For anywhere out there running BBS's on older rigs, what is it?

Im on a Mac Plus..
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: Halls of Valhalla -:- hovalbbs.com:2333 (618:300/36)

Hello Lb,

29 Nov 23 21:38, you wrote to All:

For anywhere out there running BBS's on older rigs, what is it?

Im on a Mac Plus..

nice!

my bbs runs on a P166MMX overclocked to 188Mhz, with 64Mb of RAM :)

Regards,
--
dp

telnet://bbs.roonsbbs.hu:1212 <<=-

... Uptime: 9d 23h 12m 44s
--- GoldED/2 1.1.4.7+EMX
* Origin: Roon's BBS - Budapest, HUNGARY (618:520/10)

my bbs runs on a P166MMX overclocked to 188Mhz, with 64Mb of RAM :)

That's what My BBS ran on in 1998 (or 97) I built it myself but didn't
read the manual close enough and overclocked it to 188Mhz. Took me a long
time to realize it wasn't just some weird graphical issue and it really
was overclocked.

I think from memory I had the jumpers back to front or something.

Andrew


--- Talisman v0.49-dev (FreeBSD/amd64)
* Origin: Smuggler's Cove - scove.talismanbbs.com:2323 (618:510/11)

To: apam
Re: What older computers you got?
By: apam to Daniel Path on Thu Nov 30 2023 08:09 pm

From Newsgroup: micronet.comp

my bbs runs on a P166MMX overclocked to 188Mhz, with 64Mb of RAM :)

That's what My BBS ran on in 1998 (or 97) I built it myself but didn't
read the manual close enough and overclocked it to 188Mhz. Took me a long time to realize it wasn't just some weird graphical issue and it really
was overclocked.

I think from memory I had the jumpers back to front or something.

you guys would cry if i would talk about all the hardware i dumped or gave away to people. all i have now are some i5 optiplexes in my basement that probably don't work from humidity and then a whole bunch of keyboards, harddrives and memory that i ripped off from work. it doesnt take up space, just one sterilite tub.

I have one main computer and then downstairs one media server computer for our large screen tv. i tossed out tons of stuff. it's so much better without a bunch of computers on your floor. just say no to hoarding! fill the landfills!

my 3 bbses (took down the renegade one last year) run on a hosted server. doesn't drag me down at home and it's easy to backup.
--- Synchronet 3.19b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* bbses.info - http://bbses.info - telnet://bbses.info
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)

for our large screen tv. i tossed out tons of stuff. it's so much
better without a bunch of computers on your floor. just say no to
hoarding! fill the landfills!

A-Men! Could not agree more. You've inspired me to finish getting rid
of hardware. Hell I have shit in storage from my computer store (I
closed it in 2006).

my 3 bbses (took down the renegade one last year) run on a hosted
doesn't drag me down at home and it's easy to backup.

Same. I run mine on a VM at Mr. []'s house. I think he told me it's
apple hardware now. LOL


|09S|11hawn


--- Talisman v0.49-dev (Windows/x86)
* Origin: Tiny's BBS = tinysbbs.com:4323/ssh:4322 (618:500/33)

On 01 Dec 2023, Shawn Highfield said the following...

for our large screen tv. i tossed out tons of stuff. it's so much better without a bunch of computers on your floor. just say no to hoarding! fill the landfills!

A-Men! Could not agree more. You've inspired me to finish getting rid
of hardware. Hell I have shit in storage from my computer store (I
closed it in 2006).

my 3 bbses (took down the renegade one last year) run on a hosted doesn't drag me down at home and it's easy to backup.

I run mine on VM's - have for years. I have no interest in keeping hardware running. Especially the low cost of VMs that will run a BBS now!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The ByteXchange BBS | bbs.thebytexchange.com (618:200/33)

To: Chad Adams
Re: Re: What older computers you got?
By: Chad Adams to Shawn Highfield on Fri Dec 01 2023 11:06 pm

A-Men! Could not agree more. You've inspired me to finish getting rid of hardware. Hell I have shit in storage from my computer store (I closed it in 2006).

my 3 bbses (took down the renegade one last year) run on a hosted doesn't drag me down at home and it's easy to backup.

