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  • Ancient BBS Programs

    From tenser@21:1/101 to All on Mon Jun 12 01:47:00 2023
    It's been fun to play with truly ancient "BBS" programs
    on retro systems. Things like `BBOARD` on TOPS-20 or
    `forum` or `xforum` on Multics are both very usable, and
    also quite interesting in their own right.

    `BBOARD` was built on top of the `MM` mail program
    written at Columbia University and shipped with TOPS-20;
    it's quite capable, and extant versions of TWENEX ship
    with some old content (the infamous "Goodbye" message
    from the SAIL PDP-10, for instance).

    `forum` on Multics is similarly useful; there the metaphor
    for a topic is a "meeting". This was reimplemented for
    Unix by the MIT Student Information Processing Board: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.31.8576&rep=rep1&type =pdf

    One can understand why these did not become widespread
    in the hobbyist community: the systems they ran on were
    room-sized and cost millions of dollars. Still, as
    conferencing systems they're quite useful now.

    And of course, there's PLATO on emulated CDC cyber machines,
    CONFER on MTS, etc.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From paulie420@21:2/150 to tenser on Sun Jun 11 18:19:04 2023
    It's been fun to play with truly ancient "BBS" programs
    on retro systems. Things like `BBOARD` on TOPS-20 or
    `forum` or `xforum` on Multics are both very usable, and
    also quite interesting in their own right.

    Where have you been playing with these softwares?

    I just hunted for the 'PDP-10 SAIL Goodbye Message' and came up deuces.



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to paulie420 on Mon Jun 12 23:03:26 2023
    On 11 Jun 2023 at 06:19p, paulie420 pondered and said...

    It's been fun to play with truly ancient "BBS" programs
    on retro systems. Things like `BBOARD` on TOPS-20 or
    `forum` or `xforum` on Multics are both very usable, and
    also quite interesting in their own right.

    Where have you been playing with these softwares?

    I just hunted for the 'PDP-10 SAIL Goodbye Message' and came up deuces.

    I have. I run both TOPS-20 on an emulated PDP-10 and
    Multics on an emulated DPS-8/M on my ham radio network;
    both are connected to AX.25 and IP networks.

    A copy of the SAIL farewell message is at: http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.html

    If one installs, say, the Panda distribution of TOPS-20
    on a KLH-10 and runs `bboard` it'll pop up.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From paulie420@21:2/150 to tenser on Mon Jun 12 22:00:19 2023
    Where have you been playing with these softwares?
    I just hunted for the 'PDP-10 SAIL Goodbye Message' and came up deuce

    I have. I run both TOPS-20 on an emulated PDP-10 and
    Multics on an emulated DPS-8/M on my ham radio network;
    both are connected to AX.25 and IP networks.

    A copy of the SAIL farewell message is at: http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewell.htm

    If one installs, say, the Panda distribution of TOPS-20
    on a KLH-10 and runs `bboard` it'll pop up.

    Thanks for sharing - I was able to extract the text and save to my /Documents. :P Happy days... I wish I had the hardware to see these softwarez in action. W00t W00t!



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to paulie420 on Wed Jun 14 01:59:28 2023
    On 12 Jun 2023 at 10:00p, paulie420 pondered and said...

    Where have you been playing with these softwares?
    I just hunted for the 'PDP-10 SAIL Goodbye Message' and came up

    I have. I run both TOPS-20 on an emulated PDP-10 and
    Multics on an emulated DPS-8/M on my ham radio network;
    both are connected to AX.25 and IP networks.

    A copy of the SAIL farewell message is at: http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/voy/museum/pictures/AIlab/SailFarewel

    If one installs, say, the Panda distribution of TOPS-20
    on a KLH-10 and runs `bboard` it'll pop up.

    Thanks for sharing - I was able to extract the text and save to my /Documents. :P Happy days... I wish I had the hardware to see these softwarez in action. W00t W00t!

    If you want, you can probably run them on whatever
    you've got available. Both will run under emulation
    (and indeed, that's how most people are running them
    these days...for Multics in particular, there are no
    extant machines capable of running it outside of
    museums).

    For TOPS-20, one can use the KLH-10 emulator and the
    Panda distribution:
    http://panda.trailing-edge.com/

    One can also get a free account on one of the TOAD
    systems at SDF or the LCM+L.
    https://twenex.org
    https://livingcomputers.org

    For Multics, one can use the DPS-8/M emulator: https://multicians.org/simulator.html

    Multics accounts are also available, for
    instance over at ban.ai:
    https://github.com/BAN-AI-Multics

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From paulie420@21:2/150 to tenser on Tue Jun 13 17:47:12 2023
    If you want, you can probably run them on whatever
    you've got available. Both will run under emulation
    (and indeed, that's how most people are running them
    these days...for Multics in particular, there are no
    extant machines capable of running it outside of
    museums).

    Nice, thanks for ALL the info - it wasn't on deaf ears, I extracted both the goodbye message HTML and your message.txt; I like playing w/ old systems and learning the process.

    I installed Xenix 1.0 over at https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/sys/unix/ibm/xenix/1.0/

    ... fun seeing how older *nix systems w0rked a tad differently, but mostly the same. <3



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)