PCBoard BBS in the Future?

[Malakai]

I'm glad to see that there is still some activity on these boards. I know this isn't a PCBoard site, but there really aren't any PCBoard sites left. Since I don't really plan to bring back Nostalgia BBS but still am interested in bringing a door game board on-line, something different than Synchronet, I figured PCBoard BBS will give me the greatest challenge.

I definitely want to run the board under DOS, not in windows or in a virtual OS. Someone suggested running the board off of a USB flash drive, to make backups easy = pop out the drive, put it in another PC, and then copy to a dvd. Anyone have experiences with this, and will this work with DOS at all? I understand that certain motherboards allow booting from a flash card, but does DOS itself see and access the drive?

That'd be all good if the board was running a single node, but running more than one, without a DOS multitasker, there would need to be a server that handled the files and configurations. I was thinking that maybe windows could be the actual host/server, and each DOS PC/NODE would access that server through a mapped drive on the network.

As for how incoming telnet connections would work, I haven't figured that out yet. Some type of terminal server would have to be setup to pass telnet connections to a com port on the DOS nodes.

I suppose the other option is to run OS/2 and get the shareware telnet program (sio.sys/vmodem) that allows 4 connections after a nag screen.
Four nodes is probably more than enough for a PCboard system, but ease of setup and backups may be an issue. I have used OS/2 in the past, when I was trying to find a solution to host multiple 'GHOST' sessions for worldgroup/mbbs on a single PC. It would have worked, but GHOST itself was only compatible with certain multi i/o cards, not the cards I had, and I gave up. I also was able to test out (and play) the locatha door games through a terminal program setup on OS/2.

I definitely have not started working on this yet and will be preoccupied until at least Christmas. I'm building an addition and doing kitchen renovations. So, that's taking all of my time and money right now!

[Stoneslinger76]

I'm glad to see that there is still some activity on these boards. I know this isn't a PCBoard site, but there really aren't any PCBoard sites left. Since I don't really plan to bring back Nostalgia BBS but still am interested in bringing a door game board on-line, something different than Synchronet, I figured PCBoard BBS will give me the greatest challenge.

I definitely want to run the board under DOS, not in windows or in a virtual OS. Someone suggested running the board off of a USB flash drive, to make backups easy = pop out the drive, put it in another PC, and then copy to a dvd. Anyone have experiences with this, and will this work with DOS at all? I understand that certain motherboards allow booting from a flash card, but does DOS itself see and access the drive?

That'd be all good if the board was running a single node, but running more than one, without a DOS multitasker, there would need to be a server that handled the files and configurations. I was thinking that maybe windows could be the actual host/server, and each DOS PC/NODE would access that server through a mapped drive on the network.

As for how incoming telnet connections would work, I haven't figured that out yet. Some type of terminal server would have to be setup to pass telnet connections to a com port on the DOS nodes.

I suppose the other option is to run OS/2 and get the shareware telnet program (sio.sys/vmodem) that allows 4 connections after a nag screen.
Four nodes is probably more than enough for a PCboard system, but ease of setup and backups may be an issue. I have used OS/2 in the past, when I was trying to find a solution to host multiple 'GHOST' sessions for worldgroup/mbbs on a single PC. It would have worked, but GHOST itself was only compatible with certain multi i/o cards, not the cards I had, and I gave up. I also was able to test out (and play) the locatha door games through a terminal program setup on OS/2.

I definitely have not started working on this yet and will be preoccupied until at least Christmas. I'm building an addition and doing kitchen renovations. So, that's taking all of my time and money right now!

If your going to try DOS thier is a driver out thier for USB support in dos6.
For OS2 thier is a much needed comport patch, I have that in my file area (theswampbbs.net). I had Major BBS 6 and WG1-2 running 4 channels in OS2 for a few months, looking back it actually worked well for upto 4 channels but didnt do to well when I added in a 16 port digiboard.

[Malakai]

OS/2 could definitely be an option. In fact, it would probably be the easiest way to stay true to PCBoard. With DOS, there's absolutely no way of getting around some type of terminal server to push connections through a physical comport or multi serial card. I do have a 32? port terminal server, but that's overkill.

Are there any hard drive or partition limits to OS/2 warp? On my synchronet door game server, I believe the door games took up around 4gb of space alone.

I also wonder how hard it would be to push fidonet or other newsgroups through the Internet with PCBoard.

If I remember correctly, I was able to use dialup terminal programs, like QMODEM or TELEMATE through OS/2 and convert the ATDT (dialout) command to go to telnet sites. Maybe it was also through SIO? I can't remember.