About that time?

[Malakai]

Well, in the last month or so, I've lost about 90+ percent of my loggers, with no e-mails or anything explaining why. I check my BBS e-mail at least three times a day, get the servers up and fixed as soon as there is a problem, and I believe I have the largest BBS in existence currently, as far as servers, games, and features, and before some family tragedy and various other projects came along, I was working on a multi-line OS/2 GHOST server and would have eventually brought back the PHP server.

I've probably spent over 3,000 hours working on various aspects of the board and another $4,000 on equipment in the last three or four years.

Just two months or so ago, I probably was averaging 20 users online at any given time, with a height of up to around 30 sometimes.

Even though I hadn't been doing anything but keeping it up and online lately, I have not had any plans to shut it down, but I think the board's visitors are making that decision for me.

There have been several donations in the last year or so, which makes it even a harder decision to make. Do I keep the board up, hoping that the people that donated will get their moneys worth, just for those select few people, or do I shut down the board?

If/when the board does shut down, I will give a backup to Brad from Lost Gonzo BBS, and then it'll be up to him whether or not he wants to continue running it or call it quits himself. I owe it to him to give him the board, because he has given me access to his majormud system, his crossroads system, and of course, the DMA server, with tele-arena, galactic empire, and all of the other fun games, as well as multiport hardware, backups of his own, and various other things to help along the way.

As far as whether or not I'd personally bring Nostalgia BBS back up once it has gone offline, the answer is NO. I can't do that to the few people who still log on it, to keep shutting them out, messing up their characters they worked so hard on, but if Brad decides to take the helm once again, he may need some help getting it all setup along the way. So, anyone here is free to contact him and see if something can be worked out.

If anyone's wondering where all the BBS and networking equipment is going to go after the board is shut down, I haven't quite figured that out yet, but I'm planning on starting up a small printing press, and any of the PCs that are halfway decent will probably be used as workstations. As far as the old DOS PCs, I could always use them, in conjunction with my terminal server, to log on to other BBS systems with telemate, qmodem, terminate, and the other wonderful dos programs out there that were always better than their windows counterparts.

As far as a time line when the bbs may go down, I can't say. It'll take me awhile just to figure out how to backup all of the servers. The best way would be to just copy everything to a hard drive and send it to brad. Wish I had a blu-ray drive now!

[Malakai]

I've officially made the decision to pass the helm. The board will be going down on January 1st, 2010.

http://z3.invisionfree.com/Nostalgia_BB ... st=0&#last

[Franchise_24]

I've officially made the decision to pass the helm. The board will be going down on January 1st, 2010.

http://z3.invisionfree.com/Nostalgia_BB ... st=0&#last

I personally think you are making way to much out of a hobby. You offer free access to everyone, so you can't expect to make money off of it. I think it's great what you do with all your equipment and everything you have, it's awesome, but the day of the BBS has gone the way of the dino, and the rest of us around are just reliving old days and doing it for fun. I ran a dial up BBS using WWIV back in the day, then I found Synchronet and started the board in 02-02-02, and I've been online ever since. THat BBS ran on a POS AMD-K6300 machine. Just until a few months ago I found I could cheaply get WG so I did and use the SBBS as my doors server for my league games. I've never *once* gotten any donations up until a few days ago when some of my players helped me register T-Lord cause it gets alot of use.

The thing I'm getting at is..who cares if you don't have 20 people online at once? All they do is script MajorMud anyways, so what's the big deal? It's a hobby, and when I reach peaks I'd see 140-150 calls per day, now its around 30 to 50 calls a day, but it's still cool because it's just a hobby you know? I'm not trying to get rich off it, and the world doesn't owe me anything for running this server.

It'd be a shame to see you close down, cause I've been on your system and you have a nice one, and I'll take your DMA server software if you wanna give it to me LOL!!! But, I'd say stay open, let the BBS run on auto pilot, and just have fun with it as a hobby, not something to consume your life. You may end of being much happier

-Neal-

[Malakai]

This was always a hobby for me. I hadn't expected to make money on it. I don't have money to keep pouring in to it either. The choices were #1: let it sit, running until something goes out, not having backups of anything or #2: pass the helm over to someone else that just may actually do something with it. I can't make Brad put up my creation though. He had a creation of his own, Lost Gonzo BBS.

