. Designers who come fresh from college are often experts in the use of the software and I don’t think that the majority of them owned a legal license for it when they were broke students who had no money to spend, but plenty of time to learn to use complicated software such as Photoshop.

When those designers start working professionally, guess what software they demand and get? The same software that they used illegally, but now licenses are purchased by the company because it is used commercially and the cost of it are justifiable, due to the revenue made because of its use.

With games does it work a bit different, but even there does the illegal copy sometimes help to increase sales. I don’t know who owned a legal copy of the original DOOM game by the shareware software firm ID Software, but I know that they made a lot of money with the franchise over the years. Doom 3 sold millions of copies and even a movie was created based on the game series. I wonder if those profits would have been made, if no illegal copies of the game would have been spread all over the world via bulletin board systems and copies made for friends in school. They would probably work today on Commander Keen Episode 54 with a three person team.

But here is the catch that comes with my equation. It does only work for good software titles and not with rip off and low quality junk. Unfortunately, the majority of software does qualify as junk. Did things changed dramatically in the last 10 years and I am wrong with this statement? I can only talk about my own past experience from a time when I saw every software title release that was released on a daily basis.

The laws are so wrong and it is about time for a change.

The recent announcement of a planned lawsuit of the Village People and Price against the Torrent search engine Piratebay.org, Operation Buccaneer and other operations like that by the BSA and SIIA, the suit of Metallica against Napster or the thousands of RIAA Lawsuits against consumers will not make it better for anybody. The issues will not go away and the anger of the consumers will only increase. Companies who make normal people to criminals will find a special place in the heart of their actual customers.

Legislation that allows this to happen is also not free of guilt, but we are only talking about the liberties of the majority of people here. They have of course to take a back seat in the face of interests of a few profit hungry individuals who own software companies and record labels. Democracy would be too nice, if it would actually be practiced, but it's only a word anyway, right?

I have only one thing to add to this and that would be this nice video here.


Backup link to video at YouTube.

What are your thoughts about this issue?
Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 2/17/2008 10:45:00 PM  .oOo.  4 comments

You Can't Stop Progress! Lessons from the Past

You Can't Stop Progress! Lessons from the Past

Posted on: 12/18/2007 01:14:00 AM

I was sorting some old zip archives on my file server when I stumbled across an old text file from October 1997 with the name "INETSUXX.ZIP".

I was intrigued and checked it out. The FILE_ID.DIZ provided already a glimpse of the things to come.

.-----------------------------.
| a short statement about the |
| actual bulletin board       |
| system scene !!!            |
|       changes are needed!   |
`------------------------------- -- -
                              |
   COMMENT ON THIS FILE!­!    :
   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~    .
      _.:%[READ:IT]%:._

Here is the entire content of the included text file with the filename "CHANGE.IT!". It has two authors. The initial author who also created the ZIP file and started spreading it through other bulletin board systems is an anonymous sysop who is mad that the BBS scene was going down the drain and that everybody was switching to use the Internet rather than dialing a BBS.

It was modified and extended with comments by PigPen of Poison and Surge. He made some were good and forward thinking statements back then, even though his English language skills are not the best (the text screams for spelling and grammatical errors) and border-line PG13 language used. This is true for both guys by the way. I think it was how we really talked back then. I can't remember for sure, but the text refreshed some long forgotten memories in me.

Okay, here it comes, uncut and uncensored.

Original text....

        this sux!

        we had several times to change the whole thing... but no one of us
        seems to care about  the big problems comming over us! .. we tryed
        to fight against this  enemy of  crime -  but - most of us weren't
        able  to  resist!  ...  so  the  wohle  crap  seems  to  go  down.
        should  not  we  stand  together and fight agains our worth enemy ?
        the internet -  which  becomes bigger  and bigger ... and seems to
        destroy our  nice  bbs  network scene (which seems not to be a net-
        work neither a bunsh  of  friends).  most sysops fight against each
        other  instad  of  putting  their forces together agains the inter-
        net.
                so stand together ... and keep this scene alife!

        a sysop! ...

Added crap cummin' up:

        You're right!

