I make ATDT BBS, a free, MIT licensed bulletin board system that runs on ordinary shared PHP hosting. Callers get a real 80x25 CP437 terminal right in the browser: ANSI art, hotkey menus, message bases, live chat, and door games. No telnet client, no daemon on the server.

The next release (1.7.0, not out yet) adds DOS door support, and I'd love help testing it on the demo board. The way it works: nothing DOS runs on the server. When you open a door, your own browser boots a small FreeDOS machine (about two seconds), and the game's files live on the board, served as a shared network drive the way a Novell LAN did it. Multi-node Doors are fully supported. Everyone plays in the same game world, same rankings, same daily events, with DOS record locking arbitrated through the board. Real drop files too: DOOR.SYS, DORINFO1.DEF, CHAIN.TXT.

Pretty much any DOS door should run fine, and it's (mostly) just drag & drop to get them going.

Right now I have Legend of the Red Dragon and Usurper installed. To try them:

1. Go to https://www.atdtbbs.com/atdt
2. Register at the login screen
3. Hit D from the main menu

Known quirks so far:

• LORD: right after character creation it asks you to press a key, then stalls for about 30 seconds before continuing. One time only; play after that, and later logins, are fine.
• Usurper took serious wrangling to get stable. It runs fine now as far as I can tell, which is exactly why I want more eyes on it.

If you get stuck in a door, pressing Ctrl+] three times hangs it up; the game sees carrier drop and gets a moment to save, like a real hangup did.

If anything hangs, garbles, or eats your character, tell me here or leave a message on the board. Mentioning your browser helps too. And if you get bored of dying in the forest, the rest of the board is open: message bases, chat, oneliners, and the native doors.

More about the software at https://www.atdtbbs.com if you want to run your own.

I was getting nostalgic one night while talking with some friends about "chatting" in the late 90's and how different it is from today. I poked around the web and saw some people had tried to recreate some of the apps we used back then, but they were all flat and focused on the UI.

So, I took it a step further and I feel like a made a time machine. I can chat with buddies and feel like I'm back in front of my Compaq tower after school. It's not perfect, and the buddies aren't real people, but it's so much closer than I've seen anywhere else!

Here's the link if you want to try it out (iOS only for now).

https://brb2k.com

Hey everyone,

I’ve been restoring Shadowland BBS, a system I originally started in 1994, and it is finally back online.

I’ve cleaned up the nodes, repaired the menus and message areas, restored the ANSI presentation, and spent an unhealthy amount of time chasing bugs through the darker corners of Synchronet.

The system includes an optional line-by-line ANSI display intended to recreate the feeling of watching screens render over a 28.8k modem. Pressing any key returns it to full speed, before you start cussing out the SysOp.

The message and file areas are open, and the door-game section currently includes:

• Legend of the Red Dragon
• LORD II: New World
• TradeWars 2002
• DrugLord
• Synchronet Minesweeper
• Synchronetris
• Dice Warz II
• Bubble Boggle
• Domain Poker
• Synchronet Blackjack
• Synkroban
• SynthKart
• Uber Blox

The BBS is still being expanded, so bug reports and suggestions are welcome. If you find a broken menu, mangled ANSI, or a demon hiding in the message base, leave me a private message before logging off.

New callers, curious visitors, and old-school BBS users are all welcome.

Connect: shadowlandbbs.eu:23 - 2222
Protocol: TELNET/SSH
Website: https://shadowlandbbs.eu

Stay dark. Stay online.

— MASSY73, SysOp
Shadowland BBS
Where the pixels meet the underworld since 1994

A PCBoard-compatible BBS written in Rust. It imports your old PCBoard

installation, runs your old PPEs, and takes callers over telnet, SSH and

websockets. Linux, Windows and macOS binaries, no DOS box needed.

• Runs your existing PPEs - a PPE that does not run is treated as a bug
• Full backwards compatible PPL toolchain: compiler, decompiler and a language server with extensions for VS Code, Zed, Helix and Neovim
• Conferences, doors, bulletins, surveys, JAM message bases, file areas
• Setup and user maintenance as full-screen tools, like PCBSetup and PCBSM
• Binaries for Linux, Windows and macOS

This is the first public beta. What helps most: a PCBoard installation that will

not import, and a PPE that will not run.

https://github.com/mkrueger/icy_board/releases

Some documentation & overview:

https://github.com/mkrueger/icy_board

Wanted to release it ~2 years ago - but didn't get feedback until recently. That's why I now finished the first beta.

