MNODE15C - Running Wildcat under DESQview 386
7-April-2002
Way back in the daze when BBS's ruled the on line world, I ran two Wildcat BBS's:
Firth of Fifth in Las Vegas, with help from a co-sysop, and Moonlit Knight in
San Jose. The systems ran from 1989 to 1994 when the world wide web killed the
entire BBS scene in under two years time.
Both systems ended up being multi-node (more than one modem) and were run
under Desqview, a multitasking shell from Quarterdeck Office Systems that allowed
you to run more than one DOS program at a time. This was bleeding edge
stuff for PCs back then, as only big $$$ UNIX and mainframe computers were
able to multitask.
I ended up becoming very proficient at configuring multiple node Wildcat
BBS's under Desqview and wrote one of the main technical guidance documents for
Sysops to use as a template to kick start their BBS's into multiple node operation.
I also made some money con$ulting setting up multi node Wildcat BBS's.
The last time I looked back in ~1995 or so, MNODE had been downloaded from the
Mustang Software home BBS over 700 times, making it something of a smash hit
as far as geeky how to stuff went back then. :)
The last version of this file was MNODE15C.ZIP. With a huge tip of the brim to
Todd Cochrane, sysop of the
Hafa Adai Exchange & BBSNetworks BBS (running WINS :) who has the
complete wildcat archive of every file that was ever on the Mustang BBS online,
I have been able to rescue my ancient tutorial from the digital dust bin of
BBS history and post it below.
The instuctions are still perfectly valid if for some crazy reason you wanted
to run a Wildcat v4 BBS under DESQview. If someone out there is crazy enough
to do that, drop me a line :)
Note all the phone numbers, Email addresses and the like in the documents are
obsolete. I seriously doubt the actual content of the files will be worth anything
to anyone, but as historical documents on how to set up a then "state of the art"
multinode BBS system in 1994, they have may some value.
So here they are, in all their 10 point Courier dot matrix printer friendly glory:
- MNODE15C.DOC - the main How To document.
- HELP-ME!.DOC - Technical tips on running QEMM
and OPTIMIZE, as well as some system hardware and configuration tips .
- MNODE15C.ZIP - The complete archive containing sample .BAT files and other helpful information - thanks Todd!.
Hopefully these files provide some amusement for those out there who remember
the BBS Glory Daze :)
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