Nostalgia BBS - important decisions

[3***@gmail.com]

Nostalgia BBS will have to make some important decisions in the coming
months. As some of you may know, April 2007 will be the one-year
anniversary of Nostalgia BBS's official opening. When we started this
Worldgroup server, we told ourselves that we were going to give it one
year, to see how well the board does.

When we were working hours daily, on the BBS itself, as well as
advertising the board on several message boards and newsgroups, we had
quite a bit of loggers, who came to play T-LORD, Swords of Chaos,
Mutants, BladeMaster, Farwest Trivia, and maybe a few other games.

For awhile, in fact, we had some really great LORD games and even was
able to host a tournament with a real prize, which we wanted to do most
than that one time, but the BBS sort of slowed down afterwards. We
started doing our own projects, away from Nostalgia BBS, in hopes that
it would run itself most of the time.

We've also added two gamenet servers, one which is run with a modified
version of Synchronet, and another using DOS and MajorBBS, with the
possability to add a DMA server later on.

One of our personal goals was to run a worldgroup server that did not
put all of its resources in to MajorMud, but to possibly add it in the
future. We did not want people skipping over all of the great games
worldgroup (and major bbs/synchronet) had to offer, for one game.

In the last few months, the reality hit that a successful worldgroup
bbs can't be built over night, or even in a year's time, with out
MajorMud.

In the last year, we've put several thousand dollars in to both the
hardware and software, which is currently spread out through 4 servers,
to run the BBS and all of the gamenet servers, but now it's time to
make some important decisions regarding the future of Nostalgia BBS.
Here are some choices:

#1: Nostalgia BBS goes down after April 2007
#2: Nostalgia BBS is sold off
#3: One or more people contribute the registration cost of MajorMud, to
try to salvage the BBS.
#4: Nostalgia BBS changes its name and becomes an exclusive web-based
club, which has little or nothing to do with BBSes.
#5: PostPone the April deadline for ? months
#6: ?!?

We may even consider doing a co-owner system, where one or more
third-parties would become SysOPs on the BBS, spend time and work on
the bbs, and financial support for new mods or hardware as needed. They
would have as much creative control, for rule changing, name changes,
making new menus, adding or deleting software, who becomes
sysops/gameops/forumops, and more. The only thing is that the server
would still be run where it is, and no registration numbers would be
given out to them, until when/if the bbs goes down, with the agreement
that if/when we stopped running the BBS, all software and registration
numbers (aka ownership) would be transferred to the co-owner for
him/her to do what he/she wants to with the BBS (Run it, sell it, trade
it.)

come to nostalgia bbs if you have any suggestions - email our sysop or
use the hello forums.
telnet://nostalgiabbs.servebbs.net

[3***@gmail.com]

After much emails between various sysops and visitors, we've decided to
keep Nostalgia BBS up on a probationary basis. This means we're going
to re-evaluate the situation every 90 days, until if/when we're
satisfied with an outcome.

It could be another 60 days or more before we'll actually have time to
go change some stuff around or even add some new stuff on the servers,
due to other commitments.

If any one is interested in buying majormud, a dma server, or any other
mods to help improve our great little worldgroup system, then maybe we
can get off the ground a little better. Or if any one reading has a BBS
and DMA server already registered to them and just doesn't run a BBS
any more and would like to donate it to us, that would be great too.

We've considered opening up an Adventure DMA server free to all bbses,
which would have games that aren't played very often on one bbs but
might be played more as a whole if many bbs systems played all of those
games through the one server. Kyrandia, Fazuul, Quest for Magic, maybe
some other games that may have been neglected over the years, etc.

