| Why operating a BBS? |
December 1989, during night hours, I've chatted with the sysop of LEVEL-BBS, Ton Ensink, for hours and hours. Later he invited me and showed me his Bulletin Board System. Before I entered his house, I was thinking about a room completely filled up with hardware, but this was of course a very wrong imagination! :-). He showed me his BBS (running on an 80286 machine, with a 2400 baud modem connected to the public phone-line. Ton explained me a lot about how things had to be setup to run a BBS. I got enthusiastic so I decided to setup an own BBS running on my XT-computer. After setting up COOSJER-BBS, I joined several BBS networks, so it was easy for me and the users of my BBS to exchange information with lots of people via one system. Because there were also international networks that time, it was (and still is) a cheap way to write messages to people living abroad. Of course, compared to E-mail, it takes a longer period to deliver those messages.
One of my favorite networks was Intl-Net. Two sysop meetings took place. The first one was in Munich (Germany) in 1992 and a year later the second meeting was held in Groningen. Unfortunately this network doesn't exist anymore.
Another local network was setup when I had invited some sysops, GroNet was born and still is alive and kicking! :-)
April 1992, I moved from Groningen to Leeuwarden, and became HUB and HOST of different BBS-networks. It was already clear lots of people were buying a modem because the amount of calls per day were increasing to over 50!
The last years it was made clear only a few BBS's would survive. This is caused by the enormous amount of BBS's which were setup. On the other hand lots of people preferred to use the Internet for data-communication. That's why I've decided to close COOSJER-BBS February 1998.
What did COOSJER-BBS offer? |
COOSJER-BBS was a 24 hours service available for users and down links (BBS's who get their mail via my mailer program).
Hard- and software used: |
| Hardware: | Software: |
| Pentium 75 HD: 1.2 GB + 2.5 GB CD-ROM: 4 Memory: 24 MB Modem: QuaTron FM 28.8 |
OS: Windows 95. BBS Program: Remote Access v.2.02 Mailer: Frontdoor v.2.12 Filemanager: James Mail processor: Fmail |
When you've some questions about setting up a BBS, don't hesitate to ask!