On 12/24/2021 9:14 PM, Daryl Stout wrote to Mike Dippel:
My son chats daily with a girl who lives in Thailand via WhatsApp. Sometimes they will chat for hours at a time.
That's one way to run the battery down on the smartphone.
It gets charged frequently every day.
Today, I suggested to him while he was on the phone with her that she could create an account on my system, The Hobby Line! BBS, and use the 'Asian Link' to read and write messages. She was able to create the account and hopefully she will use the BBS to communicate.
Good deal.
I promote my BBS via a ham radio application that I have, and I've picked up some ham radio operators as users.
Good deal.
I remember years ago using a phone connected to Prodigy to post a message and have to wait a day or two to get any replies. We have come a long way since then. My son uses a phone app to call Thailand, and she can use the BBS to communicate with the rest of the world, and the communications are almost instantaneous.
Are things like Prodigy and CompuServe still around??
Daryl, WX4QZ
I'm sure they all fell by the wayside, but Prodigy is what got me started in BBS'ing. I
new I could start my own DOS-based BBS for less than Prodigy wanted to renew their
service.
I purchased the software from Wildcat and had 4 phone lines coming in to the house.
Running a free BBS to the local market was a bit expensive though. Modems were very
expensive back then + the cost of 4 phone lines. Also, If I wanted to get into Fido, it
would have been a 'near zone' call not a free one because the provider was in a different
county.
When I got into the web design web hosting business I purchased my own co-located
server from Dell and paid my IT guy $350 per month to maintain it. I had a good
customer base that more than covered the costs, but it wasn't until I went with a yearly
lease for $150 or so per year that I felt some relief in the pocketbook.
Mike
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v7.0
* Origin: The Hobby Line! BBS - hobbylinebbs.com (316:36/57)