Rembember back in the simpler days, when we bought a Hayes 1200 bps modem, hooked it up to the serial port of the computer and the dedicated phone line, experimented for days with DIP switches and the ever-crucial “right init string”?

Ryan’s Bar BBQ and The Post Office were 2 BBSs, or bulletin board systems, I ran.

Ryan’s Bar was a “state of the art” BBS because I kept it as up-to-date as seemingly possible.

I will use some terms used in relationship to that BBQ:

ESDI, RLL, sector size, maximum partition sizes. Before FDISK. Using debug -g=c:800:5 I believe it was off the top of my head.

7-CD SCSI changer

Netbios commands for Novel cards running under LANtastic

Using error codes to detect, e.g., the speed of the connection and direct the BBS software batch file to use those paramaters in a batch file (gee, remember the SET command to set environment variables?)

DESQview to allow “swapping” of programs - moving from one application, like Boyan or some other popular communication program to “talk” through the modem, over the phone line, to a computer at the other end.

When DOS 3.3 came out it allowed batch programs to “call” other batch programs, making for smaller batch files but maybe more of them.

So, during this time I ran this BBQ which grew and grew and grew. I started out with a 20 meg drive because it was the biggest out there; I moved to a 32 meg drive, then got a “huge” 65 meg Seagate drive. Then I moved from MFM/RLL drives to ESDI drives and got a 330 meg drive, then a pair of 660 meg drives. Then I started networking to other computers that had drives. Then I added a 7 CD changer, then another and another. If the CDs use drive letters (and they do) you are therefore limited on how many letters in the alphabet were left, since A and B were reserved for floppies whether you had them or not, and C was the first drive letter you could use and partitions were limited in size. LANtastic helped with this, and with learning about SET, and connecting computers together.

The Post Office was a mail-only BBS that got moved around some - 2 or 3 numbers ultimately - and the mail we used then was called Echomail. Currently some provider is called Echomail.dot (not sure if .com/.org/.etc) and I wonder if Opus or FidoNet or whoever owned that trademark word will ever see a dollar.

So, all this got me thinking about hardware. debug -g=c800:5  or some such, to do a llf. Prep and part (Z’s MS-dos 3.x) and even using bios mods to modify sector size  because all those little files each used like 4k and you could make it 2k sectors.

I have in my attic a 10 gig HD with 8” floppy drive. H-67 I think (h37=dsdd, 47=8”, 67=winchester, or some such.