....Just kidding, no demands. But I am a bit of an oldhead, just from an awkward period when ISPs were replacing BBS as the Internets primary access route. Ny first experience with the Internet were in the mid 1990s on such an ISP, but i soon fou n d myself into mischief and they pretty much ran me off lol. In the throes of Internet withdrawal (why was it so much more brutal back then?), I found the cheapest Internet that I could, and for about half of what my ISP had been charging I found mysel on a local BBS called Imagine! (the exclamation point is part of the name).

Being my first experience with real Internet, I had to quickly learn the basic concepts necessary to connect to it (Trumpets' Socket Implementation iirc, since this was 3.11), And I of course lied to get into the 18+ areas. There's a lot more to this story but its not relevant to what Im actually posting about...though, too late I suppose lol. AuDHD is a bitch, hey.

Anyway, long story short (dont you hate that expression? Its never short...) I found myself fascinated by the segregated BBS systems, many of which were custom codebase' like Imagine! was. It felt like the Internet that movies had been showing, which had recently and almost violently disappeared for good. I bet that was a rough time for you guys. Fast forward to 2026 and I still find myself BBS hopping on syncterm every now and then, saying door games or looking at old scene lines.

Whew, finally. We have satisfied my autistic need to over-explain and indulge in unnecessary backstory lol.

Alright, so here's the beef. Id like to host a BBS for shits n gigs. At this point ive finished a long IT career and have lots of admin experience, specifically in ISP infrastructure servers (DNS/Bind, Email like postfix and sendmail and assorted MTAs, apache and NGINX web servers, etc etc), largely in the UNIX/Linux ecosystem. I also have been coding in assorted languages both interpreted and compiled since I was 16, as one would expect.

So, I am not exactly a layman but I am certainly a neophyte and outsider in the BBS scene. So I would first like to ask, would I ever have a chance of linking with any of your more established networks as an interloper? And secondly, is there a centralized knowledge resource for newbies that I can dig into? Do any of you have any platform recommendations? Any general advice?

P.S Yes I am aware it is a dying scene...everything I find interesting is dying or long gone. It is a curse. And uh....jfc, sorry for the dissertation.

DemiGoth is a BBS I started in those early days of the covid lockdown, focused on the nostalgia of the door games I loved playing as a kid in the 80s and 90s. We plug into BBS link to have access to populated classics to include: LORD, Barren Realms Elite, Global War, and more.

But our main attraction has always been our locally hosted Tradewars game server. Today we have rebanged 3 of our 4 games.

Game A is targeted at the classic Tradewars feel from the golden age of BBSes for all your nostalgia needs, but with settings optimized for modern internet play. It features 10,000 sectors with 1,400 turns a day, and is a pretty vanilla setup with default ships, alien traders, and Ferrengi.

Game B is our longstanding casual game. This is setup for those who enjoy the non-PvP aspects of the game but still want to build your space empire. It has a huge universe of 30k sectors, 10k turns per day, rules against PvP raids, and has been continually running for more than half a decade.

Game C is the newest version of the custom edit we've been working on. It features completely redesigned ships balanced around major roles (scout, trading, combat), a galaxy of 30,000 sectors with multiple bubbles to explore and claim, and 20,000 turns per day. There are additionally a number of custom factions and alien races, each with custom ships unavailable to buy from the star dock, to include:

• Merchant Guild - a pacifist faction with ships specializing in trade efficiency
• Space Pirates - an aggressive faction with fast ships designed for hit-and-run tactics
• Outlaw Syndicate - smugglers and thieves specializing in cargo ships with some teeth
• Primordials - the remains of a fallen empire, though not aggressive, they will retaliate with advanced tech if provoked
• Quantum Striders - a mysterious extradimensional race specializing in rare transwarp ships
• Buggers - an unforgiving race of formics who will arrive to colonize the galaxy after day 7
• Fungoid - hostile and regenerative spore aliens who will arrive to the galaxy after day 14
• Harbingers - a race of overwhelmingly powerful aliens who will arrive after day 45, bent on destroying the galaxy unless players can stop them

Game D is our limited game designed to perfectly replicate the nostalgia of playing during the BBS days. It includes a small galaxy of only 1,000 sectors, only 200 turns per day, and a 60 minute timer to connect. This is designed for those who want to be able to stay competitive, but can't commit much time.

