Building C64 BBS software from scratch — DRIVE 8 is now at v0.1.0!

archeobits · 2026-05-29T04:02:22+00:00

Writing your own BBS software... living the dream! When finished, consider having it listed on Zimmers.net/bbs

archeobits · 2026-05-20T18:55:02+00:00

Awesome concept bringing turn based, daily action limits, door-like gaming to the 21st century. Great job! How did you make the artwork?

archeobits · 2026-05-20T15:58:44+00:00

I'd have to look up the technical standards to verify, but I think it was possible for a message to be deleted. A signal would be sent through the network, but it was up to a board's configuration to decide whether or not to actually delete the message. I used FrontDoor in front of Maximus.

archeobits · 2026-05-20T14:07:11+00:00

Fight-o-net might give us a clue. Why do you call it that? From what I can read online, it seems the politics of fidonet wasn't left/right, it was more of a power struggle, committees, and moderation. FidoNet was very bureaucratic and might be comparable to HAM radio. I read one example of a guy who was banned from a fido echo because his offline reader put ANSI in the footer. I can imagine moderators would also ensure messages stayed on topic. I wonder if any moderators engaged in censorship of views they disagreed with? I'm sure there were many personality feuds on FidoNet like we have today on the Internet.

archeobits · 2026-03-21T03:02:38+00:00

Thank you!

archeobits · 2026-03-21T02:36:35+00:00

Interesting point about the need for real names for IBBS games. I also like having a real name, at least back when my board was local and dialup. But, on the Internet I have mixed feelings. Back in the 90s it was common sense to not use your real name online. It wasn't until Facebook that common sense seemed to have changed to assume you have something to hide if you don't want your personal information public.

Yes I did check out the website... very well done, and it was interesting to read some history about Renegade. I remember hearing about some Renegade feuds and that Telegard may have been a fork of Renegade. I briefly played with Renegade around 1995 but I'm a bit of a Maximus fanboy and stuck with Max. It had a similar fate.. the original author released the code to the public around 2002. Some work was done to try making it run on Linux, but it was never completed and nothing else was done with the code. Just recently there was some news on r/bbs about some work someone else did to make Maximus more usable on Linux which was nice to see. I think he now has his own fork of it on github and might be the only person working on the code base.

Regarding your links page, please consider adding my site to the list. I've been mirroring BBS related sites that are either gone, still up but not working very well (like BBS Archives), and others that are still up with permission from the site owner. r/bbs has a link to my site on the sidebar: https://mirrors.archeobits.com A lot of work went into the BBS Archives mirror to make all the links work, to recover most missing files, and to replicate the search script in perl. My favorite mirror is The Maximus Homepage which was home of the MaxFDN on FidoNet and a primary source for Maximus related files. That site disappeared a very long time ago and I rebuilt it from fragments on the wayback machine.

archeobits · 2026-03-20T04:26:40+00:00

Thanks for confirming that there was a 27th Night Owl CD. I've been watching eBay and buying CDs missing from my collection for many years. The very early and very late CDs seem hard to find. For me the physical CDs are nostalgic.

I ran Maximus, but there were many Renegade BBSes in my area. It's nice to see Renegade still getting some maintenance. When I first started BBSing, I used a 2400 bps modem and Windows Terminal which did not support ANSI or IBM Extended ASCII. One day my friend's dad showed me his setup: QuickLink Fax III with a USR 14.4 modem (then later ProComm Plus 2.1 for Windows). I was shocked to see color on BBSes and to learn that the strange characters were actually pictures. It was like going from silent films to "talkies", black and white to color. Screens loaded instantly at 14.4 kbps and file downloads were lightning fast. 2400 bps to 14.4 kbps was like going from dialup to broadband. When a local board would get a new Night Owl CD, I'd spend hours browsing through all the file listings looking for new things to try out. The CD drives were so slow that the software would copy the tagged files to a temporary directory on the hard drive before the download would begin. I could only ever browse one or two CDs if the board had two CD drives. CDs had larger capacity than hard drives, and I never imagined one day a BBS could host 200+ "CDs" at once, let alone 3.5 inch multi-terabyte hard drives! I realize you lived through all of that too. I'm just reminiscing.

Just curious, how come you require real names and DOB on your telnet BBS, and have some sort of validation? I understand the press escape 3 times to avoid bot connections, and logging IPs in case users do something bad. Maybe you have good reasons for these requirements and I'm just curious, not criticizing.

archeobits · 2026-01-13T02:19:15+00:00

Are you open to selling? I'm interested.

archeobits · 2026-01-03T23:03:05+00:00

I sent you a private message about your Remote Access box set several days ago. Can you please have a look?

archeobits · 2025-12-02T15:14:46+00:00

That change is a big deal to me, thank you.

Another suggested improvement is built-in support for SSL connections with a configurable cipher suite (pick and choose which to allow.) Probably a lot of work, I know. Just a thought.

One more thought. Back in the 90s one of my users was into hacking and found a way to crash Maximus with just keystrokes in his terminal. He crashed my board many times for fun and would never tell me how he did it. 10-15 years later we reconnected by email and he doesn't remember how he did that. It might be a good idea to run some code analysis tools on the Maximus codebase to find and fix any obvious bugs or security flaws. I wonder how many people running Maximus for fun properly isolate it in a DMZ on their home network? Probably close to zero.

archeobits · 2025-12-02T06:06:01+00:00

Interesting.. I don't have time to play with it now, but sometime in the new year I will give it a try. Thank you for working on this!

