The History of the Heart Of Tennessee Bulletin Board Service or HOT BBS as it was so often called. This BBS has had many names as it is grown to what it is today. Much experience has been enjoyed in the operations and development of this BBS over the years. It all began back in the fall of 1981, when we bought our first Radio Shack Tandy Color Computer (4K) with a tape drive. We played around with a part time BBS, any BBS with one Computer is Part Time! Then in February 1982 we purchased another TRS 80 COCO. COCO was the nick name for the Color Computer back then. We shared a TV between the 2 computers for the Monitor. With a 300 Baud modem and a Tape drive, 16K of memory we began to expand as we could afford to do so. The COLOR BBS was our first name. Right after we added a couple of Teac Floppies, modified to look like 4 single sided floppies to the COCO and Tandy DOS, we grew to a storage of just over 600K. That is Kilobytes not Megabytes. At this time we began to transfer messages (Manually) from our system to a Smyrna and we changed our name to TRI-COLOR BBS. Latter we started exchanging messages with another Color BBS in Hermitage Tennessee. Again we changed the name to TRI-County BBS. Now we were running net mail of some type. This carried on while we tied into Packet (Ham Radio Modems) and enjoyed the huge amount of shareware programs available for the COCO, about 90 or so... In May of 1983 we bought another Tandy but this one was Supposed to be IBM Compatible. Well close enough for me to start a IBM Board. Running CPM and PC DOS on separate partitions and a 20 Meg Hard Drive. Running Colossus Software we became The Heart Of Tennessee BBS or HOT. We took part of the name from our old Ham Radio club here The HOT RC or The Heart Of Tennessee Radio Club. In 1985 we had built our first PC Compatible from Mail Order. It was a 0 wait AT Jr. or a Fast (8 MHz) 8088 with 0 wait state ram. We then began running Collie software and had two 20 Meg (MFM) drives and an Adaptec RLL Controller for a 1.5 Compression to a total of 64 Megs. of Storage Wow were we BIG or what...? In 1985 we began running Opus software and Fido Net Mail on a IBM PC and Double DOS (Multitasking) software. This allowed us the option to do a little maintenance on a second node. Then in the fall of 1985 we added our second phone line. A two line BBS was great on one original IBM PC (4 MHz) with two 40 Meg Seagate MFM Drives a RLL controller for a total of 120 Megs. In 1987 we switched to PCBoard 3 node Software and a ArcNet Network. A Generic 2400 baud modem, a USRobotics 9600 baud modem and a Hayes 9600 baud modem, Not Compatible with each other. SOLD the IBM PC... Added three 8088 10 MHz machines and a 80 Meg Seagate BIG drive with the ole Adaptec controller for 160 Megs. In 1988 we bought two 40 Meg Seagate drive, switched over the Adaptec controller to give us 160 Megs and then bought a new 16 bit Adaptec controller to put into a new 80286 machine for a Server. Now we had a total of 320 Megs of storage space. Early in 1989 we added another 40 Meg Hard Drive to the Server's RLL controller to give us a total of 380 Megs. In late 1989 we added the 6 node PCBoard BBS Software. In early 1990 we lost the 80 Meg Hard Drive due to excessive errors from the RLL Controller. Worked a bit of overtime and sold a few PC systems so we spent some real money. We bought 3 AT Mother Boards at 16 MHz and 2 New 120 Meg Hard Drives. The system was growing fast now, by the end of 1990 we had added a 320 Meg Hard Drive and the system past the Half Gig mark. In 1991 we added ethernet cards, a 386 40 MHz Server, two CD Rom. drives and jumped to over a Gig and a half. By early 1992 we added a 650 Meg ESDI Hard drive to the Main Server and went to over 2 Gigs. By the end of 1992 we had bought another 650 Meg ESDI hard drive and added the forth phone line. In early 1993 we added 2 more 650 Meg CD Rom. drives. By the summer we added a 1.2 Gig 3.5" SCSI Hard drive and Node 5 for Net Mail traffic as we added Internet Mail and brought back FIDO Net. In September we added a 6 CD ROM Player/Changer for over 3 Gigs of Data storage.. In November we lost the 130 Meg HD on Node #5 (server 3) and added a 345 Meg IDE and Double spaced it to 545 Meg. Set it up to handle only Internet and Fido Net messages. In December right after Christmas we installed a Satellite receiver at downlink modem at 19,200 baud. This allows us to receive the latest programs, weather maps and TV listings as well as many Network packets. Two Days into 1994 and we loose a 650 ESDI hard drive. I hope these are not signs of times to come.. In January 1994 we replaced the 14,400 modems on Nodes 1 and 2 with Hayes Optima V.FC 28,800 V-Fast Modems and the Hayes Serial card to get speeds of 115,000 baud. In February 1994 we replaced the 2 of the 286 machines with 386 40 MHz CPUs. This should allow for a much faster operation in retrieving files and loading door programs. In April 1994 we added Node 6 and a new 386 40Mhz and a BOCA 14400 Modem. We also removed all of our adult files that were of questionable data and replaced them with over 1 Gig of BBS ready files and pictures. We also added a satellite video receiver to view BBS news and information on the same satellite as our