FONER%MIT-OZ@mit-mc.arpa (Leonard N. Foner) (11/29/85)
I have a friend who needs to set up a pair of CBBS's or RBBS's to talk to each other. He's interested in people at site A being able to call up the machine at site B and leave messages for the people there, and for the people at site B to leave messages on the machine at site A. Since the two sites are several timezones apart, this is easier for him than to have people at the two sites simply talk to each other on the phone. The two systems don't have to talk to each other directly, merely hold messages. [If they talked directly to each other, a la UUCP, so much the better; see postscript.] What he needs is to find out where to get CBBS or RBBS software for any sort of IBM-PC, with just about any common modem, with preference to a Hayes (he'll buy an appropriate modem for whatever software is available). They're running MSDOS, of course, not CP/M. Also needed is some sort of password protection or similar authorization hack, just in case. The phone numbers of the two systems will (supposedly) not be public outside the groups at the two sites. <LNF> P.S. If there is any such software which can also handle simple forwarding, that would be even better. The current system requires someone at site B to call up the machine at A and type a message into it, to be read later by people at site A. If, instead, the machine at site B could buffer up the message and call A's machine directly, talking at the modem's full speed, this would save considerable phone costs. Clearly UUCP has this functionality, but at too great a cost (in having to run UNIX solely to support the communications).
brown@nicmad.UUCP (12/06/85)
In article <163@brl-tgr.ARPA> FONER%MIT-OZ@mit-mc.arpa (Leonard N. Foner) writes:
[author wans software that could send messages between each other]
The software that is available for this is the Fido-net software. One of
the readers of this net has the software. Sorry, don't remember the name,
but I am sure he will be telling you about it.
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Mr. Video seismo!uwvax!nicmad!brown
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decvax------/ward@chinet.UUCP (Ward Christensen) (12/07/85)
I have not converted my CBBS(tm) to the PC yet - with a couple S-100 machines lying around running CBBS under CP/M-80, I've little incentive to "tie up" a PC for it. But I'm replying mainly to say "FIDO(tm)" sounds like it would do what you want - its a networked bulletin board and download system. It was written by Tom Jennings, now in employ of Phoenix Software (see almost any PC mag for their address). Each FIDO has a node number, and you can address messages locally or to another. /Ward Christensen, co-inventor (with Randy Suess ihnp4!chinet!randy) of CBBS, the first/oldest BBS, (312) 545-8086 (many C/R's for speed detect) (I also run a test CBBS at my house, (312) 849-1132).