Re: On The Twit List
  By: Nightfox to KK4QBN on Sat Sep 16 2017 20:41:56

 KK>>>> I'm better off learning for myself anyway.. I remember when one
 KK>>>> could pull 60 active systems up on the im list.. now were lucky to
 KK>>>> see 7.. thats not 

 KK>> I was speaking of the instant message list..

 Ni> Ah, the inter-BBS message list? I thought that was a pretty cool feature
 Ni> when I started using Synchronet. I've been wondering why there are so few
 Ni> BBSes on that list and how that list is generated.

I believe all system who are running the instant messenger are still polled on
udp ports nightly by Robs system, a list is distrubuted and sent around to all
the BBS systems. then when you use it it parses the list and probes the UDP
ports for available system.. most of the time there is no one on there.. 

One problem now, Is I get people send me telegrams from other BBS systems from
Ecwebv4 when I'm playing a game or something, and that telegram flashes up
quickly on the terminal after exiting the game, and theres no real way to know
who it was or even what BBS it came from.. if you do happen to catch the rare
one by the time I get to the messenger to send a telegram the people on the
website of the other BBS are long gone.. 

Tking I will try to find a better way to intergrate telegram options into my
shell maybe as a global feature. and figure out why when they are received why
they do not have a PAUSE afterwards so they can be read.

 Ni> I ran a BBS in the 90s, but I took it down in 2000. I didn't get back into
 Ni> BBSing until 2007, when I saw Jason Scott's documentary "BBS: The
 Ni> Documentary", and I was curious how many BBSes were running online and was
 Ni> inspired to start a BBS again. I am a little surprised I had not heard of
 Ni> Synchronet before 2007, but I don't remember there being any BBSes in my
 Ni> area using Synchronet in the 90s..

I had a cool setup in the 90s when I was in my teens, was the local fidonet
hub, we had planet connect satellite downling for fidonet and had to call
chattanooga nightly for the uplink. ended up getting ISDN, so it did make the
mail calls a bit cheaper. but before that I ended up having 3 lines running
into the house :) This was all before the internet was available around here..
don't think it became available until 96 or so, and that was a deathblow to all
the BBS systems.. I actually had a great many paying subscribers too.. 

The first person to offer dialup internet here was a BBS sysop who paid to have
t1 run from chattanooga to this area (around 35 miles) or so the story goes.
Winstream, was Alltel at the time and they did'nt want to invest in it. but no
less than 3 months after his business took off they finally did.. Now
windstream sucks so bad in some areas around here that dialup is quicker than
DSL because they oversell their DSLAMS. but theres no other choice.

Yeah, Warzone BBS was active when that documentery came out.. the SBBS
community was kinda so-so about it because we believe start of the art BBS
systems like sbbs and the authors did'nt get enough exposure.. it seemed he
always was speaking of BBS systems in the past tense as if they no longer
existed.

--

Tim Smith (KK4QBN)
KK4QBN BBS

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