• The FIX BBS - News Clip from 1994

    From Crushed@VERT/T0KERZ to All on Thu Oct 20 09:12:13 2022
    Back in the early 90's I helped run a BBS that eventually morphed into a 128 line ISP, and there was a local news story about it at the time.

    I've been going through old VHS tapes and transferring meaningful stuff to digital format, and came across this old tape in one of my closets. Thought you guys might enjoy some nostalgic footage :)

    Unfortunately we didn't run Synchronet at the time... what were we thinking?!?!
    Man, I can remember the headaches of MBBS/Worldgroup at the time...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHc_bM6JiSg

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ t0kerZ hUt
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Crushed on Thu Oct 20 13:36:50 2022
    Re: The FIX BBS - News Clip from 1994
    By: Crushed to All on Thu Oct 20 2022 09:12 am

    Back in the early 90's I helped run a BBS that eventually morphed into a 128 line ISP, and there was a local news story about it at the time.

    I've been going through old VHS tapes and transferring meaningful stuff to digital format, and came across this old tape in one of my closets. Thought you guys might enjoy some nostalgic footage :)

    Unfortunately we didn't run Synchronet at the time... what were we thinking?!?!
    Man, I can remember the headaches of MBBS/Worldgroup at the time...


    so did he ever became a millionaire? and he was ranked #15 of north america?
    I think this news report was a bit overblown. it was entertaining though.

    I knew a guy who did something similar. he ran infinite data exchange and had a bunch of lines and people could login and use the internet or talk on the bbs.
    I think it got too expensive and he ended up taking it down when internet coverage was more widespread.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Margaerynne@VERT/PALANT to Crushed on Thu Oct 20 21:35:29 2022
    Re: The FIX BBS - News Clip from 1994
    By: Crushed to All on Thu Oct 20 2022 09:12 am

    Back in the early 90's I helped run a BBS that eventually morphed into a 128 line ISP, and there was a local news
    story about it at the time.

    I've been going through old VHS tapes and transferring meaningful stuff to digital format, and came across this
    old tape in one of my closets. Thought you guys might enjoy some nostalgic footage :)

    As a younger person (under 40), this is incredible. Thanks for finding this, definitely the coolest thing I've seen all week.

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
  • From Ogg@VERT/CAPCITY2 to Crushed on Thu Oct 20 20:38:00 2022
    Hello Crushed!

    ** On Thursday 20.10.22 - 09:12, Crushed wrote to All:

    Back in the early 90's I helped run a BBS that eventually
    morphed into a 128 line ISP, and there was a local news
    story about it at the time.

    [...]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHc_bM6JiSg

    That was exellent. Thanks for sharing that. Are YOU in the
    news story?

    "1:229/412 Mark Steffen from Wingham ON 2006.04.14 - 2008.03.28"

    So, he popped back the inter-BBS scene briefly after all the
    fame and fortune.


    --- OpenXP 5.0.51
    * Origin: Ogg's Dovenet Point (723:320/1.9)
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Ogg on Fri Oct 21 02:40:54 2022
    Re: The FIX BBS - News Clip from 1994
    By: Ogg to Crushed on Thu Oct 20 2022 08:38 pm


    That was exellent. Thanks for sharing that. Are YOU in the
    news story?

    "1:229/412 Mark Steffen from Wingham ON 2006.04.14 - 2008.03.28"

    So, he popped back the inter-BBS scene briefly after all the
    fame and fortune.

    you might have seen me talk to nick andre about this.
    these nodelists aren't always accurate.
    I'm on there dates I wasn't on there and i am NOT on there when I was
    getting a feed.

    the information can be incorrect and incomplete.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Charles Blackburn@VERT/FBOBBS to Crushed on Sat Oct 22 20:00:47 2022
    Re: The FIX BBS - News Clip from 1994
    By: Crushed to All on Thu Oct 20 2022 09:12:13

    Back in the early 90's I helped run a BBS that eventually morphed into a 128 line ISP, and there was a local news story
    about it at the time.

    dayum

    I've been going through old VHS tapes and transferring meaningful stuff to digital format, and came across this old tape in
    one of my closets. Thought you guys might enjoy some nostalgic footage :)

    watching it now.. appreciate the history. maybe throw it up on archive dot org or something like that ?

    regards
    ---

    Charles Blackburn
    The F.B.O BBS 21:1/221 618:250/36
    bbs.thefbo.us IPV4/V6
    DOVE-Net FSX-Net MicroNET USENET




    ... Reality is for people who can't cope with their drugs.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ The FBO BBS - bbs.thefbo.us - A place for aviation fun....
  • From Ogg@VERT/CAPCITY2 to MRO on Sun Oct 23 12:26:00 2022
    Hello MRO!

