Old School BBS

[konaexpress]

Hi guys,

A couple of days ago I ran across a kid who built an old school BBS in Python. Has anyone here or know of anyone that has done this in BaCon. I didn't even know that they were still around and even more shocked to find posts of users looking for BBS software that will run on newer machines.

Holly cow, you could run an old school BBS on a netbook. What a Scream that would be.

[vovchik]

Dear John,

It can be done easily And you could look at source in other BASICs to get started. Peter has also done an excellent example for Gopher, just to get you started.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[Deleted]

OR

You could save yourself a lot of time and setup a free ProBoards forum. Any free time you have available would sure be appreciated at the ScriptBasic project!

[konaexpress]

Mar 24, 2013 16:15:08 GMT 1 @jrs said:

OR

You could save yourself a lot of time and setup a free ProBoards forum. Any free time you have available would sure be appreciated at the ScriptBasic project!

Thanks for the reply but I was kind of asking about BBS software and not forum software. Same end results but not the same "spirit" of things.

[konaexpress]

Mar 24, 2013 16:13:39 GMT 1 vovchik said:

Dear John,

It can be done easily And you could look at source in other BASICs to get started. Peter has also done an excellent example for Gopher, just to get you started.

With kind regards,
vovchik

Thanks Vovchik,

What is Gopher?

Yea, I think I can track down some old code somewhere. Might take a while to find something usable.

It was fun reading the Python code, didn't understand what all of it did but I could see what he was doing with it. Also was neat to see how he structured the app, what all was needed for it. LOL....that boy loves to put in comments!

Thanks again, -John

[vovchik]

Dear John,

I remember using Gopher and setting a server up long ago - late 1980s, I think. Had to be, since I was playing with Xenix and SCO unix back then - or was it the early 1990s?

Peter's code is here:

www.basic-converter.org/gopher.bac.html

It is almost like old BBS software but already TPC/IP aware. You can take Peter's source as the basis and make it into a very pretty affair using ncurses and ansi escape sequences, for that old BBS colorful look. I will also see whether I can't dig up some old BASIC sources for BBS. I like the idea.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[konaexpress]

There is very little to find I think but binary files. The one I liked best was Wildcat and a more simple BBS called Waffle. I really like the plain text commands in it. No strang key combos to remember. The file area is "file" and mail is "mail" and not control backspace / M. Simple but elegant .........

ANSI art totally rocks too!

All the best, -John

[vovchik]

Dear John,

I found quite a bit of source (basic, pascal, c and c++) byt googling the following:

BBS source code BASIC

I am now looking at some of it - but I think peter's Gopher code is a good place to start, since the actual networking bits have all been worked out and all you have to do is work on the text-based interface. You could make a properly networked BBS - the old ones used to rely on modem handshaking and were pretty much dial-up affairs.

with kind regards,
vovchik

[konaexpress]

Yea, most of the modern stuff is telnet and IP address now. If anyone has a modem installed on their BBS, it is jut for giggles.

[konaexpress]

Yea, not finding anything out there........

[vovchik]

Dear John,

Check out these pages: software.bbsdocumentary.com/expanded.html.

With kind regards,
vovchik

[konaexpress]

Thanks for that link vovchik, did not find that one.

Didn't find much but bits in BASIC, most source is in C and Pascal. Shame I don't know any C, found a nice small one called Pup BBS and one of the files is named Puppy.

BBS on a stick anyone? LOL