Hi folks,

As a long-time sysop, I've been frustrated with the fact that each hardware or
OS upgrade tends to break stuff on my BBS. After upgrading to Windows 7, I had
a couple of games that ran but could not be configured because the
configuration program required a full-screen DOS window. Windows 7 and Vista do
not support that functionality anymore. You can technically make Vista do full
screen DOS by using an XP video driver *if* it will allow you to install it.

I decided that the way forward is backward. BBSes are retro tech anyway so I
might as well rebuild it to period-appropriate spec. The end result is that I'm
running a telnet VADV-OS2 BBS on a "new" 486 system and have been pleasantly
surprised with the results. You can even see animated ANSI screens display
properly.

For anyone thinking of trying something like this, here are a few words of
advice. 1. Stuff eventually breaks. Use never-used equipment when you can. Most
of the equipment I used was still new in the box. 2. Get spares too because #1.
3. Use an IDE-to-CompactFlash adapter instead of a hard drive from the 90's.
This is what took me the longest to figure out. IDE drives sucked. SCSI drives
were better but were really loud and people want WAY too much money for
authentic 90's SCSI hard drives. Also, see #1 and #2. 4. Firewall
appropriately. You are going to run an old and unsupported operating system so
keep risk to a minimum. 5. It will likely cost more and take longer than you
expect and you might need to buy multiples of a type of part in order to be
able to get everything to work right (I ended up going through 4 MultiI/O cards
before I found one that worked with OS/2 and the other components properly). 6.
If you go too far back, Y2k could be an issue. Check your OS and BIOS for
compatibility and Y2k patches. I have this silly idea of being able to keep
this setup going until the 32bit time bug hits old OSes in 2038. 

Overall, it's been a fun build. You can check it out at sacrebase.servebbs.net
if you're idly curious. Menus are being rebuilt and stuff, but the games all
work.

PS. Yeah, I know you can virtualize it, but what's the fun in that?


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