Post by 3***@gmail.com
Nostalgia BBS will have to make some important decisions in the coming
months. As some of you may know, April 2007 will be the one-year
anniversary of Nostalgia BBS's official opening. When we started this
Worldgroup server, we told ourselves that we were going to give it one
year, to see how well the board does.
When we were working hours daily, on the BBS itself, as well as
advertising the board on several message boards and newsgroups, we had
quite a bit of loggers, who came to play T-LORD, Swords of Chaos,
Mutants, BladeMaster, Farwest Trivia, and maybe a few other games.
For awhile, in fact, we had some really great LORD games and even was
able to host a tournament with a real prize, which we wanted to do most
than that one time, but the BBS sort of slowed down afterwards. We
started doing our own projects, away from Nostalgia BBS, in hopes that
it would run itself most of the time.
We've also added two gamenet servers, one which is run with a modified
version of Synchronet, and another using DOS and MajorBBS, with the
possability to add a DMA server later on.
One of our personal goals was to run a worldgroup server that did not
put all of its resources in to MajorMud, but to possibly add it in the
future. We did not want people skipping over all of the great games
worldgroup (and major bbs/synchronet) had to offer, for one game.
In the last few months, the reality hit that a successful worldgroup
bbs can't be built over night, or even in a year's time, with out
MajorMud.
In the last year, we've put several thousand dollars in to both the
hardware and software, which is currently spread out through 4 servers,
to run the BBS and all of the gamenet servers, but now it's time to
make some important decisions regarding the future of Nostalgia BBS.
#1: Nostalgia BBS goes down after April 2007
#2: Nostalgia BBS is sold off
#3: One or more people contribute the registration cost of MajorMud, to
try to salvage the BBS.
#4: Nostalgia BBS changes its name and becomes an exclusive web-based
club, which has little or nothing to do with BBSes.
#5: PostPone the April deadline for ? months
#6: ?!?
We may even consider doing a co-owner system, where one or more
third-parties would become SysOPs on the BBS, spend time and work on
the bbs, and financial support for new mods or hardware as needed. They
would have as much creative control, for rule changing, name changes,
making new menus, adding or deleting software, who becomes
sysops/gameops/forumops, and more. The only thing is that the server
would still be run where it is, and no registration numbers would be
given out to them, until when/if the bbs goes down, with the agreement
that if/when we stopped running the BBS, all software and registration
numbers (aka ownership) would be transferred to the co-owner for
him/her to do what he/she wants to with the BBS (Run it, sell it, trade
it.)
come to nostalgia bbs if you have any suggestions - email our sysop or
use the hello forums.
telnet://nostalgiabbs.servebbs.net

[3***@gmail.com]

Nostalgia BBS took another big hit on its MBBS game server, when about
50 or more power surges pounded it within a 20 minute period several
days ago and corrupted much of the data, so bad, in fact, that the
installed server could not be repaired, on the software side. However,
we believe that the PC itself went undamaged.

Are we going to put the MBBS game server back up? Probably not any
time soon. It only featured a handfull of registered games (galactic
empire, etc) that aren't on our normal worldgroup server.
Unfortunately, we did not have a backup of the system, as it didn't
get much loggers.

What'll happen with the hardware? We'll continue to use it, to test
mbbs/wg dos software and possibly other software, and maybe one day,
when/if we get more loggers, put the dos mbbs game server back up.

Is Nostalgia BBS going to stay on-line? With much emails and chat with
our visitors and some other sysops, as well as thinking about how we
would really like for our BBS to stay up, get bigger, and hopefully
better.

What plans do you have to make Nostalgia BBS better? Let's just get
one thing clear. While there haven't been a lot of new features added
lately, we have still been working on little things here and there.
We've been slowly adding/changing/fixing the menu system, doing manual
verification for new users, answering emails, re-doing part of the
forum system, and keeping the BBS up.

In the spring, summer, and first part of the winter, we get terrible
thunderstorms, tornadoes, power surges, and usually get hit by the
outskirts of hurricanes when they hit anywhere near florida. That's
when keeping the BBS up takes up a huge ammount of work and time. We
have to some times make very fast decisions to either keep the servers
or or take the servers down, when we get multiple surges. On a good
day, in the storm season, a lot of times, we get two storm surges. On
a bad day, 8 or more. Like we said, this took out our mbbs game server
just several days ago, even out of season.

