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Re: Apple //e Powered BBS Operational

On Fri, 18 Jan 2013, Benoit0123 wrote:


<address_is wrote:

Hi all,

After a lot of trial and error I managed to get a telnet accessible Warp
Six BBS operational using a Platinum //e, a Rasberry Pi (running tcpser),
and a USB to serial converter. Surprisingly the whole darn thing worked by
just plugging the serial converter directly into the //e's super serial
card. A CFFA 3000 is used for disk storage.

You can connect to the board by visiting matrixreturns.dyndns.org on port
6401. Just like the old days it can only take one caller at a time. My //e
lacks a clock so it doesn't enforce time limits at the moment :).

I recommend using syncterm as a client on a Mac or PC.

I'll try to keep it running as long as the hardware holds out and there's
interest.  Hope to see you!


I managed to connect using Safari and the telnet:// prefix for URL which
launches external Terminal application, and I registered.
As I never used a BBS when it was common usage in my country (I am a perfect
newbie for this kind of thing), I do not really understand what some entries
meant. So I found myself "locked/trapped" when the BBS prompted for a
library name. I did not find the guideline to return to main menu from
there, so all I was able was to kill the telnet process hoping that it has
released the connection from your side.
I'll give it a try this evening and see if your BBS has some file
upload/download capabilities.. and I'll look for the terminal application
you advise for doing so.
Thank you again and best regards,
Benoît


I'm not sure your experience is abnormal.
I remember calling BBSs and getting lost, and bck then you generally had to register before you could do little or anything, so you'd go through this registration process only to find not much at that BBS. And until you got familiar with things, the layers of menus would seem like a maze, where you could get lost.
It got better with experience, though I went from about 1985 to 1993 before I actually stayed on a BBS. Every time I'd try, I'd not find something of value, so I'd give up for a while and then start again. Maybe it was just the BBS numbers I came across, they were just starting up so they were promoting, yet didn't have enough user base or file base. Or maybe I just called the wrong ones. Only about 1993 did I find things (or specific BBSs) to keep me calling back the same BBS. 

  Michael