Re: Dr. James Marsters, TTY deaf service developer [Telecom]

hancock4@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 8, 12:40 am, "Adam H. Kerman" <a...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hah! You date things from CBBS! Traditionally, we celebrate the
anniversary of February 16, 1978, although it probably went live a week
or two earlier.

Would anyone know what platform this BBS used?

Ward and Randy invented the BBS. Bill is recalling about a significant
moment in computer history. This invention predated Usenet and the Web.

Here's Randy's narrative. This article is undoubtably in the Telecom
Digest archives.

The original CBBS consisted of a S-100 motherboard picked up
at some fleamarket. This was a "kit" of course, so I had to
solder all the connectors. (lotsa soldering done in those days,
such as 8 k memory boards filled with 1kX1 chips)

It was mounted on a BUD chassis with a single density 8 inch
floppy drive. On the motherboard was some 8080 cpu (upgraded to a
Z80) a Hayes 300 baud modem card, a 3P+S board with the parallel
port used for control signals, a Processor Technology VDM video
display card, and an 8k memory board. There was also a card with
8 1702 EEPROMS that held the CP/M BIOS, video display drivers,
and debug code, all written by Ward. I had a EPROM burner, and
Ward made sure all the BIOS variables and experimentor stuff
ended up in the last 1702. Musta re-programmed that sucker 10
times a week for a few months.

The floppy drives of that time had 117vAC running the spindle
motor, and the drive would wear out quickly. So I built a
circuit on a prototype board that would turn on the system
power when a ring signal came in from the modem card and do
a reset of the computer. By the time the drive spun up, the
software had answered the phone and booted CPM and CBBS from
the floppy. (simple power fail system!) The circuit board also
had some 555 timers, so when the caller went away, the drive
motors would continue to spin for about 10 seconds to flush out
any data, then shut the system down. I had an old Heath chart
recorder I hooked across the floppy drive motor and set up the
chart speed for 2 days per ***. Was able to determine the
calling patterns from the chart.

From the 173k single density single sided floppy, we went to a
pair of them, then to double density double sided drives. Bout
a year later, moved CBBS to a NorthStar Horizon cabinet with
a 10 meg seagate hd. Both those systems are still sitting
around someplace. It is now running on a PC clone motherbard
still running CP/M with the original 8080 assembly code! The
clone board has a V20 chip, which fully supports the 8080 op
codes. Ward wrote a wrapper around CP/M-CBBS, and CBBS has been
running that way for over 15 years.

.

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