The Cellar - View Single Post

Undertoad · 04-23-2004, 08:42 AM

BBS = Bulletin Board System

In the olden days you'd use your modem to dial directly to the phone number of the remote computer. You'd connect to it and leave messages on it. Then other people would call the system with their modems, read your messages, and leave their own.

Most systems only had one phone line so when someone was on, you'd get a busy signal. The Cellar was revolutionary for its day because Scott and I developed it on Xenix - the first version of Unix for PCs - and so it had the native ability to support more than one modem, and thus, more than one user at a time. At its peak it had 7 phone lines dedicated to it.

04-23-2004, 08:42 AM	#6
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	BBS = Bulletin Board System In the olden days you'd use your modem to dial directly to the phone number of the remote computer. You'd connect to it and leave messages on it. Then other people would call the system with their modems, read your messages, and leave their own. Most systems only had one phone line so when someone was on, you'd get a busy signal. The Cellar was revolutionary for its day because Scott and I developed it on Xenix - the first version of Unix for PCs - and so it had the native ability to support more than one modem, and thus, more than one user at a time. At its peak it had 7 phone lines dedicated to it.