-

As far as the DMA server goes, it belongs to Brad, always had. I was just borrowing/hosting it, along with his majormud and crossroads of the elements servers.

[Drex]

The choices were #1: let it sit, running until something goes out, not having backups of anything.

Well mine is just a hobby board, actually has been 90% of its life from starting back in 96.Some days I have no callers but that doesnt bother me at all, I still like to play some of the games, MMUD and a few other games. As far as having no backups as you mentioned my server backs up all to a slave drive at cleanup, so thiers no work involved for me. With the coming of the Web around 2000 people went off to play other online graphical games and the BBS scene died out, but thier are still some retro players that enjoy the old text based RPG's and you can find posts on forums about people asking about them or does anyone remember SoC or where to play it. I am on a very limited budget and have only purcahsed few things from Rick and am very happy he has taken on this project. But good luck in the future and hope you reconsider things.

[dspain]

The choices were #1: let it sit, running until something goes out, not having backups of anything.

Well mine is just a hobby board, actually has been 90% of its life from starting back in 96.Some days I have no callers but that doesnt bother me at all, I still like to play some of the games, MMUD and a few other games. As far as having no backups as you mentioned my server backs up all to a slave drive at cleanup, so thiers no work involved for me. With the coming of the Web around 2000 people went off to play other online graphical games and the BBS scene died out, but thier are still some retro players that enjoy the old text based RPG's and you can find posts on forums about people asking about them or does anyone remember SoC or where to play it. I am on a very limited budget and have only purcahsed few things from Rick and am very happy he has taken on this project. But good luck in the future and hope you reconsider things.

same here i was getting spikes of 50 online, one day had over 100, down to 15, up to 20, down to 5, up to 30, its hit and miss.

[Stoneslinger76]

Well, in the last month or so, I've lost about 90+ percent of my loggers, with no e-mails or anything explaining why.

Your not alone most of us have seen simlar decreases in users's activity. Don't be so hard on yourself, what you have achived is what you should be most proud of. If thier is even only a few who enjoy it isn't that enough.

[Questman]

Unfortunately it's cyclical. Shutting down only makes it worse. Keeping it online is probably better although it's frustrating to have few to no logins for long periods of time. But the lack of stability doesn't help.

Just my $0.02

[Rigoletto]

same here i was getting spikes of 50 online, one day had over 100, down to 15, up to 20, down to 5, up to 30, its hit and miss.

Would be nice if one could even connect to your BBS now days. Been 49 days and counting since my last connect.

Unfortunately it's cyclical. Shutting down only makes it worse. Keeping it online is probably better although it's frustrating to have few to no logins for long periods of time. But the lack of stability doesn't help.

Just my $0.02

Malaki I'm amazed at the amout of time and money you have thrown at your BBS, if it goes down it will be missed. But I agree with Questman that most users are looking for stability and longterm reliability of being there down the road when their situation in life might change and they have more time to be online.

As an avid SoC player with players in 19 games, and one that doesn't script. I only have so much time to play, and I spend most of my time working on lower level players to raise them up to the level of my biggest players that share the same stats on 3 of the BBS'es. It was time to work on my player on your BBS, then you made this announcement, which kills any desire to do that, as it will just be time that doesn't account for anything, as the BBS goes down.

In my spreadsheet of players I have a section on lost players going back as far as Oct 2002. There have been 24 lost in that time period, ranging from level 8 (about 18 hours) to level 41 (about 350 to 400 hours). Because the BBS crashed or shutdown. Yet there always seems to be new ones starting up all the time. And I'm foolish enough to keep starting new players.

I currently have 4 level 5's (two of the BBS'es seem to have a hard time staying up and connected), 1 level 9, 2 level 14's (including your BBS), 4 level 16's, and 8 level 41's (3 currently at the desired goal for this level.)

I greatly admire all SysOps, and if Rick had the rights to SoC, I would probably be one of you. But it has to be for the love of doing it, the sense of accomplishment of doing something most others only wish they could. If you follow through with your plans, just know that no one can fill the void, the passion for BBS'ing that you have demonstrated over the years.

[dspain]

same here i was getting spikes of 50 online, one day had over 100, down to 15, up to 20, down to 5, up to 30, its hit and miss.

Would be nice if one could even connect to your BBS now days. Been 49 days and counting since my last connect.

