NULL mag Issue 07 06 When I set up my first BBS

eZine lover (@eZine)

Published in 

null magazine

 · 26 Dec 2020

  

 

 
    When I Set Up My First BBS... In 2019... jagossel, SysOp of 
    Disconnected Reality 

    Back in the day, I would call into a local computer shop's BBS and 
    download games for the Atari ST computer. This was something that I did 
    during my summer break when I had nothing better to do. I was just in 
    the middle school, and playing outside was so 1980's. The thought, 
    then, never occurred to me run a BBS. I was young, and all I cared 
    about was playing games. I never participated in the conferences nor 
    chat, and I never heard of FidoNet. 

    Fast-forward to 2016... I got really curious: are there any BBSes out 
    there that are as how I remember them? Turns out that there are, and 
    lots of them. I signed up for a few BBSes to participate in various 
    difference conferences. I was really hoping to download things like 
    I used to back in the mid-90s, but I could not (at the time) because 
    I did not know any way to do it on a cell phone. I only knew how to 
    connect to BBSes using ConnectBot. 

    Now, here we are in 2019. I finally set up my first BBS: Disconnected 
    Reality. I only did it because I wanted one central place to go to for 
    the conferences that I participate in, and out of curiosity. Unlike 
    many of the SysOps of today, I have never set up a BBS before in my 
    life. It was a new experience to me, and I wanted to see what it would 
    take to do so. What did I found out? All it takes is... well... not 
    much. With the Internet being so readily available, and a plethora of 
    resources available to help guide anyone in setting up a BBS, I was 
    able to get mine set up, with my customizations in place, in a manner 
    of a few days. I chose Synchronet because it was the only BBS software 
    package that I found that had the source code readily available. 

    Synchronet is pretty flexible on what platform it could run on. I set 
    up a desktop computer (that wasn't being used anymore) as a headless 
    VM server with CentOS, VirtualBox, and phpVirtualBox. Then, I created a 
    VM with Debian Stretch installed, because I wanted a stable OS to run 
    Disconnected Reality on. From there, I just pulled up the Synchronet 
    Wiki page and followed the instructions there. In a manner of a few 
    minutes, I got Synchronet running. After that is when all of the fun 
    began: the ANSI art to replace Synchronet's stock screens with my own 
    customizations, and to set up conferences that I was interested in. 
    Between the ANSI work and connecting to QWK conferences, that only took 
    a day or two. 

    What I was not ready for, because I had no experience in this, was 
    setting up a FTN conference for the first time: fsxNet. That alone took 
    me a few more days to a week to figure out. Being new to FTN, I did not 
    know how to fill out the fsxNet application, and I had to learn the 
    terminology. After reading an article on Wikipedia on FidoNet and FTN, 
    then I had to get started on getting FTN set up. That is where I did 
    it wrong: I was submitting my application before I even got it working 
    against the test node number. I got BinkIt working in Synchronet, but 
    I could not figure out how to get a message out or to receive any 
    messages. After days of trying, tinkering around, asking for help in 
    DOVE-Net, I finally got it. It turns out that I had to run a timed even 
    in order for it to work. A few weeks later, I got TickIt set up, and I 
    am now receiving packets and files from fsxNet without any issues. 

    That was my first and last time where I set up a BBS completely on my 
    own. Disconnected Reality is still running, but it is on a VPS now. 
    Thanks to MarisaG for hosting it for me; after taking my last BBS back 
    up that I made off of the VM, and getting my BBS up and running again 
    on a VPS that she owns. I still handle the configuration of my BBS on 
    my own, and I recently made an AdBot script that advertises my BBS on 
    fsxNet and RetroNet daily. I do have plans on what I will be doing next 
    with the BBS, and when I get the free time, I will work on those plans. 
    These plans include expanding on the AdBot further to do more than just 
    post ads daily, and to change one of the conferences over from QWK to 
    FTN, now that there is an FTN option available. 

    Do I think I can do it all over again? Maybe, but I hope that will be a 
    while before I do.