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AUDIO FORUMS >> General Discussion and Support >> This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
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Message started by Steve Deckert on 07/22/18 at 05:52:42

Title: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by Steve Deckert on 07/22/18 at 05:52:42

I don't know if any of you remember or were into Bulletin Boards (BBS) in the 1980's back when dial-up modems were 1200 and 2400 bps! For me it was a real thrill to have been exposed to it right away when the first IBM PC computers came out. I ran a BBS myself, in Peoria IL called Opus which I wrote a lot of software for. I was a "Sysop" as they called it, and had many friends around the area who were also BBS operators... it was an exclusive club and a hell of a lot of fun!

After a few years of running the BBS on floppy disks, we upgraded to a 20 megabit hard drive from Segate that cost $720. That got things rolling much better and eventually it became necessary to install a second phone line. I remember well the buzz I got every time the phone rang as I ran into the office to watch the ASCII screen log-in sequence to see who it was!

(as a side note, the biggest hard drive you could get after a couple years of the Senate 20 meg, was an 80 meg drive. You could have several drives, and being a unix based system we could stack many hard drives, but virtually no one had enough money to create a 1-gigabyte hard drive.) Also for those who are too young to remember, and think todays computers make things happen faster, they don't. Things were faster in 1990 with a fraction of the memory and a fraction of the processor speed. The reason it was faster is lack of graphics and superior software. High efficiency software. Programs were single executable files that were less than 100Kbytes. Today a firkin flashlight app is 28 megabytes. The bureaucracy of todays software is so pathetic it's just pathetic.)

It wasn't long before we figured out how to share message bases between all the various BBS in the area by having one BBS call the next and upload all the data -- but always within the local calling area. By this method we were able to bounce messages from one location to another without encountering long-distance phone charges. This was later developed into what we called ECHO MAIL. It grew to a nation-wide network that we called FIDO NET, and most BBS operators were ham radio operators who switched over to computers.

I remember how we divided into NETS and NODES to transmit packets around the world into Europe. So this network of BBS operators in less than 5 years created FIDO NET and shared message boards between all the BBS in the system around the world. I think when I quit it was a NET/NODE list of 270,000 BBS around the world. For example, if you logged onto my BBS in Peoria IL, and selected the international message board, your message would make it's way to Europe in 3 days and the response would make it's way back in 3 days.

We wrote scrips to dial and hack into Illinois Southern University and others to download real-time information, such as national news and weather. We would then post it in real time on our BBS systems for our local users.

No BBS on this network had more than a few hundred users, all were free to users and fully funded by the Sysops.

For those who don't know -- a BBS is a general message board, virtually exactly like this forum. FIDO NET was all the affiliated message boards in the world connected together via packet-sharing through dial-up phone service. It started at 1200 bps (baud rate) and finished at 56000 bps.

For those ISU professors and Al Gore who claim to have invented the internet... I don't think so. It was ham radio operators and little guys like myself who made that happen.

So with that back history, I remember after my days as a Sysop ended due to being entangled in a thing called life which is somewhat spontaneous, I shifted my attention to audio. After I was good and into Audio as my new hobby, I remember sitting on my back porch after having just build my very first tube amp and getting it to actually play music 30 days later, thinking how cool it would be to have a BBS just for audiophiles!!!! At the time it would have been impossible because there weren't enough people "connected" through the FIDO NET and the "internet" was not yet formed.

I am SO thrilled to be able to sit here with all of you and realize that that dream on the back porch has come true and then some!! At the time the idea of becoming a high-end audio company was only a fantasy. This forum is exactly the international BBS I fantasized about, only 100,000 times faster and with graphics capabilities I couldn't comprehend at dial-up speeds and with monitors that were only 640 x 480 at the time.

Thank all of you for making this concept so fruitful! And God Bless technology!

Decware is a well-balanced blend of technology and old-school kick-ass result-oriented make it happen methodology that just works.

