Multiline Amiga BBS Questions from an Atari/PC'er

[Xebec]

Hey folks

I ran a BBS back in the day - starting with BBS Express! on the Atari 800XL, BBS Express! ST on a 520ST, then FoReM ST, then finally PCBoard on the PC.. until I got in some trouble for software piracy .

Anyway, I was always curious about Amiga BBSes. I remember a "Warez for the Masses" down in Delaware being a multi-line Amiga BBS, so...

Were Amiga multiline BBSes in the early 1990s running on a single Amiga or were they networked somehow? If a single Amiga, how would it handle multiple high speed modems - were there upgrades for UARTs available maybe for the big box Amigas? Just curious how the hardware worked out for them..

Thanks..
John

From a telnet point of view one machine handles the entire task of running the BBS. I'm not sure how multiple modems were used, though.


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[don27dog]

I had three phone lines ringdown and one telnet node towards the end. Most guys used multiple http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/ioextender cards in a single amiga.

[Phantasm]

Multinode BBS's typically ran on big box Amiga's (A4000/040 for me although i first started out as single node on an A1200) with Zorro serial cards (like the one mentioned above) giving you the capability of connecting multiple modems. The Amigas excellent multi-tasking capabilities meant it was well suited to handling multiple calls at the same time. In the later years people moved over to telnet.

[Codetsu]

one local Amiga BBS use some multiserial card to handle multiline modem system
he build serial card him self you can found same build ins. on Aminet even this day

now Telnet is just to easy hander multiline BBS xD

[Xebec]

This is exactly what I was curious about.. 'back in the day' - before the internet really took off, it sounds like Big Box Amigas + one or more Zorro cards with serial ports to do it.. I guess even an Amiga 2000 was probably healthy enough for a couple of nodes if configured properly then..

thanks guys!

[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by Xebec

This is exactly what I was curious about.. 'back in the day' - before the internet really took off, it sounds like Big Box Amigas + one or more Zorro cards with serial ports to do it.. I guess even an Amiga 2000 was probably healthy enough for a couple of nodes if configured properly then..

thanks guys!

Add a nice SCSI card and an 030 processor to your A2000 and then it would handle it real nice. Might have struggled a bit on a stock 7.14mhz 68000

[nogginthenog]

I used to have a Spider card in my A2000. This is not related to the USB Spider.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/spider

It's a beast! It had had eight serial cables connected to a 64pin connector.
No idea what happened to that card...

[Xebec]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

I used to have a Spider card in my A2000. This is not related to the USB Spider.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/spider

It's a beast! It had had eight serial cables connected to a 64pin connector.
No idea what happened to that card...

That looks pretty awesome! I was actually shopping for a PC high end equivalent in 1994 -- a Digiboard 4/8 serial port board set which PCBoard BBS supported but then the "software police" arrived . (I was 17 at the time)..

[idrougge]

One nice thing about the Amiga as a BBS machine was that the BBS software never had to support any specific card. That's why any Amiga BBS system also supports telnet nowadays.

[Codetsu]

yep A2000 whit 030 and some add-on serial card run BBS multi node just fine
even whit telnet now days but telnet slowdown system :/

serial card project from Aminet was bit slow 19k Baud max
if my memory not fail me

Genetic-point BBS
g-point.tunk.org:500
A2000 030 come an visit any time xD