I agree with 3/5King, Back in the day when I was running a 48 line BBS the one thing that kept most of the people coming back was what was there for them to dl, games to play or just to interact with others.. When I first started it was rocky people would come and go. with system upgrade and modem upgrades and going from 4 to 8 to 12 lines Adding access numbers for other counties. Still felt like people would come and go to often. Then one of our sister BBS offered to host a GTG and that brought people from 3 counties. It was then that made the BBS boom. i was there as a user not the sysop to gather intel on what was lacking. The thing with times back then is you were really unknown and shortly after that the 12 lines was 48 lines and access #'s from 3 counties to 5. and a 800 access line for the working callers that traveled. There was only a few of us that had multi platform modems from USR, AKA US Robotics. Always staying ahead of the speeds with our upgrades. last thing i wanted was my users that was then over 300 paid and 430 total to leave because of access issues, dropped calls, busy signals most people were still running 8088's and 14.4 modems. Single disc arrays. I had 4 486's and 2 Pent75's running 6 jpg roms and 2 zip roms. i offered 2 hours of internet access with full time access to the bbs. Then AOL and Compuserv proved to have more money and I was doing well up until the time they offered full internet access @ 1995 i couldn't compete with that. But even before the internet we offered semi internet access... Ftp, Telnet, IRC, gopher, inter mail and extra mail. Went from charging 40 a month for service to giving aways 4 months to the last 40ish users that stuck around. I didn't have to keep it going they wouldn't have cared but seeing I had already paid for my phones lines and dual ISDN lines to the internet i might as well keep it on for them. changed the 48 lines to 24, removed the 800 lines, removed the county lines when i noticed no more calls where going into them banks of modems. Had one last GTG and this tie it was with my BBS and 5 others and only had 40 people turn out...
Now there is the internet. It is a great tool. Speeds are faster and uptimes are always on. Learn about anything you want. See Map photos of where ever you want almost. Just don't have the ONE on ONE like before. Unless you can afford to travel to a herf or lucky to have one in your area. HERF AKA GTG...
Those were the days. if i had to tell, I kind of miss the old BBS days. The Good, Better and Best days...
Burn out I think it is part of the Slope. Sadly for some like me I try and help as much as I can, (however I can) and then climb back under my rock and read and enjoy the others happiness and joys. I haven't got to that point yet. But seems as the Christmas time draws near that will most likely be where I am. Hidden in the shadows.
James