        Definately the Inter*et is huge and growing very fast. The _BIG_
        problem is: It's simply more popular than the BBS-Scene, and you
        really can find there everything, even things, you really don't
        WANT and surely never NEED. Also it's really simpler to use than
        dialing BBS'es...
        And there the whole shit goes: I-N*t is becoming a mass-media
        like TV, and if someone complains about shitnet, he also could
        shout out: 'Read books! Sell yar TV-Set!' Stupid thoughs, but true.
        But on the other hand, sucknet is SLOWER, BUSIER, easier HACKABLE
        and much more EXPENSIVE.
        By the way, ever thought about all those _really_ lame dudez, who
        moved to blamenet, and doesn't bother you anymore? ;)
        Back to business...
        So we all hate lamenet, and wanna _FIGHT_ against?
        ( I mean <fight> not <complain> !­! )

        - What about heavy announcing for our boards in hmpfnet?
        - What about email support per BBS?
        - What about firin' up _ONE_ huge net like good old GSN, CDN or DGI?
        - What about making our boards easier to use?
        - What about making our boards friendlier?
          ('What means ICE?' , 'Be sure you have a good reason to page!' ,
           'No beginners!' , or those ratios we have but glblbnet don't)
        - What about all those suckers, who would call and give the
          remaining scene the rest?!?

        But what's about the _meaning_ of 'The Scene'? Is the scene a
        huge mob of people who call BBS'es and spread drivers and chat
        about Java, HTML, sexdolls and helicopters?
        Or is the scene a small crowd of active, friendly and sometimes ;)
        productive freaks with abilities, not only a mouse to click with?
        I'd really prefer the second...
        Also if you want to keep the scene together, a first step would be
        to sign with your handle, not with <a sysop>.
        Imagine all those dudez, who have the same opinion like you,
        and don't know, who you are... Nice, 'eh?

        Pressin' all this in a short sentence:
        [Internet grows, Scene selects.]

        PigPen^Poison^Surge

Yep, the good ol' days, gone forever. I can feel the anonymous sysop, because I used to be one myself and watched it all go to hell without anybody even blinking or saying anything. But when I saw it in 1997 in greater detail, I knew that the times for bulletin board systems are coming to an end. Note: I saw the Internet already before 1997. I used the Inet for the first time via CompuServ and the second time via a BBS Door :). But it took me a bit to "get it" to the full extend.

You can't change things back to what they were. The genie was out of the bottle and there was no way to put it back into it. Resisting progress is a natural but bad reaction. If you don't stop fighting progress a.s.a.p., the progress will eventually simply roll over you and leave you behind in the dust. Progress cannot be stopped, it can only be delayed! Remember that!

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 12/18/2007 01:14:00 AM  .oOo.  0 comments

It Was Time Again For A Clean-Up

It Was Time Again For A Clean-Up

Posted on: 10/15/2007 01:59:00 AM

As the title of this post already said, it was time again for a clean-up of my site RoySAC.com. Its content was growing significantely over the past months, which resulted in a very user unfriendly navigation and gave folks a hard time to find stuff on the site.



Homepage
The first thing you will notice is a much more cleaner, shorter and straight forward homepage of RoySAC.com. Old content from the homepage was moved to existing pages (SAC homepage, About Me page), to its own page (Closed Society BBS) or simply deleted.

ASCII Art Academy
The ASCII art primer and the three styles of the underground text art scene articles can not be found in the top navigation anymore. I created a whole new section call the ASCII Art Academy. The academy refers to those two articles and to a lot more stuff, including the existing ASCII art tutorials by Solid and DiamonDie plus five new ASCII art tutorials and the History of ASCII Art article by Joan G. Stark.

The new ASCII Art Academy can also be reached via the simple URL RoySAC.com/learn/.

Art Galleries
I had already four art galleries for my own stuff. Three more were added when my site took over as Superior Art Creations homepage. Then I added two more with ASCII and ANSI art from other artists and don't forget the special ASCII Nudes gallery and the ASCII morph pieces by Skylined.

Stuff was all over the place.

The galleries got a new "splash page" called... right, Art Galleries, which provides easy access to all the galleries and art pieces mentioned above.

Contact Page
In the case that you did not notice, I also have a contact form available now where you can send me a message without the need to dig for my email address and using your email client.

Site Navigation
The top navigation and additional text navigation in the footer of the site reflect the new structure of my site. I hope it makes things less confusing and make people actually find all the nice stuff, which I made available on my website.

