nep.pgelhausen@AMES-VMSB.ARPA (09/17/85)
I finally got through to the "official" Atari BBS, run out of
Atari headquarters in Sunnyvale. (I got the number from
Creative Computing's Atari olumn a couple months ago).
There is some good news & some bad news.
There are now three lines operating. Each has a seperate number,
but a call to line #1 will try to use line #2, if #1 is busy, if
#2 is also busy then it will try for #3. I do not know if the other
two numbers contain automatic "try-the-next-line" features.
Line #1 & #2 are on Atari 800s w/ Corvus hard disks (using joystick
ports 3 & 4 for the interface) (I still don't know where to get one
though), line #3 is a 130XE with two double density drives. This
means that three is slower AND THAT THE MESSAGE BASE IS SEPERATE
FOR EACH LINE! They want to see if they can get something to allow
one machine to use more than one incomming port....
Their official line is that they will carry PD software for the ST
line as it comes available....they say that stuff for the 8-bit
machines is already available on other BBSs. I left a note saying
that a little "offical" support would help us feel a little less
abandoned ("us" being the 8-bit owners). I suggest that others
feeling the same way call & leave similar messages.
Each line has 1200/300 baud modems, so you can call w/ either.
It detects ATASCII/ASCII on the first <CR>, and there is no
facility for telling it otherwise after you are logged on. I
don't know if there is a real advantage for using ATASCII, some
BBSs use the special graphic chars if they know that they are
available.
I will post the numbers if there is enough interest.
-Richard Hartman
max.hartman@ames-vmsb
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