exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

rubber_jonnie wrote: 04 Apr 2021 10:15 Well, back in the day (80's & 90's), I couldn't afford a phone line, so never got on line to experience the fun of BBSes.
I decided this weekend would be a good chance to see what I missed out on back then, so have connected to and joined both ST Guild and

So Jon, do you actually have to connect with a modem or is it a telnet/ssh connection these days. What do they have on bbs’s these days?

PaulJ wrote: 05 Apr 2021 14:59

rubber_jonnie wrote: 04 Apr 2021 10:15 Well, back in the day (80's & 90's), I couldn't afford a phone line, so never got on line to experience the fun of BBSes.
I decided this weekend would be a good chance to see what I missed out on back then, so have connected to and joined both ST Guild and

So Jon, do you actually have to connect with a modem or is it a telnet/ssh connection these days. What do they have on bbs’s thes days?

There are games, competitions in the case of Darkforce, and even ways to contact other users, so what you'd class as email. It's all what you'd perhaps call 'Lo-Fi', but a bit of fun.

Once I am able to get my ST stuff set up again, I may well try connecting using a WiFi modem setup using a real machine, but for now I'm connecting using my Mac and a telnet client.

@rubber_jonnie , thought I would check it out but you can't get there from here. where is dark force dark force located?

@PaulJ Darkforce is at telnet://darkforce-bbs.dyndns.org:520

Sorry I should have said it's on telnet but a different port. ST Guild is standard telnet.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 05 Apr 2021 19:14 @PaulJ Darkforce is at telnet://darkforce-bbs.dyndns.org:520

Sorry I should have said it's on telnet but a different port. ST Guild is standard telnet.

Hmm, I used the darkforce-bbs.dyndns.org from his webpage and there was no port specification on his telnet definition.

@PaulJ I had to do a little digging to find the port, but can connect fine now.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 05 Apr 2021 20:36 @PaulJ I had to do a little digging to find the port, but can connect fine now.

Still hangs here Jon. Say after a minute "Unable to connect to remote host".

PaulJ wrote: 05 Apr 2021 21:07

rubber_jonnie wrote: 05 Apr 2021 20:36 @PaulJ I had to do a little digging to find the port, but can connect fine now.

Still hangs here Jon. Say after a minute "Unable to connect to remote host".

I was just logged on so I know it's working. You are using telnet and not ssh?

Have you tried: Stguild-bbs.ddns.net

That has no fancy ports and I was also just connected there, just telnet again.

Yes, was using telnet, tried a ping with no response.. maybe a mega doesn’t even do ping? Also traceroute doesn’t get there either so I’ll chalk the experience up to the opportunity to build telnet on the new machine. It was more a novelty to check it out anyway so not a great loss. I use telnet quite a bit and hadn’t bothered to install it yet.

PaulJ wrote: 06 Apr 2021 14:40 Yes, was using telnet, tried a ping with no response.. maybe a mega doesn’t even do ping? Also traceroute doesn’t get there either so I’ll chalk the experience up to the opportunity to build telnet on the new machine. It was more a novelty to check it out anyway so not a great lost. I use telnet quite a bit and hadn’t bothered to install it yet.

Weird, works fine on my Mac, what machine did you try on?