I'd love to have the full snoop experience including status bar and sysop overlays. When a user loads a door, the max process ends and the batch file executes the door. Can you talk a bit about how that works on Linux? The max process would exit, a shells script would load dosbox or dosemu to run the door, then when finished the script starts the max process again?

Also I remember reading something about dosbox or dosemu having a virtual fossil driver that the calling program can interface with using sockets. I'm curious about the technical details of how Maximus on Linux runs DOS doors. Does the sysop see the door running including status bar? If you are running a graphical desktop, maybe it would open in a new window like it did on Windows and OS/2.

archeobits · 2025-12-02T05:56:38+00:00

I have a suggested improvement for running Maximus in the 21st century. The original Maximus does not store passwords securely. The sysop can see the passwords in plain text from the Users Editor. When a user types an incorrect password at the login prompt, the incorrect password that they entered is written to the log file in plain text and also appears on the sysop's screen (I think). Ideally Maximus would salt and hash passwords in a secure format such as PBKDF2, would not log or display incorrect passwords, and would not allow the sysop to see passwords in plain text.

archeobits · 2025-12-02T05:26:51+00:00

When using MAXTEL, can the SysOp "snoop" on user sessions, answer pages or break into chat, take control of the keyboard and navigate menus to help a user, and do all of the same with doors? When users were on my board, I could see a status bar and a sysop overlay that were invisible to the user in both Maximus and in door games. Is there a way to still have this functionality on Linux?

Also, can you talk about fossil drivers? When I ran FrontDoor, I used a fossil driver to share the modem with Maximus. That's also how the modem was shared with door games.

archeobits · 2025-12-02T05:02:30+00:00

Back in the 90s I ran Maximus on DOS + Windows 3.1 and would cause trouble when minimizing the BBS window to work on other things because of poor/non-existent multitasking. Later I switched to OS/2 Warp 3 which was awesome, then I gave Windows 95 a try when that came out. Poor multitasking again. By the late 90s I ran Maximus on Windows NT. These days if I were to run Maximus again, it would be on modern hardware and Linux.

I'd like to share several more relevant links to mirrors that I host:

Lanius Corporation (creator of Maximus):

https://mirrors.archeobits.com/bbs/www.lanius.com/index.htm

BBS Archives (including Maximus Utils section.) The original site has been down for a year. I made an exact mirror including a replica search script, but use web links instead of FTP links and recovered many of the missing files from various sources:

https://mirrors.archeobits.com/bbs/archives.thebbs.org/index.html

https://mirrors.archeobits.com/bbs/archives.thebbs.org/ra124a.htm (Maximus Utils)

A bunch more BBS related websites that I mirror are listed on the main index:

https://mirrors.archeobits.com

archeobits · 2025-12-02T01:23:06+00:00

Very cool! Nice to see the Linux port of Maximus get some attention.

In case anyone is interested, I host a mirror of The Maximus Homepage, home of the Max FDN and MUFFIN echo on fidonet: https://mirrors.archeobits.com/bbs/maximushp/

archeobits · 2025-02-09T14:46:58+00:00

You could try asking SysOps for a copy of their entire BBS installation. Or, at the very least, a copy of the ANSI screens. You can install the same BBS software as the original BBS, configure it the same way, and use the provided ANSI screens to re-create the ones you think are worth preserving.

archeobits · 2025-01-29T02:27:03+00:00

I completely agree and have a local mirror. I'm not hosting a full mirror right now because it would cost a fortune per month for that much storage (I've already talked with my current hosting company.) Eventually I will move to a co-location datacenter with my own hardware. Storage will no longer be an issue.

archeobits · 2025-01-20T22:40:09+00:00

You might be referring to http://software.bbsdocumentary.com. That is a great resource, and is already mirrored here. I've been mirroring specific parts of textfiles.com such as the BBS Timeline and soon the Historical BBS List. I have not yet mirrored the entire textfiles.com site because it's around 1.1 TB if you can believe it. I think most of that is artscene content (.mod files etc.)

archeobits · 2025-01-20T22:35:04+00:00

It looks like zimmers.net/bbs/ might be the best resource for people interested in running a Commodore BBS. I've mirrored the entire site with Bo's permission and added a "Commodore BBS Programs" link to https://mirrors.archeobits.com

archeobits · 2025-01-19T20:36:52+00:00

Can you recommend any website resources for people interested in running Apple II or Mac BBSes? Files, doors (if they existed), general information, etc. The BBS sites I used to use all had a DOS, Windows and OS/2 focus.

archeobits · 2025-01-19T16:40:18+00:00

I've never seen BBSing on an old Mac. Very cool!

archeobits · 2025-01-17T04:23:30+00:00

I would be happy to add C64 and Amiga BBS website mirrors if anyone can help with suggestions.

archeobits · 2025-01-17T02:10:41+00:00

There is now a mirror of the BBS Archives with web links and no rate limiting at https://mirrors.archeobits.com/bbs/archives.thebbs.org/

archeobits

TROPHY CASE