Unchanged
The SAC section grew in size a little, the same is true for my About Me page, but the rest remained pretty much the same as it was before. Also the online shop, downloads page and links section did not require to be changed.

Feedback Wanted
Let me know what you think. I am open for any comments, suggestions, praise, complaints and other feedback about the new site structure and navigation. Contact me directly or leave a comment here at my blog. Thanks, I appreciate that.

Enjoy the site! Cheers!
Carsten aja Roy/SAC

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 10/15/2007 01:59:00 AM  .oOo.  2 comments

Welcome to the ASCII Art Videos

Welcome to the ASCII Art Videos

Posted on: 8/31/2007 09:30:00 PM

I added a new page to my site, which is dedicated to show videos that are about or related to text art and the subject that surrounds it, including the BBS scene, the demoscene and of course SAC, Superior Art Creations.

Visit the new ASCII Art Videos Section at RoySAC.com/videos/.

The section launched with 10 videos.

The first one is "The Art of Textmode" - Text Art History, a presentation at the Assembly 2004 Demo party in Helsinki, Finland by Christian Wirth aka RaD Man. I referred to that video earlier already in a blog post of mine from February and decided to put it somewhere on the site where it can be found more easily.

The second one is a short video by Creature of Hell/SAC - The Movie from 2001, showing off some of his pixel art skills.

The main part of the section is made up by the six videos, which represent the complete content of Jason Scott's 3 DVD long documentary titled "BBS - The Documentary". No, it's not an illegal copy of the DVD's. Jason put them up himself on Google Video, because he released the documentary under the creative commons licensing model to make its content easier accessible. Jason does of course appreciate support for his cause(s), which are surrounding the subject of BBS and actually were the triggers for him to create the documentary in the first place. You can support him via buying the real DVDs, pressed, not burned, with nice wrapping and paper box for example. You can get it via his website here or from Amazon.com, if you prefer them for any reasons.



Then I also put up two good examples of ASCIImation, which means animated ASCII or ASCII animation. The examples show two songs by more or less famous musicians who used ASCIImation for their music videos.

More videos will be added over time, especially videos of the old SACtros and cracktros the group did for others and which can not be started and watched on modern PCs without emulation of the old MS DOS operating system.

Btw. I extended the SAC section of RoySAC.com a little bit as well. I added more content and also found two music-disks that were released by SAC members when I was not part of the group anymore. I found them by accident and put them up on my site of course. :)

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 8/31/2007 09:30:00 PM  .oOo.  4 comments

PCBoard BBS Software

PCBoard BBS Software

Posted on: 6/08/2007 03:19:00 AM

Something else was even longer on my to-do list than the post about leveraging sites like deviantART for online marketing.

It has been on my list for over one year now and I also got finally around to do it. What am I talking about? The article to the PCBoard BBS Software at Wikipedia.

I extended the article significantly and also added a photo of the box of the software, which I took myself with my digital camera. You can see the picture here in the post as well. For the folks who don't know, I used to run a BBS myself called "Closed Society". I wrote about it on the homepage of my RoySAC.com website.

I used as BBS Software PCBoard. First via multiple PC's under MS DOS and then all Notes on one machine running under IBM OS/2 Warp. The BBS was up 24/7 for over 2 years in my one bedroom studio. Did the noise of the running computers bother me when I was asleep? Actually quite the opposite.
I had a problem sleeping when the BBS was shut down and offline.

PCBoard was a great software and the best thing about it was the availability of its own script language to change the look, feel and behavior of the BBS. I wrote and published a bunch of tools myself. You can download all of them here.

I launched the BBS shorty after SAC was founded. The existence of the BBS did cause me to create more ANSI art than I would probably have done without it. So it was kind of a good thing to have a BBS of your own and do ANSI text art. It also did not make me depend on the time and talents of other artists hehe.



Clark Development, who created the software did unfortunately go bankrupt in 1997, the year when I shut down my BBS. They saw the reign of the BBS coming before most sysops at the time (including me) and started development on a product called PCBoard Metaworks, which was the attempt of the creation of a BBS like environment on the internet. The product was not finished to save the company. It died together with the company and never saw the light of day.

