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MY BBS.
March 3, 1999
By Jason "Archon" Whittenburg

What do I remember about the old BBS days? Well, that's the question Dan asked over three months ago and I am just now getting to writing an answer.
I'm bored today, life is a blur, but here's my story and I'm sticking to it.

//\\//\\//\\//\\ ß Squiggly Flash Back Lines

It all started in 1991, January 30th to be exact. That's the day when I received my first Intel PC. It was a killer 386DX-25 with 4 megs of ram and a 80 meg SCSI HD and running MS-DOS 3.31. It also contained another curious device, a 24oo baud modem! I would have to learn modem about this device that would become so cool!

I went to school the next day, I came home with a few BBS numbers to call, and then it all began. About a week later, on February 9th, I set up my first BBS. With the help of a friend, we named it the Sanitarium.

It was running T.A.G., but I quickly switched to Telegard after logging on to Martin Pollards BBS, the author of Telegard and a pretty decent guy, and seeing how nifty the software was (or could be). With the change I renamed the BBS to "Southern Cross" after the popular Anime series. And from there everything moved so fast! Staying up until past midnight updating the BBS, playing games such as Trade Wars, The Pit and Global Wars and chatting with users. I was really getting in to the social aspect of the BBS more than anything else, but also loved the games. When I was younger I wanted to run a FiLeZ and WaReZ BBS, but that soon passed, but during that time I met may interesting/good people like Tony Lim who run World of Krynn. Also a notable it is shortly there after a BBS called EnterPrise was busted for carding. I think the BBS was down for about 18 hours, when it came back up it was minus a gig or two of files.

Then something bad happened, the BBS crashed. As all BBSs seem to do eventually. My motherboard was fried in an electrical storm and poof, I'm offline. It was covered by insurance, but this is before CompUSA was on every corner and I had to wait for the new parts. When they finally came I restored the BBS from a tape backup and decided that it might be good to take a week or two before putting the BBS back online to overhaul the system. I switched software to Renegade and cleaned up the whole BBS from message bases, to files to games and ANSi's and brought the BBS back online as "Son of the Southern Cross" For this I also bought a new 14.4k modem from USRobotics on their SysOp program for $512! Cheap back in early 90's.

SotSC was great! It was the most fun running a BBS could be. BBSing was beginning to boom, and people were out in force. The BBS was getting 50-60 calls a day! One day I remember getting 81 calls! I had a second phone line installed so that good friends could still get on the BBS. It was extremely active and I was pulling several echo's (FidoNet, WishNet, ITC and other special nets). InterBBS gaming was going nutz with the inclusion of a brand new game called BRE. SotSC was just great fun and a lot of work. I was spending about 2 to 3 hours a day with the BBS, but it only seemed like seconds (as fun things always do). Then I switched back to Telegard when version 2.7 was released, the major reason was I didn't get along with the person coding Renegade, but Telegard 2.7 gave me everything I wanted for the BBS. I also found the source code for Telegard on one of U of M's gopher servers. The I was able to "fix" some problems I had with Telegard for myself. Eventually Telegard would be sold to Tim Strike and revamped with a host of new features. In fact its still around today at www.telegard.net if you need a flash back, check it out..

I then moved to Ann Arbor in late 1994 and took the BBS with me, put it up there as Eclipse Café (after my new favorite show Babylon 5). It was never as popular as SotSC and with U-M and the Internet I didn't spend too much time with it either.

After getting married in late 1996 and moving back to Novi, I ran the BBS for a few more months, but the new physical location didn't allow me to keep the phone number and the Internet took its toll and the Eclipse Café died. About all that is left is my home page on the internet at www.tir.com/~jasonwhi (shameless plug)

\\//\\//\\//\\// ß Flash forward to today

During the 6 years I ran a BBS I met many people. Some of who I still call friends today. But the most influential of the bunch is probably Refog (John). Refog ran a BBS called the Baytec Zone, started as a support BBS for the company he worked for. We had a blast, we hacked all sorts of stuff, just playing around to see how things ticked and worked. We became good friends and still see each other every once in a while, but of course technology lets us keep in touch. I also need to mention Babydoll (Stacey), who I met online and dated for a while. It was, an experience and it didn't last but greetz none the less

John and I had BBS parties every so often, and held them a Kensington park most of the time. It was fun, and in the later years many people turned out.
We had a good ole time.

We all did well, all things considered, and every so often I wish those days never ended (sounding like an old man now). The Internet just isn't as fun.

I would like to send greetings to.

John Brunk - Let's get everyone together real soon
Jim Heinze - Where are you? You get married and take off! Contact me you bum!
Tim Strike - Keep up the great work on Telegard 3.1!
Scott Kennedy - I remember you when you were a little kid! J
Dan Boujoulian - Here you go, enjoy. BTW, you're a man with too many handles
Al Bocklor - Are you dead? Did her husband get you? Where are you man?
Keith Nichols - I heard your married now, another married guy who disappeared.

________________________________________________________________________
Jason Whittenburg
jwhitten@netrex.com
Offer Development
Netrex Secure Solutions
248/352-9643