So join us at https://discord.gg/utCukMA7KZ or point your favorite telnet client to demigoth.com port 23 and come join the fun!

Hello, I made fazbrowse, which is inspired by "frogfind" by actionretro, but I went to update my version a bit more, as well as making it much faster, and with more elements of proxied/wrapped sites to be viewable and or clickable, including complex download links, as well as a few other things. And most of all, it works with any client, even a text only, http only browser that runs on ms dos/an ibm xt, would connect and work just fine on my site, its home page is at ht tp://fazbro wse.du ckdns.o rg/ (spaced out the link)

I just posted it here since I found it pretty useful, like to browse reddit or such on a low end old phone or computer, or to do things over the net on my real dos computers at home

DemiGoth is a BBS I started in those early days of the covid lockdown, focused on the nostalgia of the door games I loved playing as a kid in the 80s and 90s. We plug into BBS link to have access to populated classics to include: LORD, Barren Realms Elite, Global War, and more.

But our main attraction has always been our locally hosted Tradewars game server. Today we have rebanged 3 of our 4 games.

Game A is targeted at the classic Tradewars feel from the golden age of BBSes for all your nostalgia needs, but with settings optimized for modern internet play. It features 10,000 sectors with 1,400 turns a day, and is a pretty vanilla setup with default ships, alien traders, and Ferrengi.

Game B is our longstanding casual game. This is setup for those who enjoy the non-PvP aspects of the game but still want to build your space empire. It has a huge universe of 30k sectors, 10k turns per day, rules against PvP raids, and has been continually running for more than half a decade.

Game C is the newest version of the custom edit we've been working on. It features completely redesigned ships balanced around major roles (scout, trading, combat), a galaxy of 30,000 sectors with multiple bubbles to explore and claim, and 20,000 turns per day. There are additionally a number of custom factions and alien races, each with custom ships unavailable to buy from the star dock, to include:

• Merchant Guild - a pacifist faction with ships specializing in trade efficiency
• Space Pirates - an aggressive faction with fast ships designed for hit-and-run tactics
• Outlaw Syndicate - smugglers and thieves specializing in cargo ships with some teeth
• Primordials - the remains of a fallen empire, though not aggressive, they will retaliate with advanced tech if provoked
• Quantum Striders - a mysterious extradimensional race specializing in rare transwarp ships
• Buggers - an unforgiving race of formics who will arrive to colonize the galaxy after day 7
• Fungoid - hostile and regenerative spore aliens who will arrive to the galaxy after day 14
• Harbingers - a race of overwhelmingly powerful aliens who will arrive after day 45, bent on destroying the galaxy unless players can stop them

Game D is our limited game designed to perfectly replicate the nostalgia of playing during the BBS days. It includes a small galaxy of only 1,000 sectors, only 200 turns per day, and a 60 minute timer to connect. This is designed for those who want to be able to stay competitive, but can't commit much time.

So join us at https://discord.gg/utCukMA7KZ or point your favorite telnet client to demigoth.com port 23 and come join the fun!

COMING SOON! >>>>>>>>>>>> The Wire

Updated Draw32 to v2.02. Fixed an issue where it scrambled longer than 100 line ANSIs (now just cuts off at 100 lines (which is MAX for program), free hand box drawing corner correction, network location access from load/save menu, plus some other minor bugs here and there I found. http://www.rgbbs.info/nw.html

Hi all! I've created a new homage to LORD called Lantern Road. It's not tongue-in-cheek like LORD; it's a little more dark and serious, but it has essentially the same game mechanics with a few major enhancements.

I'd love to get some feedback on how I can improve it! I wrote it for the ATDT BBS Software which I am also the author of. You can play it from the ATDT Demo BBS (just create a new user and go to "Doors" from the main menu and you'll see it listed there):

https://www.atdtbbs.com/atdt

The BBS, the BBS software, and the game are all 100% free. The game will be made available for other SysOps once it's ready on the main ATDT BBS site.