That's fate I guess, but no whining will change anything and we have to move on.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 6/08/2007 03:19:00 AM  .oOo.  0 comments

Search for ANSI and ASCII Artists and Bloggers

Search for ANSI and ASCII Artists and Bloggers

Posted on: 5/30/2007 10:02:00 AM

Except for some activities at deviantART was I not successful after over one year of searching to find much (if any) other blogs that are related to the old ANSI and ASCII underground artscene.

Fellow artists who created ASCII art for group NFO files, File_ID.diz or ANSI art for BBS Layouts and Login pictures and logos back in the early to mid 1990's.

It's sad and frustrating. The lack of community makes me spin off with my blog into other subjects, such as deviantART, Wikipedia and Cirque Du Soleil (or Internet Marketing and in a few cases about video games). I also was writing about internet video and music. Nice stuff, but not text art related.

I recenty created a new "Demoscene and Text Art Community" over at BUMPzee!

BUMPzee! is a blogger community / feed reader / networking site with some Digg features. I added another blog to the community, which I found at Blogspot, but that blog does not see much activity anymore either.



Where are you guys (and few girls) of the text art scene, demo scene and BBS warez scene? Nobody blogging? Nobody writing about things that were forgotten by most people and never learned by todays youth? Come on over and contact me and join the community.

Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 5/30/2007 10:02:00 AM  .oOo.  3 comments

Travel back in Time for a Vision of the Future

Travel back in Time for a Vision of the Future

Posted on: 4/21/2007 06:18:00 PM

I traveled a couple days a go back in time to the year 1994 to an internet marketing and advertising conference. Wait a moment. Did I say 1994? Yes I did and I am not trying to trick you.

See here the video recording of one of the first, if not the first internet marketing and advertising conference, which was held on November 4th,1994 in San Francisco, California.

What happened?
Ken McCarthy is the first speaker and talks about opportunities. He was very forward thinking and you might think that what he says is obvious and logical. They were not in 1994. The second speaker is Marc Andreessen, co-Founder of Netscape, which was founded just a bit earlier in 1994 as well after the overwhelming success and popularity of their software called "web browser", the original "Mosaic" and the creation of the World Wide Web as we know it today.

The Web is just existed for a year or so when the conference was held.



link to video


It was a nice trip back in time. It also brought some memories back and a chuckle when I heard Ken talk about the role of BBS systems in the growth of the internet.

I have to say that he was a bit off when it comes to the role of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) would play in getting people online by becoming something like a mini-ISP. True, a lot of BBS software development companies were jumping on the bandwagon and worked on internet integration into their software. With about 50,000+ bulletin boards in the united states at that time did it may be quite reasonable. I happened to be a Sysop of a bulletin board exactly around that time and can tell you that this could not have worked that way.

What are we talking about here?
The vast majority of the BBS's where run by individuals as a hobby and not as a business. Access was often free, but donations for hardware upgrades were appreciated. The resources were limited and multi-line (more than one modem) BBS's became only widely available at the beginning of the nineties when the computer hardware was able to connect multiple nodes to a single computer. But even then remained the number of BBS systems with more than 5 or even more than 10 nodes relatively low.

A BBS that was an ISP (kind of)
If you want to get an Idea how a BBS looked like with over 20-30 nodes, look at the picture below. That is "one corner" of the Rusty-n-Edie's BBS around 1988-89 and far away from its final size. The BBS had a staggering 128 dial in connections available in its prime and needed one computer for each line, plus multiple support servers. Details are from the article "The Birth of Rusty n Edie's BBS" that was written by the sysop of Rusty n Edie's, Rusty Hardenburgh.

If the majority of BBS's would have been like that, the Idea of them becoming a micro-ISP would have been a bit more realistic.


(Equipment detail follow at the end of the post)

The Reality
Normal BBS's were limited in bandwidth and dial in connections. My BBS had 5 lines, which means that it could handle 5 callers at the same time. My BBS had over 100 active users and a lot of them called every day or every other day. At peak times were all 5 lines constantly busy, which means that a lot of my users got a busy signal for a period of time, before they got a connection when another user left.