    ** On Friday 21.10.22 - 02:40, MRO wrote to Ogg:

    these nodelists aren't always accurate.
    I'm on there dates I wasn't on there and i am NOT on there when I was getting a feed.

    the information can be incorrect and incomplete.

    Even one of my entries is incorrect. Dunno how or why "No_Pain_No_Sorrow_in_Avalon" got recorded as the system name.


    --- OpenXP 5.0.51
    * Origin: Ogg's Dovenet Point (723:320/1.9)
    þ Synchronet þ CAPCITY2 * capcity2.synchro.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/Rlogin/HTTP
  • From MRO@VERT/BBSESINF to Ogg on Sun Oct 23 20:41:55 2022
    Re: The FIX BBS - News Clip from 1994
    By: Ogg to MRO on Sun Oct 23 2022 12:26 pm

    these nodelists aren't always accurate.
    I'm on there dates I wasn't on there and i am NOT on there when I was getting a feed.

    the information can be incorrect and incomplete.

    Even one of my entries is incorrect. Dunno how or why "No_Pain_No_Sorrow_in_Avalon" got recorded as the system name.

    the answer is simple: human error.
    ---
    þ Synchronet þ ::: BBSES.info - free BBS services :::
  • From Crushed@VERT/T0KERZ to Ogg on Sun Oct 23 22:14:21 2022
    Re: The FIX BBS - News Clip from 1994
    By: Ogg to Crushed on Thu Oct 20 2022 08:38 pm

    That was exellent. Thanks for sharing that. Are YOU in the
    news story?

    Glad you guys enjoyed it :) Yes, I made a brief appearance near the end... I was the "Vice President" (William Scott).

    They sure were fun times... one of my fondest memories is being creative in expanding our local calling area. In the beginning, "call forwarding" allowed multiple calls to pass through - so you could have a call forwarding node between the BBS and a large town/city that would make a normally long-distance call, a local one.

    A year or two later, Bell got smart and put an end to that - so once one call went through, you would just receive a busy signal. Well a bit of testing discovered that if you disabled call forwarding (*70 or something like that) then re-enabled it (*71), another call could pass through. So we installed dumb terminals that would watch for a RING signal, then disable/renable call forwarding to allow another call to go through.

    Well that hole was eventually closed also - but these were the early days of cell phones (well, BAG phones at the time), so once again we discovered that if you had a CELL number, unlimited calls could forward through it. I remember one month dialing into one of the cell nodes to check usage, and hearing the robot voice report "You have used 22, THOUSAND, minutes this month. Your bill is, $37 dollars". And yes, that hole was eventually closed too which forced us to pay for a legit number of PSTN connections.

    But for the few years we "gamed" the system, we saved thousands :)

    ---
    þ Synchronet þ t0kerZ hUt
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@VERT/REALITY to Crushed on Mon Oct 24 06:49:00 2022
    Crushed wrote to Ogg <=-

    They sure were fun times... one of my fondest memories is being
    creative in expanding our local calling area. In the beginning, "call forwarding" allowed multiple calls to pass through - so you could have
    a call forwarding node between the BBS and a large town/city that would make a normally long-distance call, a local one.

    Sounds like one of my stories. I worked at a company where the engineering people set up a FirstClass server and set it to poll a remote site (a local toll number at something like 6c/min) every 15 minutes, whether there was
    mail or not.

    I tried convincing him to set up their equivalent of crashmail, but he
    didn't want the other side to make calls.

    We set up remote call forward. Set up the remote call forward number to be
    the local toll call. Told my FirstClass server to call itself. It call forwarded the call to the remote end as programmed, but it cost fractions of
    a penny instead of 6c/minute. Hundreds saved per month, and no accolades given. Just another day in the life.





    A year or two later, Bell got smart and put an end to that - so once
    one call went through, you would just receive a busy signal. Well a
    bit of testing discovered that if you disabled call forwarding (*70 or something like that) then re-enabled it (*71), another call could pass through. So we installed dumb terminals that would watch for a RING signal, then disable/renable call forwarding to allow another call to
    go through.

    Well that hole was eventually closed also - but these were the early
    days of cell phones (well, BAG phones at the time), so once again we discovered that if you had a CELL number, unlimited calls could forward through it. I remember one month dialing into one of the cell nodes to check usage, and hearing the robot voice report "You have used 22, THOUSAND, minutes this month. Your bill is, $37 dollars". And yes,
    that hole was eventually closed too which forced us to pay for a legit number of PSTN connections.

    But for the few years we "gamed" the system, we saved thousands :)

    ---
    Synchronet t0kerZ hUt

    ... At the end of the day, it gets dark.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.