Unfortunately it's cyclical. Shutting down only makes it worse. Keeping it online is probably better although it's frustrating to have few to no logins for long periods of time. But the lack of stability doesn't help.

Just my $0.02

Malaki I'm amazed at the amout of time and money you have thrown at your BBS, if it goes down it will be missed. But I agree with Questman that most users are looking for stability and longterm reliability of being there down the road when their situation in life might change and they have more time to be online.

As an avid SoC player with players in 19 games, and one that doesn't script. I only have so much time to play, and I spend most of my time working on lower level players to raise them up to the level of my biggest players that share the same stats on 3 of the BBS'es. It was time to work on my player on your BBS, then you made this announcement, which kills any desire to do that, as it will just be time that doesn't account for anything, as the BBS goes down.

In my spreadsheet of players I have a section on lost players going back as far as Oct 2002. There have been 24 lost in that time period, ranging from level 8 (about 18 hours) to level 41 (about 350 to 400 hours). Because the BBS crashed or shutdown. Yet there always seems to be new ones starting up all the time. And I'm foolish enough to keep starting new players.

I currently have 4 level 5's (two of the BBS'es seem to have a hard time staying up and connected), 1 level 9, 2 level 14's (including your BBS), 4 level 16's, and 8 level 41's (3 currently at the desired goal for this level.)

I greatly admire all SysOps, and if Rick had the rights to SoC, I would probably be one of you. But it has to be for the love of doing it, the sense of accomplishment of doing something most others only wish they could. If you follow through with your plans, just know that no one can fill the void, the passion for BBS'ing that you have demonstrated over the years.

sorry the server is in ocean city,MD and i am in richmond,va.

dealing with a very serious family issue.

[Rigoletto]

sorry the server is in ocean city,MD and i am in richmond,va.

dealing with a very serious family issue.

I'm truly sorry to hear that, I hope things look up for you in the near future!

One question though, if the BBS is in Maryland. Why did 'The BBS Telnet Corner' list it as Grand Prairie, Texas. Seems a lot of established BBS'es have gotten knocked off this website because of connection issues in the last month.

[dspain]

sorry the server is in ocean city,MD and i am in richmond,va.

dealing with a very serious family issue.

I'm truly sorry to hear that, I hope things look up for you in the near future!

One question though, if the BBS is in Maryland. Why did 'The BBS Telnet Corner' list it as Grand Prairie, Texas. Seems a lot of established BBS'es have gotten knocked off this website because of connection issues in the last month.

thats a good question.

im home based in richmond,virginia, purchased a small company in ocean city, hence why i was there past year and a half.

whomever listed my server, must have me confused with a system from way back.

i was ArcticZone BBS in the 90's which i still have (wg 2.0) ArcticZone Online Entertainment is the NT one.

/shrug

[Micromancer]

This was always a hobby for me. I hadn't expected to make money on it. I don't have money to keep pouring in to it either. The choices were #1: let it sit, running until something goes out, not having backups of anything or #2: pass the helm over to someone else that just may actually do something with it. I can't make Brad put up my creation though. He had a creation of his own, Lost Gonzo BBS.

-

As far as the DMA server goes, it belongs to Brad, always had. I was just borrowing/hosting it, along with his majormud and crossroads of the elements servers.

If your base BBS software will no longer be in use, would you consider passing it to someone else to use?

Edit: I just read the link you posted with the FAQ and this question was answered there.

[Malakai]

If I would have had one or two people that would have ran the board, I would have gladly let it stay online. I've come to a point in my life where everything is hectic, and there isn't a lot of time to do anything.

The more servers and games I added to the mix, the more maintenance had to be done. The GE database was corrupting. Tele-Arena was randomly crashing the DMA server. I had so many problems trying to get MajorMud DOS working correctly with the DMA server. When I finally decided to put MajorMud on its own, dedicated nt server, it had tons of problems, and I had to deal with daily e-mail complaints for awhile. I ended up installing a majormud editor on the server, to try to manage things on the fly. Some of it helped, but some of it didn't ever work out. I've come to almost loath MajorMud.

If any one wants some advice on wanting to run a large bbs, they should think twice. One or two servers is no problem to manage, but after two, everything becomes harder, especially when you use dos or os/2 and have to deal with partition size limits and backing stuff up frequently.