A user that is finally able to connect checks a few mails online, if the BBS was file focuses as mine. Some Systems were message focused and connected in networks like the Fidonet (which could be compared to the early Usenet of the Internet). Since the volume of message could be pretty big depending on the number of subjects you were interested in and subscribed for, users did not read the emails while connected to the BBS, but connected with special software, like Email clients today and downloaded new messages and uploaded responses.

If the BBS was created to be a place to swap files, the user would check the mostly new uploaded files only, flag the ones he is interested in and start a download and possibly an upload at the same time. When finished, users would hang up and leave to consume the downloaded content "offline", making the node available to another user.

Because of that was it possible for small BBS's with only a handful nodes to serve so much people. The "online time" was fairly brief.

..and the conclusion
Connecting the user with the world wide web would have changed that and make users stay longer connected because they can't browse the net "offline". During that time is the node blocked for any other user, which would reduce the number of people you could serve in a reasonable manner.

Add to this, that the BBS would also require a permanent connection to the internet which was not cheap back then. There was no such thing as high speed internet yet. What some Sysops did, was the option for users to create an internet email account and use the BBS as something like a Hotmail or Gmail.

The end of the BBS era was coming, but some did not wanted to believe it. BBS software companies attempted to create internet versions of their BBS software, but failed to realize that the internet does not work like a BBS. Needless to say, with the BBS's did also die a lot of BBS software companies, including Clark Development who created "PcBoard", the BBS software I was using (Rusty n Edie's too btw).

That's life. There is nothing anybody could have done to change the course of history.

Here are the promised technical details about the Rusty-n-Edie's BBS.
  • Three 486 33Mhz servers with 32 Megabytes of memory on each. One 22Mhz 486 server with 80 Megabytes of RAM. They each have a caching controller. We need that much memory to cache the fifteen 780 Megabytes SCSI drives, three 1.2 Gigabytes and two 386 Megabytes ESDI drives, the 20 drives format to something over 15 Gigabytes.

  • 128 (one for each node) 16Mhz 286's.
  • In addition, we have eight 33Mhz 386's, a 16Mhz 386 (our original server, our original Tandy XT type machine died about a year ago), and five 12Mhz 286's (These machines are so we can work on the system without taking it down).
  • 25 Anchor: 2400 baud modems.
  • 58 US Robotic's Dual Standards 14.4 V32 V32bis V42bis.
  • 24 Compucom 9600 baud Speedmodems.
  • 5 Hayes V-Series V42bis modem.
  • 16 direct connect CONNECT-USA lines.
  • All of this networked together with four copies of the wonderful Novell Netware 386. It works great!
  • The whole thing is hooked up to ten huge batteries that supply 16KV of uninterruptable power.
  • Sysops: the couple Rusty Hardenburgh and Edwina Hardenburgh, two of their son's, their daughter and a friend of the family with the name Carl
The BBS was busted by and shut down by the FBI in 1993 because of software piracy.
More to that is available at Wikipedia.

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 4/21/2007 06:18:00 PM  .oOo.  0 comments

How things happen such as this Blog

How things happen such as this Blog

Posted on: 2/11/2006 10:55:00 PM

It is sometimes funny how things happen in life and take unexpected turns, trigger a chain reaction you did not expect to happen when you started something for a complete different reason. Exactly this happened when I did the redesign of my families Homepage Cumbrowski.com between Christmas and New Year.

It was only a single page with a family photo, Family Members Names and contact Information plus some text talking a bit about me, my move to the United States and my private business Venture ConsumerMatch.com. I decided to create a separate page for every member of the family including a page just about me. I put on my page the content I already had and started extending it a bit to include more about my past and the time when I was still living in Germany.

My time as ASCII & ANSI Artist with the pseudonym "Roy/SAC", my BBS Closed Society suddenly came back into my mind. It was back then "my life" and not just a "hobby". I was very serious about it and dedicated not only the biggest piece of my spare time for it but also a big chunk of my income as student and later salary. I realized that this was a topic I should create at least one page just for itself. So I started one at www.Cumbrowski.com/RoySAC/ which was moved to its own website in 07/2006 to RoySAC.com (edited 12/2006)

When I started writing the content, talking about people, groups and locations a began to do searching for them on the Net to see if I can find useful related stuff, Screenshots, Dates etc. and also to see what people I knew from back then are doing today. It was all very interesting and exiting. A trip back in time bringing back more and more memories. The dedicated Page became oviously a bit bigger than intended.

