BBS Preservation Demo board online
LINE 1DIAL TONE · ANSI · CP437

Save the hobby. Bring back the BBS.

Before the internet, there were thousands of little ones: bulletin boards for every hobby, every game, every scene, and a few you probably shouldn't have been calling. The boards are still out there, but running one takes a server and calling one takes a terminal program, so the hobby is fading.

This project fixes both. Run a board on cheap web hosting. Call one from any browser.

Hotkeys work here too. Just press the letter.

Why I'm doing this

One old SysOp, two big headaches.

I ran boards from 1985 to 1997. My first was Fido, and like most SysOps I tried just about every BBS package there was.

A while back I got nostalgic and went looking. The boards are still out there. Some run on modern operating systems, some run in DOSBox. But every one needs a server with a fixed address that somebody has to keep alive, and every caller has to hunt down a terminal program and then work out how to connect. Old-timers like me put up with that. New people don't, and a hobby without new people dies.

What a waste. Retro is everywhere right now. BBSes are a real piece of computing history, and they're still fun, especially the door games.

So I wrote ATDT, a BBS in PHP that looks and works like the boards I remember, on shared hosting that costs a few dollars a month. Then I got the original 16-bit DOS doors running inside it: LORD, TradeWars, The Pit, Usurper, fully multi-user, nothing DOS on the server. Then I got an entire DOS BBS running as a door (Renegade, for the curious). That became ATA: the real, unmodified classic boards, installed in one click and callable from any browser.

Plenty of people never cared about the board. They called for LORD. So I pulled the DOS machine out on its own. ATO Doors runs the classic doors straight from a web page, with no board around them.

That's two ways to run a board and two ways to skip it: one for the whole shelf of classic doors, and one for the game I couldn't leave alone.

It's a hobby project, and it's free. Let's bring back the BBS.

:: Ariel

AuthorAriel Benzakein
SysOp1985 to 1997
First boardFido
Software triedJust about all of it
This projectA hobby
Cost to youNothing

The projects

Two ways to run a board. Two ways to skip it.

Everything installs on the shared hosting you already pay for, and every caller gets in with a browser.

Three of the names are Hayes modem commands. ATDT and ATA are the dial and the answer. ATO is what you typed after +++ to put a call back on line.

Run a board

▚▚▚

ATDT

A new board, built the old way.

A complete BBS in PHP with ANSI art (and a built-in ANSI editor), hotkey menus, message bases, and live chat. It runs its own native doors and the original 16-bit DOS doors, multi-user.

  • Takes less than five minutes to install
  • Door API or classic DOS doors
  • LORD, TradeWars, The Pit and Usurper, playable today
  • Imports legacy BBS message bases, tested with a large 60,000 message import

Available now · atdtbbs.com

▓▒░

ATA

The original boards, without the hassle.

Install a real, unmodified 1980s or 1990s DOS BBS in one click. Anything you could do over telnet works here, just as fast.

  • Supports 16 classic 16-bit DOS BBS systems with one-click install: Renegade, T.A.G., Maximus, PCBoard and more
  • Multi-user, with file transfers and doors
  • SysOp chat and echomail
  • Or import the board you already run

Alpha, running · beta soon · atabbs.com

Skip the board

▙▟▙

ATO Doors

The door games, without the board.

The original 16-bit DOS doors run unchanged on a small DOS machine inside the page, so the game runs on the player's own computer. The server only needs PHP and SQLite.

  • Seven classic doors in the demo, LORD and TradeWars among them
  • Multi-user: players see each other, duel, trade and chat
  • Runs on a $5 host, with no daemon to keep alive
  • Free and MIT licensed. You bring the doors

In testing · demo open · atodoors.com

◤◥◤

Usurper

The classic door, finally fixed.

A PHP rewrite that follows the original Pascal source 1:1, except for bugs and exploits that sat unfixed for years. Set up a whole multi-user realm without running a board.

  • GPL, like the original
  • Source cross-references the Pascal
  • SysOp guide lists every change
  • Fully multi-user, on ordinary shared hosting

Out now · door and web editions · getusurper.com

What was a BBS?

Never called a board?

Before the web, you met people online by dialing a computer in someone's spare room. You read the message bases, answered your mail, grabbed a file, played your turns in a door game, and hung up so the next caller could get in.

Early boards had one phone line, so one caller at a time. The big ones grew to dozens of nodes, and every node needed its own modem and its own phone line.

Tens of thousands of boards ran through the eighties and nineties. After 2000 most of them went dark. A handful moved to telnet, and some of that software is still being updated today.

Read the history