On 11/04/14, Knight said the following...

Re: Re: Greatings from sunny Miami
By: Mark Hofmann to Poindexter Fortran on Sat Oct 25 2014 09:48 am

When I went to WWIV and a 286 years later with the 40 meg MFM, that was HUGE space at the time. The system was busy just about 24/7. I got ve used to falling asleep with the lights flashing since both systems were my bedroom when I was growing up.

Oh man, me too. After my bouts with my TI computer and TRS-80, I got a used IBM

8088 XT that served as my first PC. It had a 20MB MFM hard drive, and
ran DOS like a champ. I had no problems running minix on it too. My dad ended up scoring a Mac SE/30 that I'd use too.

Then I later got a 386 computer at my mom's house, and I'd stay up so
late using it, falling asleep to the lights flashing too (and the TV
tuned to KTEH where old Doctor Who reruns would play in the wee hours of the night/morning). This is the same computer that would have The Dark Knight BBS for a few years running Telegard and later Renegade.

Good times, good times! After the '89 Loma Prietta quake, the lights were
out in my apartment, so I spent a lot more time at my mom's house. We spent several hours playing "The Perils of Rosella" from Sierra Games. She had an 8mhz IBM-XT. I never owned a computer, nor had any access to a computer
before then. She had gotten the PC to help with her tax business, but it was obiviously used for fun stuff too. I remember the animation sequences would
be painfully slow on that IBM-XT. The Loma Prietta quake was in mid October. By that Christmas, I has purchased a Radio Shack Tandy 1000 TL2, which had
both a 360k floppy drive as well as a 720k floppy drive but no harddrive.
That setup cost me $1,600 (financed through Radio Shack), without the HDD.
I remember getting it at the Radio Shack at Bascom Ave near Union Ave, and I remember having to drive there to make my payments :( But my mom gave me a
20MB MFM drive for xmas, so I could play my Rosella on my own at home.

By the next month, I had a modem and was BBSing. A month after that, I was a brand new sysop running WWIV. Once again, my mom has purchased some software for her IBM-XT, and one package was Borland Turbo-C. So I ended up
purchasing the source code for WWIV. That made me learn how to code, and was effectively my start down the path of my IT career. Two years later I got my first IT job running the 16 line TBBS BBS at 3Com. It was called "CardBoard" as I recall.

--- Mystic BBS v1.10 A53 (Linux)
* Origin: Cyberia BBS | Cyberia.Darktech.Org | Kingwood, TX

Re: Good Times!
By: Gryphon to Knight on Wed Nov 05 2014 08:18 am

spent several hours playing "The Perils of Rosella" from Sierra Games.

Kings Quest IV! One of my first games.

business, but it was obiviously used for fun stuff too. I remember the animation sequences would be painfully slow on that IBM-XT. The Loma

Yeah, I had to play it at 4.77MHz in CGA 4 color. I would take my disks over to a friends place, so that we could play it in 16 color. It was the AGI version; I've never played the enhanced SGI version Sierra was selling at the same time for people with 286/386 machines.

---
þ Synchronet þ Sent from The Lillypad BBS - lillypad.synchro.net:2323

By the next month, I had a modem and was BBSing. A month after that, I was
a brand new sysop running WWIV. Once again, my mom has purchased some software for her IBM-XT, and one package was Borland Turbo-C. So I ended
up purchasing the source code for WWIV. That made me learn how to code,
and was effectively my start down the path of my IT career. Two years
later I got my first IT job running the 16 line TBBS BBS at 3Com. It was called "CardBoard" as I recall.

There are a good number of BBS sysops that started young and were gravitated towards IT in some form or another. I'm another example of that.

I still run WWIV over here. I remember when I started in the field, most large
companies had BBS systems for support - before the Internet was mainstream.

- Mark

--- WWIVToss v.1.50
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (33:1/3.0)
þ Synchronet þ curmudge.hopto.org

On 11/09/14, Mark Hofmann said the following...

By the next month, I had a modem and was BBSing. A month after that, I a brand new sysop running WWIV. Once again, mymom has purchased some software for her IBM-XT, and one package was Borland Turbo-C. So I ende up purchasing the source code for WWIV. That made me learn how to code, and was effectively my start down the path of my IT career. Two years laterI got my first IT job running the 16 line TBBS BBS at 3Com. It was called "CardBoard" as I recall.

There are a good number of BBS sysops that started young and were gravitated towards IT in some form or another. I'm another example of that.

I stillrun WWIV over here. I remember when I started in the field, most large companies had BBS systems for support - before the Internet was mainstream.

FWIW, I still have the WWIV 4.20 source code. It's sitting on a diskette in
a box full of other legacy stuff. I have Quest for Camelot (all for disks), Microsoft DOS 6.0 (2 disks), and Microsoft DOS 5 (3 disks). The real
treasure of my 720k disk loot is a copy of America Online. The disk was formatted and is now storing Turbo C 2.0, but I still have the disk with the label on it.

--- Mystic BBS v1.10 A53 (Linux)
* Origin: Cyberia BBS | Cyberia.Darktech.Org | Kingwood, TX

FWIW, I still have the WWIV 4.20 source code. It's sitting on a diskette
in a box full of other legacy stuff. I have Quest for Camelot (all for disks), Microsoft DOS 6.0 (2 disks), and Microsoft DOS 5 (3 disks). The
real treasure of my 720k disk loot is a copy of America Online. The disk
was formatted and is now storing Turbo C 2.0, but I still have the disk
with the label on it.

The question would be is that diskette still readable at this point in time? Disks used to give me grief often when they were widely used. I don't even own
a floppy drive in any of my system at this point.

I took my entire physical BBS computer and created ISOs of the drives, then converted them to virtual disks to be run in VMware. Once all was good to go, I then kissed my old BBS computer goodbye.

- Mark

--- WWIVToss v.1.50
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (33:1/3.0)
þ Synchronet þ curmudge.hopto.org