Subj : Re: Hope all of my Pi sysops are safe!
To   : Blue White
From : Ray Sbaitso
Date : Fri Apr 10 2020 12:42 pm


 On Sunday April 05, 2020, Blue White said to Ray Sbaitso...

 BW> I am lucky.  Our local PBS network, Kentucky Educational Television,
 BW> has kept him on once-a-week for at least 15 years now.  They sometimes
 BW> go back in time far enough to pick up a season I have not seen yet.  :)
 BW>  I decided to name it after the show after taking a trip to Canada back
 BW> in 2017.

My local PBS station never carried it, but I happened to be close enough to the
 Canadian border at the time to receive 3 Canadian channels over the air and on
 cable so I was able to catch them on there.  In my mind the episodes were
split into two parts, snowy (aka over the air) and clear (aka on cable).  It's
funny that years later that's still how I remember it.  When I got Netflix
years ago I got a bunch on DVD to watch and it was really strange to see the
snowy episodes clearly!

 BW> I have noticed a few more new people, and a lot more posts from folks
 BW> that were not as active before.  At least that is one good thing to
 BW> come of all this crazy stuff.

I've become much more active the longer this has gone on.  I'm around a decent
amount, but I have to admit that I don't take as much time as I should to post
normally.  It's been a pleasant change and fun to discover people to chat with.
  It's easy to just see all the problems on a lot of the web forums and forget
there were (and still are) places that aren't like that.  Not to say that all
was always good and kind in BBS land of course.  ;)

 BW> I get many more comments about how they like that a BBS with a retro
 BW> look is still online.  I am a novice programmer when it comes to PCs (I
 BW> have 20+ years experience as a mainframe COBOL developer), so I am very
 BW> thankful for folks like apam, Digital Man, and so many others who
 BW> continue to develop BBS software, doors, etc., so that we can keep
 BW> enjoying the hobby.

The amount of continuing development is amazing on some of the platforms.  I'm
on an Amiga BBS package now that I was never on when BBSes were new and it's
almost like I was always on this software.  I just took to it from the first
time I used it.  There really is no active development on it, which is a shame,
 but the base software keeps moving along and doesn't know or care about what
it can or can't do compared to other BBSes.

 BW> Not too much.  The Pi I have is old enough (a 2B or 2+, cannot remember
 BW> which), that the x server was so slow I eventually uninstalled it.  So,
 BW> it is all command line driven.  Also, it has been running headless for
 BW> about 6 months now... I ssh into it from another machine.  Because of
 BW> the architecture, you have to be willing to compile some things
 BW> yourself as binaries are a little more difficult to come by.  I have
 BW> learned a few things.  I have not tried it, but have heard that running
 BW> DOS doors is much more  of a challenge.

 BW> Other than that it really is not too much different.

It sounds interesting and I've always wanted to run my own BBS, but I've been
fortunate enough to find a few to frequent that provide everything I need. 
Some systems have next to no active users beyond the Sysop and I hate to see
that.  BBSes need users too and I enjoy visiting the different digital
neighborhoods.

What software do you run?

--- Zeus BBS 1.5
 * Origin: CIA AMIGA BBS - ciaamigabbs.dynu.net:6400 (314:314/175.0)

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