The LampLighter Tech Help BBS started operation
16 years ago and originally was just to help several local users
stay in contact better and share files they were downloading from
GEnie or Compuserve. It was also to help answer questions about
computing that users had without calling the sysop by voice so
often. The idea was that instead of having several people in the
shop asking questions, people on the phone asking questions, and
at least one knocking at the door, we could all share in
questions and answers here with a bulletin board. If one of the
users found a program or file of interest, he or she could upload
it here for all to share (of course it was expected to be
shareware or public domain software). Often we would all call
long distance to GEnie or CompuServe and find some great program,
spend hours downloading it long distance - then find the next day
that others in the area had done the same. A bbs would help us
share, answer questions, keep in a bit better sync on things and
learn more. So began the little system and here are some details
of how it progressed.
This system was first started part time in 1981, then
went full time in February of 1982. In those days it was operated
on a Commodore 64 with the total drive capacity of 170kb, and
64kb of ram, running the 1mhz clock speed that was the blazing
fast Commodore 64. First modems were 300 baud and even small file
downloads took some time. At that time the system was called
"The Hobbs CBM BBS". Later we moved to 2 disk drives
and had a whopping 340k of storage space and a fast 1200 baud
modem.
As better hardware became available we moved to a
Commodore 128 and then to an early IBM PC-XT clone system with a
360k floppy and 512k memory. Then improved to a better XT clone
with the hot-rod NEC V20 processor (20% faster on some things
than the 8088) and a huge 10mb hard drive. As we traded with
other users and clients upgraded we came into a 286-10 then a
386-16sx and then a 386-25dx. Hard drives went up to 40mb and
then 120mb. The system which had run then for 8 or 9 years had
gone thru name changes becoming the MOJO BBS and then the
LAMPLIGHTER, then finally the current name.
Processors moved more into speed with 386-40dlc and
386-40dx, then a 486/66dx2 and a 486/80dx2 on a DTK VLB
motherboard. Currently the system is running a Cyrix 686-p166mx
processor on a Elite PCI bus motherboard. System ram has gone
from the 64k of the commodore to the 16 megabytes we run usually
now. Its amazing to see the things that have progressed and yet
sometimes the overall performance stands still as we add more
functions.
Total drive space has moved from the little 170k
floppy drive to the big drives of over 4.5 gigabyte today.
Current drive space here is over 4.0 gig plus another 1.300mb on
CD-rom drives. While the main BBS pc is networked to several
others, we currently are not using the network for the bbs.
Modems have gone from the 300 baud modem used 14 years
ago thru to the first 1200 baud units (nearly $300 at the time)
on thru 2400, 14,400 to the current line one unit of 28,800 baud
and line two with 33,600 baud. Both modems have v.34 capability.
We routinely get fax messages and send faxes out with the modems
these days. Along the way we have moved to a multi-node system to
allow for more than one caller at a time and have joined
worldwide FidoNet echo mail and Technet echo mail networks, and
have internet email thru fidonet. We typically carry 30 or more
message areas with over 3000 messages online at any given time.
New mail of over 1000 messages a week is not unusual to see here
these days.
As to future expansion, well it is safe to say you can
count on it. Stay tuned for more as it happens and watch us grow!
This textfile was imported from the actual BBS
text file area.
