Post by MartinT on Dec 2, 2022 15:15:10 GMT
While working from home today, I was reminiscing about old pre-internet Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) and the lengths some of us went to in order to allow customers to make contact and download support files without having to post them files on a floppy disk.
I was working for NEC at the time (around the late 1980s) and I found myself buying boxes of floppy disks in order to post printer, graphics and CD-ROM drivers to support our products. I remember researching BBS software and decided on a product called TBBS, together with a dedicated PC, Digiboard and four 2400 baud modems with four telephone lines. I put the proposal to my boss and he barely understood every third word but, amazingly, he gave me the green light to go ahead. I spent a good month coding and setting everything up and uploading all of our support files to it. We did a mailshot to all of our warranty customers and waited. I still remember the day the first modem lit up to show a caller to the system, and the TBBS status screen showing what they were doing. It became fascinating seeing them flick on and off, occasionally all four lines being in use at once!
I also wrote my most successful utility at that time, a DOS executable for printing text to a PostScript printer called PSPRINT.EXE in Borland C. My word, that got downloaded a good few times! I only fully understood later how much more advanced TBBS was than most other offerings at the time. It did its own multitasking without the need for multiple PCs or a multitasking OS. fantastic!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bread_Board_System
Do you remember your early days with BBS access, perhaps with a CIX, BIX or CompuServe account?
I was working for NEC at the time (around the late 1980s) and I found myself buying boxes of floppy disks in order to post printer, graphics and CD-ROM drivers to support our products. I remember researching BBS software and decided on a product called TBBS, together with a dedicated PC, Digiboard and four 2400 baud modems with four telephone lines. I put the proposal to my boss and he barely understood every third word but, amazingly, he gave me the green light to go ahead. I spent a good month coding and setting everything up and uploading all of our support files to it. We did a mailshot to all of our warranty customers and waited. I still remember the day the first modem lit up to show a caller to the system, and the TBBS status screen showing what they were doing. It became fascinating seeing them flick on and off, occasionally all four lines being in use at once!
I also wrote my most successful utility at that time, a DOS executable for printing text to a PostScript printer called PSPRINT.EXE in Borland C. My word, that got downloaded a good few times! I only fully understood later how much more advanced TBBS was than most other offerings at the time. It did its own multitasking without the need for multiple PCs or a multitasking OS. fantastic!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bread_Board_System
Do you remember your early days with BBS access, perhaps with a CIX, BIX or CompuServe account?
