From: csunyapost@hotmail.com (Adam Jacobs) Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm Subject: Info wanted (by original author) on the RAVICS BBS system for C64 Date: 13 Aug 2002 12:56:24 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com/ Lines: 72 Message-ID: <175e2248.0208131156.1f192aa5@posting.google.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 149.142.173.160 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: posting.google.com 1029268584 6560 127.0.0.1 (13 Aug 2002 19:56:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 13 Aug 2002 19:56:24 GMT Hi all, Back in early 1982 I wrote a simple BBS program -- almost certainly the first, and probably the only one -- for the VIC-20 (!) computer. Because the VICmodem attached to a phone's handset cord and had no automatic functions at all, I had to jury-rig an autoanswer gadget (send ringing signal to the computer, which then sends out a "flip the relay" signal to pick up the phone -- I think I used the cassette port because the user port was occupied by the modem). I ran it (in 212) as VTUG-BBS, and within a month or so, to my surprise (I hadn't initially intended to go into business!), I had sold a few copies, along with a couple of autoanswer boxes, to other VIC-20 owners wanting to run a BBS. At that point I named the software "RAVICS" for Remote Access VIC System. Towards the end of '82, the Commodore 64 came out, and I bought one right away, and immediately ported RAVICS over to the C64 (the initial changes were minor, e.g. because I had a 1580 disk drive, I had to blank the C64's screen in order to avoid timing problems during disk access! Thus I think that RAVICS likely was the first, and for a while the only, BBS to be deployed on the C64; it was up and running on VTUG-BBS in late '82, within a month of the C64's release. Naturally I started "marketing" the C-64 version, which I steadily improved over the next couple of years until it was s fairly high-powered system for the time (remember this was the first couple of years of the C-64!) It had some exctic features, e.g. tree-structured ocnferencing, in addition to the more mundane ones like message bases, private mail, text files, uploads and downloads and so on, and "remote administration" shell of sorts. It was highly configurable using external menu and message base structure editors. It was written in BASIC (ultimately compiled BASIC) with 6502 assembler for the low-level communication routines (serial I/O, PETSCII-ASCII conversion, etc.) It ran fine on one or two 160K drives. I think I sold at least 50 copies, and I know that quite a few RAVICS BBS's were deployed in various places around the country. By 1984 though I was moving on to other things (starting high school, for one thing); I'd made a fair amount of money for a 14 year old, but I wasn't really into the business side of things. I felt the program, which was at Version 6.2 by that point, was technically very good and had a good chance of succeeding if it was marketed by someone with good business sense (though by that time I'm sure competition in the form of other BBS programs was heating up) and to my delight an already established RAVICS sysop offered to buy the rights from me. I don't remember his name but I think he lived in the midwest somwhere. I sold hit to him for a fair amount of money and promptly lost track of the whole thing; a month or so later I sold my C64 system lock, stock, and barrel, bought an IBM-PC, and pretty much left the BBSing "scene" entirely. Remember this was all in 1981-1984, perhaps the first "heyday" of BBSing -- before large-scale file trading became a main focus of BBS's; RAVICS was more oriented towards messaging and text files. After I "sold out" in 1984, I know that RAVICS was developed further -- I've seen references to a Version 9.x in a few places -- and I have no idea how far it went, what was added to it, what it was capable of, and so on. I wonder if anyone out there remembers RAVICS, either in its original (up to Version 6.2) incarnation or in whatever form it took after I sold the rights. I'd be very curious to get any information at all from you guys. I don't know if I even have a copy of the source code or documentation any more, so if anyone happened to have that (for any version) I'd be utterly thrilled. But any and all info would be appreciated. Thanks, you can email me at csunyapost@hotmail.com (preferred) and I will try to monitor this group for a while in case anyone replies. Adam Jacobs