data receiver in the KU band. In May 1994 we added 3 more SONY CD-ROM Drives. Thanks to upgrades from the Assistant Sysops. Also added a Computer for digital voice answering and Fax machine on our voice line (895-7737) and Fax (896-5397) In June 1994 we replace Nodes 3 & 4's 14400 BOCA Modems with ZOOM 28800 baud modems. In July 1994 we added another Hard Drive, 2.1 Gig 8ms 3.5 inch Seagate. In August 1994 we added a Single Speed Panasonic 6 CD Changer. with a special SCSI controller card. In September 1994 we tied our E-mail directly into the Internet. No more dial ups and downloads. Fast Internet E-Mail with links to CompuServe, AT&T, Prodigy and AOL. We used a 28,800 baud modem to dial up and link directly to the net from our PC server. We used several copies of Qmodem in a DOORway (Drop to DOS) and allowed our users to access the internet through telnet and ftp terminal. A few weeks latter and SLIP was available with Mosaic Web Browsers to Surf the Web. In January 1995 we added a Hayes 56K ISDN terminal Connector and a Northern Telcom NT1 terminator. Now we had some High speed access and added a Linux 386/40 machine as a router. This was were we made a major change in running a BBS. We moved all of our Files to a 486 40 mhz Server still running Lantastic Networking and used the Linux machine (named hot) to answer the calls on 16 external COM ports. The default login was to telnet to the BBS. This was much less over- head than the 6 nodes and 3 servers. The Linux machine allowed for PPP connections directly to the Internet. The Internet was alive and growing fast. In July 1995 we purchased a Pipeline router (128K) and 64 port Compucom terminal server. The terminal server replaced the 16 com ports on the Linux box and allowed ethernet connections through a hub directly to the router and out to the Internet. We also built a OS/2 machine to run the New PCBoard BBS software. On OS/2 with Vmodem we could emulate COM ports through telnet connections. The BBS was still alive, although many had given up BBSing for the internet. Our Internet Service had become our new on-line hobby. 24 Phone lines were enough to keep our small service going while we took the time to learn about HTML programming, Linux commands and a whole new world of telecommunication. With the addition of a Pipeline 400 router for 512K access and additional 30 phone lines we were able to offer unlimited internet access at $19.95, while others were charging by the minute. In September 1996 we dropped our prices to $15 for unlimited access, Tax had to be collected now, everyone wanted a piece of the Internet action. In January 1997 we were trying to hold a login ratio of 10:1. This would help with busy signals. Many people were adding a second phone line in their home just for the internet. Now that many people were thinking they could stay on-line all day, we changed our terms to Flat Rate, meaning no additional charges for time on-line. Unlimited access first meant there was no surcharge for using the system outside of evening and weekend hours. In October 1997 we added 30 more Phone lines and had some terrible modem experience with USR modems. After removing a great modem that would only connect to other USR modems, we replaced them with ZOOM modems. In November we added another Linux box and upgraded the old hot machine to 133 MHz K5. Both machines are identical. hot runs all the web service and mail handles all the mail services. The old HOT became a internetworking server and monitored all of our equipment alarms. In December 1997 we added a T1 router and moved the ISDN routers off to answer ISDN calls. Filled all com ports with phone lines and new 33.6K modems. In July 1998 we Gave up on OS/2 and PCBoard software, since they went out of business. We switched over to Wildcat v5.0 and WINS. We placed the software on a new 133mhz K5 AMD with Windows 98 and a 2 gig hard drive. We found little need for drive space now that the Internet has it all. In September 1998 we added another Linux Box for Shell Accounts and local logins. In October 1998 the TRA and Bell South phone company passed a new ruling that anyone with over five residential lines in their home must pay business rates for those over five. Now that the phone company is in the internet business, competition must pay! In November 1998 we upgraded the BBS to a 300 MHz K6 machine with a 10 gig hard drive and installed Windows NT Small Business Server. In December 1998 we began dropping some of our phone lines in preparation for the phone company's rate hike. In January 1999 we dropped all of our phone lines, except for five and leased wholesale digital ports. This was great for most of our users because we now offered ISDN and 56K as well we now had thousands of new phone numbers for our customers to dial into.
In April 1999 we added a 20 gig hard drive just for backups. Hard Drives are getting cheeper than tape and CD ROM drives.
In May 1999 we purchased a 400 Mhz K6-2 Processor and 2 20 Gig Hard Drives for our New Web Server to run under Linux 6.0.
Since the invention of the Internet we have grown so fast it has been hard to keep any history file updated. The HOT BBS shutdown all access on 12/31/2018.
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