TL/DR: Okay, so, for my sins I decided to write my own BBS from scratch, but it is a little different -- It is inspired by old Apple ProDOS operating system (I know I am probably getting blank looks right now)
LONG STORY: During the 80's I loved the Apple II series of computers, and this culminated in me getting an Apple IIgs in 1989. It blew my mind! Anyway, got into programming on it and using BBSes to download software and so forth. Come 1992 and I decided I would write my own BBS. I wrote a terminal in ORCA/C and a shell that worked like ProDOS, you would navigate directories and run "programs" to do things like go into messages and play games etc. I wrote a full MUD engine which had its own programming language built in based on GS-BASIC. I even made it so it would work with FidoNet!
I had a few hundred people who would visit it regularly and enjoyed giving suggestions on what I should build next etc. But, by 1995 the internet had taken over and I mothballed the whole project and had put my IIgs in the loft and had moved onto Mac.
Anyway, it's Jan/Feb 2026 and I was working on another project: An ARG Game, based on a 1970's super computer -- I wrote an operating system and programming language for solving puzzles etc. But I digress. It sparked a long forgotten memory.
So I grabbed my IIgs, powered it on for the first time in 30 years, amazingly it worked. I had the forethought to remove the battery from the real time clock etc before I packed it away so no leaking. I backed up the HDD because I wasn't sure if it would last and then started going through the files etc and I found the old source for my dear BBS - IIgs.BBS
So here I am in April and I have been re-writing and re-imagining my BBS. I am writing it in TypeScript and hosting it in the cloud. It is very much in Alpha, but I am having a fantastic time.
I have written an SSH server for it (to make it nice and secure). I am writing a whole SHELL for it and a subsystem that acts like an operating system that you can compile programs against. I am writing a whole version of BASIC to go with it.
The TELNET screen to tell people to use SSH
I have named the OS - FauxDOS (Instead of ProDOS) and the version of BASIC is FS.BASIC (FauxSoft BASIC). Everything is based and inspired by the olfactory technical documents of ProDOS 16 (that ran on the IIgs) and GS-BASIC.
Catalog - How to see what is on the File System
I will be opening it up for people to play with soon, if you're interested. The ABOUT.BBS Program submitted by /u/Wihtlore [link] [comments]