Hello Aaron!

** On Monday 01.02.21 - 08:16, Aaron Thomas wrote to August Abolins:

 AA>> I came on board to Fidonet in 1993 with Vis a Vis
 AA>> Communications BBS.  I offered internet email, and QWK for
 AA>> offline reading.

 AT> It was cool when BBSs started offering internet e-mail. It
 AT> was fututistic and exciting. I found a BBS that offered it
 AT> too, but of course I didn't have tons of people to send e-
 AT> mail to back then.

I used it to send "To Do" reminders to myself at work.

There were a few email bots that came in handy and would send  
back document research results on a query.

 AA>> Prior to all that, I experimented with operating a low key
 AA>> BBS for about 3 years using RBBS-PC.  It was very tricky
 AA>> at the time

 AT> There were a handful of RBBS boards in my area. Does it
 AT> support color? I remember those being all monochrome (I
 AT> think.)

The very earliest versions were probably monochrome.  But I  
don't remember any distinctive limitation in colour in the  
mature versions; I was stickler for getting the visual  
appearance of my board to look right, and colour was something I  
remember experimenting with.


 AA>> front-door intercom system to my apartment. Whenever I got
 AA>> a buzz at the door, it would interrupt the BBS session
 AA>> currently in progress.

 AT> That's funny! When I started out I was using my parents'
 AT> voice line and was running the BBS from like 10pm-7am, and
 AT> they had call-waiting, which caused similar issues.

I think Call-waiting could be disabled for the duration of an  
outbound call that you initiated, but it couldn't be disabled if  
someone called you (like an incoming bbs call) and then another  
caller trying to call your system when your system was already  
engaged with a previous connection.

I think I ran into something similar with my phone service. I  
ended up cancelling call-waiting. It was more of a nuisance than  
the extra $7/mo than the phone company claimed it was worth.   
Besides, if someone REALLY wanted to talk to me, and if it was  
important enough, they could call back when the phone wasn't  
busy.

I later opted for a distinctive-ring service which provided a  
separate phone number on the same phone line. I had a little box  
that I could switch to either the bbs or the phone. That way,  
all the incoming calls to the BBS were practically silent.  The  
ring for my voice phone was only directed to the phone when the  
correct ring pattern was detected.  I only had to check if the  
modem was in use before I attempted to pick up my phone or the  
bbs caller would get a few seconds of an annoying error- 
correction.

 AT> Back then there were a bunch of BBSs running just at night
 AT> - looking back, that was such a terrible idea!

With Call-waiting active, every caller had the potential of  
getting errors when another call was comming in.  Not a good  
setup.

--
  ../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.48