Since the Internet and how to make other people that are interested find your stuff was nothing new to me did I start looking for appropriate places to get a link added to my new Page that I did not have to wait that mighty Google will be so kind to add it to its index in 3-6 months, maybe.

I started at Wikipedia because somebody already created an entry there about "my" Group Superior Art Creations.

Heck, I was the founder of it so I had no problem to add a Link to the me, the Founders Homepage there. I also updated the content of the Wikipedia entry with some information that were missing. I also updated Topics like "ASCII Art", "ANSI Art", "Bulletin Board System" and "Computer Art Scene". I was amazed about the Amount of Inforation already collected and provided by Wikipedia. New sites like Wikipedia which are based on "folksonomy*" are a great thing because its a living thing created by millions of people and not a "Algorythm" based or "Business" driven collection of information.

* Folksonomy - "a portmanteau word combining "folk" and "taxonomy," refers to the collaborative but unsophisticated way in which information is being categorized on the web" (from Wikipedia).

I then turned to DMOZ (OPT or Open Directory Project). I made only bad experiences with them in the past when it came to register my commercial website projects because of the general hate of most DMOZ Editors towards anything that smells like commerce and marketing. I felt more confident this time, because my page was as NOT commercial as one can be.

I registered the page at the "ASCII Art" category at DMOZ and got surprisingly fast a response back from the editor responsible for this category with the name "shedragon" and real name Laura. "Where is the ASCII art?" was the question. I only had some thumbs with links to the bigger image of ASCII & ANSI "Screenshots" on my page until then and responded that to Laura (who probably had images turned off when browing my page). I also added some real ASCII's of mine to the email to prove that I know what I am talking about and do know my stuff when it comes to ASCII, something I took great pride in and nothing to fool around with.

We began an email conversation about ASCII in general. She was doing some ASCII herself but was involved in a different area of the Text Art Scene than I was. I was active in the what's called "Underground Art Scene" and she in the more "public" Scene with known Spokespersons like Joan G. Stark and others. Those email conversation made me extending the content of my page to talk also about the "Underground Art Scene" in gerneral and their distinct styles which differ significantly from the styles of the public Text Art Scene due to the different applications of each type of Art. She added my Page eventually to the Artist Category, which is a subcategory at /Arts/Visual Arts/ASCII Art/Artists/

I went of to spread the knowldge about Underground Text Art and created a Lense dedicated to it at Squidoo http://www.squidoo.com/ascii/ which allows people to create "Lenses". Lenses are "one person's (lensmaster's) view on a topic he cares about. More specifically, a lens is a single web page filled with information and links that point to other web pages, to continually updated RSS feeds, or to relevant advertising. It's a place to start, not finish. (from Squidoo.com)"

I also put Art Examples up at Flickr, a great place where you can store pictures for free and make them available to be searched for and looked at by anybody if you want to.

All this activities drove of course some highly targeted traffic from people intersted in ASCII Art and people that where active in that Scene as I was. This was great, because this was the original intention and purpose of the whole thing. I got an email one day from Christian Wirth with subject "so..." and one sentence without introduction or signature "you do realize, that you live like 60 min from me now.".

I was thinking "who is this?" and checked the email header in Outlook. Sender Email: radman@acid.org. Radman, the Founder of the fellow and biggest underground Art Group ever called ACID - Ansi Creators In Demand (ACiD.org). I did not realize that he was living in San Jose (2 hours from where I am living now btw. hehe). We only had brief communication before once, years back on the IRC (Internet Relay Chat). We planned to get personally in touch when I get to go to San Jose or if he passes by Fresno one day. I am already looking forward to this. It's always a good thing to be able to share memories with people who experienced the same thing and treasure those memories as much as you do.

All this eventually made me start this blog and I hope that this blog and my Site will allow me to connect to more and more people from the past who I mostly only got to know by their nick name and never met in person and outside the activities of the "Scene". I also hope this will help me to re-connect with friends in Germany and Europe I actually did meet and got to know personally more or less well.

cu around
Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC

Note: Updated 12/22/2006 - Moved Site mentioned and links fixed

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posted by Carsten a.k.a. Roy/SAC at 2/11/2006 10:55:00 PM  .oOo.  0 comments

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