The servers are also split up in two seperate locations, connected
using a long-range wifi network. If a power surge hits one place, it
usually hits the other place. So, we have to either take down or bring
back up the servers in those two locations.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and say that it's a major problem, but
just want to let people know of some of the work that goes in to just
keeping the bbs up alone.

What we can do.
#1: We could just put as much stuff on one PC, take down any/all
servers that can't be run on the same PC, and then shove the BBS in a
corner somewhere, and then just keep it online and not do any thing
else with it.

#2: We could keep it running like it is and just add stuff as we can
afford to, in terms of both time, work, and money.

As of right now, we're taking the 2nd path. We have plans to work on
our BBS Door Game server, to register some of the games that aren't
currently registered on it, as well as adding some new games to the
server. We're working out a list of various door games we're
interested in putting on-line, and just giving it some time before we
actually start working on the server.

We want all of the door games downloaded and have a plan to do the
major updating as fast as possible, because we do not want to take the
server down more than 2 or 3 days when it does happen. We want to do
what we need to do, test it out, and put it back on-line so that every
one can enjoy it.

There are also several other projects that we're working on, one non-
bbs related but may tie in to the BBS, and another, BBS-Related, but
since it's not set in stone right now, we're not going to go in to it,
so no one will be disappointed if it falls through.

So, what is set in stone is that we're going to be working on the door
game server, loggers or not. We do not have a time-line when it'll be
ready.

Do we take requests for BBS door games? Any one can email us and tell
us what their favorite door games are, sure.

Will you have any interbbs door games available soon? When we first
started Nostalgia BBS, we really did think about this but knew that it
took many loggers to make it worthwhile. If we get many loggers who
want to play interbbs games, we will definately consider doing that.
We would need a lot more visitors/players for that, however.

What about MajorMud? I'm just going to be blunt about this. We can't
afford majormud. So, chances are it won't be on our BBS for a long
time, unless there are some very generous donations coming in to the
BBS.

What about other worldgroup mods? We've got our eyes on 1 or 2 other
worldgroup mods. We'll see.

Why complain about the weather in Florida, the power surges? Why not
just get battery backup systems? We originally wanted to have battery
backup systems on the servers, and even have one for our modem and
router, but there are still several other servers, including a high-
wattage dual cpu ibm e-server. It could cost any where between $800
and $1000, and batteries may only last for a couple years before
having to be replaced. Batteries cost more than the actual backup
systems themselves.

If we had that type of money for the BBS, we would have to make an
important decision. Should we buy a battery backup system, which the
batteries will only last around 2 years, or would we buy majormud, or
do we buy a DMA server, or even put it up for emergency funds for the
BBS, for hard drive upgrades, pc upgrades and/or when any hardware
fails.

So, we decided to just buy a backup (not battery) system for our main
server. That way, if the bbs did a hard crash, it could be brought
back up with a recent backup. Of course, if we're gone or asleep, the
bbs just has to stay offline until when/if we notice the problem and
fix it.

Our other plan was to place all of the servers in a centralized
location. We've got a pretty much empty office room ready to be used
for that purpose, other than getting several hundred dollars worth of
networking stuff, to extend the network. This was our original
intentions when started the bbs but just could never seem to put the
fund in the right place.

Will Nostalgia BBS ever have dialup lines? This has been a
questionable possability from the start of Nostalgia BBS, for a couple
of reasons. First, the internet just isn't always the fastest and most
stable network. Most of the time, it's OK, but randomly, you're going
to have lag and disconnections, etc. With phone lines, you're directly
connected to it. With phone lines, you can get on to the BBS when the
internet (or the internet provider) is down.

The other reason dialup could be good now days is that many people now
days have unlimited calling plans. Between $19.99 and $29.99 per
month, most phone companies offer unlimited long distance. Even if
dialup has a slower connection rate, the speed could some times be a
lot faster, due to not having internet lag. No, it's probably not the
best for downloading, but it could have a lot of potential chatting or
playing games.

In the end, while dialup lines are possible, it is not looking very
likely. Everything would have to fall into place perfectly.