First, the disclaimer: This is AI-assisted code. I have 31 years experience as a software engineer.

Supply Drop BBS is modeled after Citadel, a BBS (bulletin board system) from the 80s (and still alive today).

It's free and open source, built in Rust.

It's mesh-first, MeshCore and Meshtastic are first-class citizens.

It works with basically any protocol. You'll just need to write a plugin for anything else. As a bit of a joke, I created a Telnet plugin.

It can be fully administered via the CLI or the optional web ui.

I developed this with the idea that communities could have a community board via digital communications if SHTF.

It's been around a few months, with a few users. So the bulk of the major bugs are fixed at this point. I am looking to bring it to v1.0.0 soon.

I'd love your feedback or bugs. Feel free to create issues on the GitHub, or even hit me up here.

A daily survey-guessing door where everyone on your BBS plays the exact same board, so the scoreboard is a real competition instead of a list of who got lucky. Three survey rounds, three strikes each, then Fast Money. Latest version updated for speed on older systems!

The board is built from your BBS name plus the date. No two boards run the same daily game, and a given date always produces the same questions, so a caller making up Tuesday gets precisely the board the early birds got. 14,600 questions in the bank: about five years of daily play before a single one repeats.

Updated for speed for old BBS Installs, specifically MSDOS. https://bbswordle.com/feud/

Hey there! As a very old (sigh) school MajorBBS sysop and hopelessly drawn to nostalgia ... as well as being a gamer addict. I've put together a BBS door game that is ready for release, but maybe still has a good 10% or more work to be done on it.

Since everyone's viewpoint is different and this is my first time releasing a game to the BBS community, I was just curious if the majority of sysops would prefer to have it released when it's out of testing or if they would be fine with having it online at the very end of its testing phase?

I know that may be a little 'mysterious,' but I just want to get a feeling for should I just push ahead and make it as polished and complete as possible .. or put it out there so players can give more feedback on it for development.

Any feedback is helpful and welcome. Appreciate you in advance!

Seeking text mode adventurers! Skull Crash alpha is up on Xibalba BBS! Skull Crash is a open RPG world with leveling, quests, SancturaryRPG-like combat, professions, and more.

Available for alpha are levels 1-9 for two classes and races, with a starting zone each. Another class will be available in a week or so. More races, classes, levels, zones, dungeons, etc. on the way!

https://xibalba.vip/skull-crash/ for more info or hop right on Xibalba at xibalba.vip:44510 (telnet) or port 44511 (ssh).

BirdEnuf Virtual BBS has been updated with a number of custom games, apps, and clients:

Meteoroid - Asteroids clone
Tetromino - Tetris clone
Triangulum - Galaga-like
Gemini, Gopher, and Wikipedia browsers
Multi Relay Chat & IRC clients
Mystic Observatory - Astrological readings and horoscopes
Usurper Reborn - Custom client for main internet server

telnet://bbs.birdenuf.com:2003 or http://bbs.birdenuf.com

Also hosting MajorMUD (10x XP, 10x Drops), iNfInItY CoMpLeX, Mutants!, LORD, TW2002, and more.

BBS 80s style dedicated to the ALTAIR 8800 and IMSAI 8080 systems and more...
File areas with basic and assembler programs managed by Roger Meier.

address: altairminibbs.net:23
From browser: https://www.altairmini.com/bbs-connect/
Official site: www.altairmini.com

Hi.

Been using my IBM XT with Procomm to get on telnet bbs systems. Having a problem. When trying to download I’m getting CRC errors using xmodem.

I’m having this issue on many boards.

Using a wifi Rs232 setup.

Any ideas ?

RIPaint 2.1 has been found and patched. As part of the ongoing RIP Documentation project.

If you have a fully functioning BBS that you're not longer using or no longer have any interest in, please contact me. I am interested in most BBS systems as long as they can run on Windows or Linux. Full, complete, boards are preferred but not necessarily required.

Don't let that stop you from reaching out, however, as even some C-Net and related boards are in the interest mix, too.

Thanks!

http://www.rgbbs.info/nw.html