was broke. In 1988 I started saving my newspaper-route money and picked up
a shiny new Commodore 64C from a Best Department Store. The reason I got
into the C64 was a no-brainer at the time. Most of my friends had
Commodores, they were cheap (mine cost $129 new), and for a few bucks you
could copy all the games you wanted to onto floppy disks. It sure beat the $20-40 for an Atari/Nintendo cartridge.

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Q. How, when, where, or why, was your first experience of a Bulletin Board System?

I called my first BBS in 1989, a Colour 64 board, on a lowly Vicmodem. It
was terribly outdated even in 1989 - 300 baud, manual dial (you had to dial
it on your phone, then disconnect the handset cord and plug it into your
modem) and it dropped carrier constantly on a bad line. We didn't have
clean lines back in the day, so some days you were able to download, some
days you weren't because of the line quality.

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Q. When did you set up your first system and how long did it run? What hardware and software did you run?

My first BBS board, which is surprisingly still backed up on disk here, was Arctic Games and put online in 1990 on a Commodore 64 running Ivory BBS software. Arctic Games was a sort of combination of the names of the two sysops who ran it.. myself and my friend Scott, Gamesmaster. It ran for
maybe a couple of months since we were only able to run it during evening
hours at his house as he only had a single phone line.

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Q. How long has Particles BBS been running, and was that constantly, or
have you had (should we say) Configuration breaks? Was it always called Particles BBS?

Well Particles! was put online May 25th, 1992. It ran constantly from
1992 to 2008 until my daughter was born. The birth of my daughter and some hardware failures made me take it down until my life was in a better spot
to support it. It came back online in November 2013.

It's always been called Particles! though it's run on everything from a Commodore 64, to an Amiga 600, to a PC, and then back to a Commodore system again. The name 'Particles!' was a joke name thought up from my friend
Scott. Back in the day, it was common to name your BBS, or Bulletin
'Board', with the word 'Board' in it. In my local area we had the Circuit Board, the Surf Board, etc. So the joke was to name it 'Particle Board'.
We dropped the 'Board', added an 's', and the rest is history.

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Q. What hardware and software does the Particles BBS system use?

The board is currently running on the following hardware configuration:

* A Commodore 128D with 640K of RAM

* Centipede BBS running in 2Mhz 80
Column Mode

* CMD HD with the mechanical HD
replaced with an AztecMonster
running a Compact Flash card.

* Swiftlink set to 38,400 baud

* 1750 Clone 512K RAM expansion

* One of Jim Brain's 3+1 cartridge
expanders

* 1581 drive for quick backups

* BBS Server 1.4a for modem emulator
running on Windows

Q. Of course some will pull their faces at the mention of the Windows PC. Realistically, could the system still be run on Commodore hardware without
the PC? If so, why use the PC -- what does it add to the system setup?

I'm sure there's other ways of doing it, but I use a Windows computer to
run BBS Server 1.4a. BBS Server is a modem emulator and routes all telnet traffic to and from the BBS automatically. Also, the same box runs a web-interface so you can connect via an HTTP 5 enabled web-browser.
Besides those two tasks, the Windows box doesn't do anything else for the
BBS.

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Q. You mention the system runs on Centipede BBS Software. Is this
customised in any way and have you tried any other BBS software? If so,
why have you stuck with Centipede BBS Software, and when was this software released?

Centipede BBS is based on the original Colour 64, but rewritten to take advantage of all the upgrades to the Commodore 128, such as expanded
memory, networking, 80 column mode, etc. The version of the software that
I run was released into he public domain in 2000 and is completely stock.
Have I tried other software? Sure! Up until August, the board ran off of C*Base 3.1. However, I found C*Base to be a bit limited for what I wanted
to do. I wanted to have a BBS that supported lots of download directories
to support multiple computers, supported the expanded abilities of the 128, supported ANSI reliably so that anyone could connect into the board, not
just Commodore users. Centipede fits the bill on this and much more.

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Q. If you could have a custom piece of hardware or software made for the
BBS what would it be and why?

There is a custom piece of software I wanted written for the BBS - so I'm
in the process of writing it. I'm re-writing the Legend of the Red Dragon
as a door (online game) for the BBS. Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) was
huge in the PC world back in the day, and is still played by thousands
today. I'm probably about 80% done with the basics, and would like to say
I'll have it done 'soon' but I know I'm pretty lazy. It's probably going
to be a rainy day project that I finish next year sometime.

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Q. Do you think (in Commodore realm) there is still a market for a new
piece of BBS software?

Sure! As the time of this interview, there's over 30 active Commodore
BBSes, and I think because of Commodore's push into the world of telecommunications back in the day, that more Commodore users are BBS-savvy than many other classic machines. A well written piece of software could
bring more people back into the fray like Synchronet has done for the
Windows world.

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Q. Although the BBS were (back in the day) a dial up-only system, what
would our readers need to connect to Particles, as you offer a host of connection options bringing the BBS more up to date?

Well, it depends on how you're trying to connect. If you want to see what
it's all about, you can connect via the website's web-interface. The best
way though is connecting via a real Commodore 64 or 128. To do this,
you'll need to have your Commodore connected to the Internet somehow and
have a piece of software (terminal software) to interact with the BBS.

While there are a LOT of ways to hook your Commodore up to the Internet,
for someone who is new, the easiest way is to visit Alwyz page at: 1200baud.wordpress.com. Alwyz offers the Strikelink userport to PC
adapter, and Striketerm to connect to BBSes, as well as a 'how-to' page.

Q. Would you consider yourself to be the best BBS?

Best BBS? No. Actually I don't think there is such a thing. Every BBS is different, and most sysops have different visions for their board. In the Commodore world we have boards that range from warez boards, to boards
running on experimental BBS software, to boards running on emulators
because the sysop is travelling the world and isn't able to take their Commodore equipment with them. Each board is a reflection of the sysop's personality. Originally boards were viewed as visiting someone's 'home'.
There is no best 'home'.

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Q. How much data is hosted by the system?

CMD's hard drive's operating system has a hard limit of '4GB' regardless of
how big your hard drive or memory card is. So, while the memory card is
8GB, only 4GB is viewed. So by the numbers its '4GB'. That 4GB though is currently partitioned into a little over 100 file areas that hold files for
the Commodore 64, Commodore 128, Vic-20, Plus/4, GEOS, CP/M and more. The
file areas are constantly expanding. If I were to take a guess, I'd say we have well over 10,000 files online. Total space is something around 32
million blocks. I'd say less than a quarter of that is used currently.

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Q. What does the system cost you to run and do you manage to recoup any of that out

--- MBSE BBS v1.0.01 (GNU/Linux-i386)
* Origin: Dragon's Lair ---:- bbs.vk3heg.net -:--- (39:901/280)