What is tHe sHacK bBS?

A homebrew Bulletin Board System that ran from 1998 to 2006 — in its later years under the velvet.ath.cx hostname: message bases, file areas (g-files), doors and multi-user chat. It was reconstructed from the 2006-10-26 filesystem dump and now runs again in the browser.

Is the BBS really running, or is it a mockup?

Really running: the message bases, file areas, chat and presence operate live in the browser against the recovered system data. ANSI terminal sessions from the era are preserved as captures on the sister archive, sdelic.org.

How do I get an account?

Connect to the BBS terminal and apply at login the way dial-up users did, and the sysop provisions new accounts. The old etiquette still applies.

A door is an external program the BBS hands the caller's connection to — usually a game. The name comes from the connection literally going 'out the door' of the BBS software into another program: trade wars, dungeons, adventures. Doors were the arcade of the BBS era, and because boards were small and local, door games were shared worlds where the same couple dozen players met daily.

Which doors ran on tHe sHacK bBS?

The final board's menu carries one door: StarFlight (X) — an explore-the-universe game with trading, banking, planets and player-versus-player battle, which on this board wrapped a rebuilt Hunt the Wumpus. Older menu generations also show a Dynasty door that later vanished. StarFlight still runs on the live board today.

Doors

A door was a program the BBS handed you to — the connection literally walked out the door of the board software into a game. Doors were the arcade, the drama, and often the reason you called back tomorrow.

STaR FLiGhT

The one door on the final menu — key X — and the board's small shared universe. Its recovered screens sketch the whole game: analyze planets and find warp paths, trade goods, bank at the Galactic Bank, dock at the shipyard, beam down to the Pub, the Swamps or the Hills — and battle other players, because on a board this size every rival was someone you also traded messages with. A rebuilt StarFlight runs on the live board today.


.~-~=~-~v~-~=~-~v~-~=~-~v~-~=~-~v~-~=~.
|.  .   .      .     +   .     .   +  |
+    .    .   STaR FLiGhT   .   .     +
| .     .        v 1.o    .           |
|  .  + (EXpLoRe tHe UNiVeRSe!)  .    |
|     .           .       .        .  |
`~=~-~v~-~=~-~v~-~=~-~v~-~=~-~v~-~=~-~'

gamelogo — STaR FLiGhT — the door game’s title screen.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
 XXXX SHiP CoNtRoL'S ANd CoMPuTeR XXXX 
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
.====<Computer>====.===<Navagation>===.
| A]nalyzae Planet | M]ap the Planets |
| U]plink Console  | F]ind Warp Path  |
| E]xamine Logs    | W]arp!           |
.===<More Stuff>===:=<General Stuff>==.
| B]attle a Player | L]ist of Players |
| V]iew Status     | Q]uit to bbs     |
.=<Planet Actions>=:=<Planet Actions>=.
| 1] Trade Goods   | 2] Galactic Bank |
| 3] Dock Shipyard | 4] BeamTo Pub    |
| 5] BeamTo Swamps | 6] BeamTo Hills  |
`==================:=================='

SHIPMENU — StarFlight’s ship console: analyze planets, warp, battle other players.

Hunt the Wumpus

Inside the StarFlight door, the board also kept a version of the classic cave crawl — Hunt the Wumpus, the 1973 text game that half of interactive fiction descends from. It is playable on the rebuilt board, wumpus and all.

The door that vanished

The menu generations preserved in the dump remember a second door — Dynasty, on key T in the middle years. Whatever it was, it was gone by the final menu: boards shed features the way gardens shed leaves. The screens are its tombstone.

Why doors mattered

A door game on a small board was a persistent world with a cast you knew by handle: turns were limited per day, rankings were public, and the person who robbed your ship at the Galactic Bank was the same person quoting Warren G in the message bases. That loop — play, seethe, retaliate, post — was half of what kept a board alive.