Just to give you an idea of how much equipment it took to run Nostalgia BBS the way it was:

Eserver running win2k for the main board and space quest 2112
Dedicated majormud server, XP PRO
Dedicated Crossroads of the Elements Server, DOS
Dedicated Mutants Server, DOS
Door Game Server, Win2k
Dedicated SQL/PHP server, for the PHP games - this server was up for awhile but became unstable. it was planned to come back on-line though.
Linksys router
Wireless Bridge
Wireless Repeater
16-Port Switch
2X battery backup systems (needed at least 3, probably 4 if all servers came on-line)
OS/2 Warp 4 system for the GHOST server (never went public but was still in the system)
A Myriad of WIRED and Wi-Fi pci-x/pci/isa cards
8 port multiserial card - for the ghost server connection and/or modem upgrades and/or *nix terminals
misc high-gain antennas, including one omni outdoor wi-fi antenna.

Not everyone wanting to run a BBS will use wi-fi or have to do a long-range wi-fi system like I did, and that's a good thing. Just the cabling to run my outdoor omin-directional wi-fi antenna was like $70, and all of the wi-fi cards, repeaters, and bridges do add up. It would be a much cheaper (and better) option to use wired, whether it be 100mbps or gigabit.

My original plan was to bring everything to wired, with a gigabit interface, adding a dedicated machine that all of the servers backed up everything on through the LAN. That never happened. I can only guess that everything would be around 70gb of data to backup each time, if every file were backed up, probably less than 30gb if just the main system files were backed up. I'd always liked the idea of backing everything up so that every backup is a drop-in replacement as a complete system, and you don't have to go scrambling around to find files from previous backups etc.

[Stoneslinger76]

If I would have had one or two people that would have ran the board, I would have gladly let it stay online. I've come to a point in my life where everything is hectic, and there isn't a lot of time to do anything.

The more servers and games I added to the mix, the more maintenance had to be done. The GE database was corrupting. Tele-Arena was randomly crashing the DMA server. I had so many problems trying to get MajorMud DOS working correctly with the DMA server. When I finally decided to put MajorMud on its own, dedicated nt server, it had tons of problems, and I had to deal with daily e-mail complaints for awhile. I ended up installing a majormud editor on the server, to try to manage things on the fly. Some of it helped, but some of it didn't ever work out. I've come to almost loath MajorMud.

If any one wants some advice on wanting to run a large bbs, they should think twice. One or two servers is no problem to manage, but after two, everything becomes harder, especially when you use dos or os/2 and have to deal with partition size limits and backing stuff up frequently.

Just to give you an idea of how much equipment it took to run Nostalgia BBS the way it was:

Eserver running win2k for the main board and space quest 2112
Dedicated majormud server, XP PRO
Dedicated Crossroads of the Elements Server, DOS
Dedicated Mutants Server, DOS
Door Game Server, Win2k
Dedicated SQL/PHP server, for the PHP games - this server was up for awhile but became unstable. it was planned to come back on-line though.
Linksys router
Wireless Bridge
Wireless Repeater
16-Port Switch
2X battery backup systems (needed at least 3, probably 4 if all servers came on-line)
OS/2 Warp 4 system for the GHOST server (never went public but was still in the system)
A Myriad of WIRED and Wi-Fi pci-x/pci/isa cards
8 port multiserial card - for the ghost server connection and/or modem upgrades and/or *nix terminals
misc high-gain antennas, including one omni outdoor wi-fi antenna.

Not everyone wanting to run a BBS will use wi-fi or have to do a long-range wi-fi system like I did, and that's a good thing. Just the cabling to run my outdoor omin-directional wi-fi antenna was like $70, and all of the wi-fi cards, repeaters, and bridges do add up. It would be a much cheaper (and better) option to use wired, whether it be 100mbps or gigabit.

My original plan was to bring everything to wired, with a gigabit interface, adding a dedicated machine that all of the servers backed up everything on through the LAN. That never happened. I can only guess that everything would be around 70gb of data to backup each time, if every file were backed up, probably less than 30gb if just the main system files were backed up. I'd always liked the idea of backing everything up so that every backup is a drop-in replacement as a complete system, and you don't have to go scrambling around to find files from previous backups etc.

Sounds like you need a break from it for a while, maybe just keep the core online and worry about the secondary stuff when you have more time. Even a co-sysop to take care of the mudder's would help keep some hair on your head