The History of the Bits of Blue RBBS

By Kevan Sheridan, Secretary, Tampa PC Users Group

Sometime during August of 1986, Rodney Brewer of Excellence Computers and then president of the Tampa IBM PC Users Group Inc. started a club electronic Bulletin Board System (BBS). Back then bulletin boards, just becoming popular, all had names that tried to give an idea of what the system was about. The IBM PC was quite the computer in those days, and the nickname for IBM was "Big Blue". So, the name of the club newsletter, Bits of Blue, was used for the BBS. The purpose was to give members a place to trade valuable information and prospective members a place to find out more about the group. We will not talk about what some callers thought about a name with 'blue' in it.

This original system had some very fancy items for those days. A messaging area allowed questions, answers, and general comments to be posted or read by any caller. Bulletins allowed the System Operator (Sys-Op) to give callers a standard set of information on request. Items such as how to join the group or what the next meeting would be about were placed in bulletins. A Files area, a standard part of most BBSes, kept the latest version of your favorite shareware game. If your communication program included the X-Modem transfer protocol, downloading files took place at the (amazing for the time) speed of 1200 baud (1200 bps or 120 characters per second). Let's not talk about how long it took to download big files, okay?

Games were big then too, so one was installed on the BBS. Games were so popular people wrote them to be played online, using a function called 'DOORS'. This allowed players to compete for the best scores or just offered something to do for awhile. Another function was called PC-Pursuit, which allowed callers to 'connect' to other systems. Word of mouth and an advertisement on other boards was the way callers found out about any BBS. After a short time Rodney brought his brother Daniel in to help him. Daniel eventually took over all operation of the BBS and worked very hard until mid 1988 when Excellence could no longer support the system.

After two years of operation, volunteers to operate the BBS were called for. Three people, perhaps more, spoke up: Vern Semrad a very capable computer expert, Harvey Bruneau of Dun and Bradstreet, and Kevan Sheridan of Realtron. Kevan, being two months on a new job, offered to keep the BBS at his place of work. His company let the system take up desk space and connected it to a 5kv UPS. The public access of an office must have helped as Kevan was picked to be the next BBS Sys-Op.

Unfortunately, the transfer of operations was not a smooth one. The entire list of items actually transferred amounted to two backup tape cartridges. A company whose name cannot be found, offered to donate equipment for the operation to continue. Kevan's first encounter with building PC's began with a trip through a repair shop: "Here is a computer case and keyboard. And we'll use these memory chips. Let's see. Yes here is a mother board…. Whoops, let's use this one instead. A 20 meg hard drive…" The company really should get credit here for donating this equipment because they did make it possible to continue the BBS. They also loaned the use of a backup tape drive.

It was September 1, 1988. With a pile of components and a modem, Kevan proceeded. He affectionately (well MOST of the time) called this the "Frankenstein System" and once built, the restore from backup could begin. The next lesson was: Backups do not always work. Halfway through the first of two tapes a block was apparently unreadable, thus ending the restore. Some 1500 files were never restored. Fortunately the core files needed to run the BBS were recovered. The next month was spent finding out how to make it run. On October 8, the BBS software, RBBS-PC version 15.1A, was upgraded to RBBS-PC version 17-1A providing lots of new features.

The first official (non sysop) call to the "new" BBS was on October 14, 1988. The sysop spent the next few months learning about modems and how to handle them. Fortunately the BBS software included all the BASIC source code which gave him enough information to allow him to write a new set of modem control programs for his other job (the paying one). This was the first time his BBS experience helped his career. Terms like Baud, BPS, Parity, Stop Bits, and Flow-Control now meant something. Constant system trouble also gave him valuable experience with the operating system and hardware connections. "Wait! You mean the location AND order of the memory chips make a difference???"

In May 1989 Edward Buzza wrote "So,… You've Got A Modem" for new callers to the BBS. Distributed on the BBS and mainly on new group member disks, this manual continues to be the ultimate resource for new BBS users. In April of 1990 a second 20 MB disk drive was added and ZMODEM, YMODEM, and PUMA file transfer protocols were added too. Right after that memory parity errors started to happen causing the system to be taken down for repair. With a new motherboard and completely empty disk drives the next lesson was Low Level Disk Formatting. A program called FDISK now became a friend. Previously learned lessons paid off as the backups worked this time. The support of several group members helped greatly during this low period.

A new 286 computer was purchased from LORAN Computers in November 1990 (we actually traded our old system in!). Steve Speairs donated two 65 MB RLL hard disk drives, as the previous D: drive (containing only files to download) failed.

By 1992 the BBS had many message areas (or topics) that had a lot of activity. Two doors, Silver Express and TQM, were added to allow callers to download, read, and send mail while offline (not connected to the BBS). To make things better, there was a new "network" called FIDOnet. With a dog as the logo and using a system of computers, a new way to transfer messages between people was developed. Each 'node' on the network wasn't always connected to other nodes. Special programs called "mailers" were written to handle the transfer of messages. A program called D'Bridge (version 1.3) was installed in March 1992. For those interested, our node address was 1:377/32. Fidonet allowed the sysop to ask questions in the DesqView "echo" and get helpful answers from a caller to another BBS located in Australia (in just 3 days!).

The BBS joining Fidonet gave all of its callers access to the world. Additionally fido membership gave the sysop access to other local BBS sysops, a wealth of PC knowledge. This also led to the addition of a US Robotics 16,800 baud modem, a big leap in online speed.

The next very big boost for the BBS came from a donation in Dec 1992: A brand new computer! A 486/33, 200 MD Hard Drive, and 8 MEG RAM. With a better computer a second phone line was added with Desq View running two nodes of the BBS software. This sysop lesson was called file sharing along with a BIG boost in the member support lesson.

Things change, and during 1995 the sysop was no longer able to spend the same amount of time on the BBS. System operation was transferred to Mary Sheridan in September when the system was moved to their home (cutting the monthly phone bill in half).

Things changed even more when the Internet took hold. Overall usage went down over the next year or so, and life with a PC changed as well. The local fidonet feed ended on February 20 1998. Mary took these changes (and more) into consideration when she decided to recommend the TPCUG board stop BBS support in March of 1998. With that, the history is over.

On a personal note: When I started, I spent about thirty to forty hours a week on the BBS (down to ten by March 1994). During that time I learned a huge amount about modems, programming, and people. I spent months and even years learning software. I was allowed to install just about any program I wanted to, each one helping in one way or another. I spent countless hours trying to make hardware or software work properly. And after all of this I believe that I had the better part of the deal! I also believe I couldn't have done it without the unending support of many group members. I would like to personally thank these people for their special support (without which nothing could have happened): Harvey Bruneau, Vern Semrad, Ed Buzza, Larry Anders, Bill Fuller, and Connie Kincaid. I would also like to thank my wife Mary for helping me change my life from a keyboard to the real world. By the way, I met her on the BBS! u