Hello, Mark.

Wednesday February 23 2011 at 10:56, you wrote to me:

 MH> Sure, I'd like to hear it.  I don't know Scott (at least I don't think
 MH> I do).

I haven't been able to contact Scott for quite some time now.  I have a
friend who still lives in the same town Scott does and I'll see if he can
contact Scott, but anyway, here's how I got into BBSing as a sysop:

It was 1996 (maybe 1997).  I was a newly-married soldier in the Army
stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 16th Field
Artillery unit in the 4th Infantry Division.  I was on special assignment
as a division transportation secretary assistant meaning I helped
coordinate the movement of heavy equipment (tanks, M88s, SPLLs [MLRS],
etc.) across the 400 square mile area.

As a welcoming gift into G3 (the division supply/logistics unit), my
commanding officer, whose name escapes me now, a very nice LTC, gave me a
gift certificate to Another World Internet Services, which is now part of
Earthlink, I think. AWIS was run by two soliders in their spare
time-basically a T1 running off of three Red Hat servers.  It was all
dialup, no broadband.

I discovered I had shell access and I went on to use it quite a bit.  One
day, I got a talk "request" by another AWIS user, Scott McNay. 
We chatted a bit using ytalk and he said he found it extremely unusual that
there was another user using their shell account.  After meeting in person,
I discovered he ran Wizard's BBS (1980-1999, I think).  He was running a
heavily modded RBBS with a Squish message base via dialup.

Needless to say, I was hooked.  I started out tinkering with ProBoard but I
couldn't afford the registration.  I joined Fidonet as a point and then the
newly-formed Sysop's Tech Net.  One of its founders, Vincent Danen,
suggested I try Telegard since it was free.  Boy, did I love Telegard!  I
got in good with its author, Tim Strike, and when the OS/2 version of TG
came out, I was the second person in the world to have it.  I also helped
with TG's documentation; if you ever look at it, I am mentioned in the back
credits as "Hausmaus from IRC". :)

That was just the beginning.  I've used over 40 different software
packages, every tosser you can think of, and have finally settled on the
"triad" of Maximus/BinkleyTerm/Squish.  I'm quite happy with what
I have now and you will learn that I had a rather notorious reputation for
switching software at a moment's notice.

In 1998, I bought a copy of OS/2 Warp 4 from a fellow sysop, Art Stark, and
that is where my love for OS/2 began.  I can now set up OS/2 with my eyes
shut, I think.  I've probably set it up at least 50 times if not more.  I
own legal copies of OS/2 Warp 3, Warp 4 (blue), Warp 4.52; eComStation 1.2,
1.2MR and 2.0.  I also help out fellow OS/2 sysops (I moderate the Fidonet
OS2 echo also) and beg for help in here too. 

Also in 1998, I found a door that I really liked, but it was unregisterable
nagware.  With the help of Michael Preslar, the LORD developer, I brushed
off my Turbo Pascal book (and being given a legal copy of TP7 by Scott; I
still have the original disks with a serial number on each of them) and
fired back up my Pascal programming skills that I'd worked on back in 1987
in high school.  I originally wrote the door, called The Magic Oracle, for
myself but people asked if they could have a copy.

That lead to my creating Cheepware (a spin on "cheap wares"),
which is my line of DOS-based BBS doors and sysop utilities.  The utilities
come in DOS, OS/2, and Win32 flavors if possible.

So that's in a very short and incomplete nutshell about how I got started
in BBSing.  My current wife, who's known me for 11 years and we're about to
celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary on 28 Feb, has never seen me not
running a BBS. 

 MH> Sure do!  I have not heard from him in awhile.  He bought WWIV from
 MH> Wayne Bell years ago.  If you talk to him, let me know I said hi.  He
 MH> will probably remember me by my alias (Weatherman).  He went by Trader
 MH> Jack back on WWIV systems.

I will let him know that at the next club meeting or if I catch him on the
local 2 meter repeater. :)

Later,
Sean

... One man's wealth is another man's pocket money.
--- GoldED/2 3.0.1