COMMODORE: C64: LASERBBS
Author: Chris Timmerberg
Author Contacted?: Chris Timmerberg sent in notes.
Additional Notes:
Chris Timmerberg writes "The program never was for the c64. It was written in c128 basic, and used practically all of the ram the basic editor would allow. I had to remove all of the spaces in the source. And it wouldnt even run until I fed it into a compiler. This program was in rather heavy use by c128 owners, at least it seemed that way to me as it was selling really well and funded my hardware upgrades for quite some time."

Nextly, I got an amiga and ported the code over. After a brief frustration with amiga basic and dabbling into languages most people never heard of (Comal, anyone?) I finally gave in and learned C. The C version of the bbs was also sold, although not quite as well due to the numerous other good choices of software the amiga had. I added compatibility with paragon's door system and wrote a dungeon-like game for it. I also enhanced the Prism ansi editor software for the amiga adding a very optimized save/load routine based on codefrom the bbs and a few other things.

The next computer I got was a 486, and I did port the code over for both dos and later os/2, although these were just personally used by myself as far as I can remember. There were quite many GOOD packages for dos and os/2, and I didnt stand a chance of competing with them. After a few years at this point, I just started nudging people to use the internet instead, and eventually I switched to Linux and just left MY computer connected to the net continually, allowing friends to contact me that way, via the IRC or YTALK services, TELNET, and so forth. (Being able to talk to several people at once and while downloading stuff without running multilines was certainly a deciding factor there! heh.)

I myself have been looking around the net from time to time and can't find acomplete/newer copy of laser, either for the c128 *OR* amiga. The old floppy disks were left sitting in a rather harsh environment and after going through all that heat and cold I highly doubt any of it is recoverable. Sigh. But considering the amount of people I personally sent 'registered' versions to, not to mention the undoubted amount of pirated copies and so forth, someone out there *HAS* to have it. I even gave a copy of the source for the amiga C version to someone at one point.

I always was running a slightly newer version than everyone else, as most people didnt always bother mailing me a floppy disk for an update and I dont recall having it availible for download (modems were slow, and my c128 and amiga didnt exactly have much storage space to keep much availible for download). So chances of getting the FINAL versions are almost nil, but surely a full copy of a somewhat more recent version must be out there SOMEPLACE."

lasrbbs2.zip () Original C= name was: laser bbs v2.arc Laser BBS v2.0 system for the C64.