Steve

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by Bottlehead on 07/22/18 at 06:35:31

No, really, it is all of us who thank you, Steve, for persevering and creating this board/forum which enriches all our lives. Long live Decware!

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by Steve Deckert on 07/22/18 at 06:37:47

Ha! I'll second that! 106 years old would be nice. I'm shooting for that for obvious reasons.

Steve

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by ScottNC on 07/22/18 at 13:34:29

Wow, nice blast into the past...my first Apple in ‘84, which was basically a big keyboard into a 9 inch black and white monitor, was not sure what to do with it then...but got a modem. I remember being totally in awe, and just as confused as I get now on my MacBook and messing with with 4 Teribyte Storage!
I have to agree with Bottlehead...Here’s a THANKS to you Steve, you are making great things happen🌝
Best,
Scott

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by hdrider on 07/22/18 at 16:06:22

No Steve, all of our (collective) thanks goes to you as the Zen Master of this tribe, all the regular and new posters who keep the questions, answers and updates moving. This forum has for the first time in 45 years of this hobby actually resulted in consistent musical bliss. The design, gear and knowledge derived from my trip thur the portals of Decware are nothing short of amazing. As the rack warms up this Sunday morning, while my grandson and wife figure out breakfast our Decware/Omega system is making music. Oh, and I'm typing this on an Apple MacBook Pro, a lot smaller than our first Apple. Happy listening, Chris.

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by will on 07/22/18 at 19:18:05

Thanks for the great story Steve. I love it when dreams turn to reality! Very nice...

Speaking of Speed and tech, I wonder if it is just me, but I did not receive the board notification for this thread until almost 24 hours after you posted. It seems my notifications of threads are sometimes sketchy, at times not showing up at all. Just a heads up...

Good luck to you and everyone here with ongoing creative development.... life, amps and everything else!!!

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by 4krow on 07/22/18 at 22:14:45

Living far out in the high desert of Wyoming, my exposure as a young guy was sometime in Jr Hi when I fixed my parents radio and took it to my room. I found KOMA Oklahoma Radio. Compare that to the convenience of 'any internet connection' even from way back, and this is bliss for me. To find forums, information, and so much more, not just about audio but so much more than that. When you sort out your specific needs with audio, this is one of a few sites that I have belonged to for a number of years. I couldn't be more appreciative for that to have happened.

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by Brian on 07/22/18 at 23:35:32

I was 41 years old when I came to the internet in year 2001. And what little I had read or otherwise picked up on the subject of audio equipment in forty years was totally eclipsed by what I learned here. Essentially all my audio education comes from the Decware web site and the Decware forum.
I am grateful.
Brian

P.S. I do miss the presence here of the tech heads: Eli, Eddie and Terry who taught me so much.

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by Mark on 07/23/18 at 01:17:46

My father worked as a field engineer for IBM for 30 yrs. Worked on large mainframe computers... He died in 1981... Before the PC revolution... If only he could see it now... I'm sure he'd be amazed...

It used to take a whole room of equipment to do what a single PC can do now... Actually, the PCs of today are more powerful than that whole room of equipment...

He also was an electronics hobbyist, ham operator, a tube Hi Fi buff, way back in the 50s... I was pretty young then, but remember him showing me stuff in his shop / radio shack... (m.)

Correction: He was a Hi Fi buff... Everything was tubes back then...

Title: Re: This Forum is a BBS / Understanding Decware
Post by funch on 07/23/18 at 05:50:02

Anyone here ever buy or sell something through Audio Mart? It was the
analog version of Audiogon, and was run by a guy in Crewe, VA out of
his home.

He charged a yearly subscription fee, and if you wanted to sell a piece of
equipment, you wrote/typed it out and mailed it to him. Then about
every month (or so), he would send out all the ads that he had received.
It was printed out on plain pieces of paper turned sideways, then folded
and stapled in the middle. Of course there were no pictures, just one
ad after another, with a space between each ad.

To buy, you simply called the number on the ad to talk to the seller.
Payment was made by sending the seller a check. I bought/sold several
things and never had a bad experience.