I run mine on VM's - have for years. I have no interest in keeping hardware running. Especially the low cost of VMs that will run a BBS now!

well i'm not using the real cheapo ones. i've tried that in the past
and i had lots of problems. i'm using a cheap kimsufi ovh server and split the use between several things. they have jacked up the prices and the ip prices as well. I'm no longer hosting vms for other people in the bbs community.
--- Synchronet 3.19b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* bbses.info - http://bbses.info - telnet://bbses.info
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)

Hello Chad Adams!

** On Friday 01.12.23 - 23:06, Chad Adams wrote to Shawn Highfield:

I run mine on VM's - have for years. I have no interest in
keeping hardware running. Especially the low cost of VMs
that will run a BBS now!

Is it possible to restore a diskimage backup from a Win7 system
into a VM on a Win10 or Win11 pc?

Ideally, I'd love restore my existing Win7 environment into the
SAME Win7 box, but there are elements that ought be upgraded or
replaced (chassis fan, possibly cpu fan, more ram) ..and I am
wondering if it might be easier to just get a modern Win10/11
pc and restore to that in a Win7 VM.

Possible?
--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.57
* Origin: (} Pointy McPointface (618:250/1.9)

On 02 Dec 23 09:13:00, August Abolins said the following to Chad Adams:

Is it possible to restore a diskimage backup from a Win7 system
into a VM on a Win10 or Win11 pc?

Thought this was already discussed not long ago... I mentioned a very simple shareware program to do exactly this.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)

On 01 Dec 23 23:06:50, Chad Adams said the following to Shawn Highfield:

I run mine on VM's - have for years. I have no interest in keeping hardware running. Especially the low cost of VMs that will run a BBS now!

A BBS VM shouldn't even be a blip on anyone's hydrobill...

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)

On 02 Dec 2023, Nick Andre said the following...

On 01 Dec 23 23:06:50, Chad Adams said the following to Shawn Highfield:

I run mine on VM's - have for years. I have no interest in keeping har running. Especially the low cost of VMs that will run a BBS now!

A BBS VM shouldn't even be a blip on anyone's hydrobill...

It costs me pennies. And I have multiple VMs with Static IPs will all ports open, even mail.

... Error, no Keyboard - Press F1 to Continue.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The ByteXchange BBS | bbs.thebytexchange.com (618:200/33)

On 02 Dec 23 22:14:36, Chad Adams said the following to Nick Andre:

A BBS VM shouldn't even be a blip on anyone's hydrobill...

It costs me pennies. And I have multiple VMs with Static IPs will all ports open, even mail.

Same here, running a full mail system and telnet port 23 on Vmware EXSI
without any problems. Went from some HP rack hardware to a single I7 system completely silent and more energy efficient. Am guessing the fish and lizard tanks here use more power than that system.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)

To: August Abolins
Re: What older computers you got?
By: August Abolins to Chad Adams on Sat Dec 02 2023 09:13 am

Is it possible to restore a diskimage backup from a Win7 system
into a VM on a Win10 or Win11 pc?

Ideally, I'd love restore my existing Win7 environment into the
SAME Win7 box, but there are elements that ought be upgraded or
replaced (chassis fan, possibly cpu fan, more ram) ..and I am
wondering if it might be easier to just get a modern Win10/11
pc and restore to that in a Win7 VM.

you would be running a VM of windows 7 so yeah you can do that.
depends on the image type and if it supports it. it could be converted, if needed.

you should be running windows 10, though. you can run windows 10 on lower end computers.
--- Synchronet 3.19b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* bbses.info - http://bbses.info - telnet://bbses.info
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)

To: Chad Adams
Re: Re: What older computers you got?
By: Chad Adams to Nick Andre on Sat Dec 02 2023 10:14 pm

From Newsgroup: micronet.comp

On 02 Dec 2023, Nick Andre said the following...

On 01 Dec 23 23:06:50, Chad Adams said the following to Shawn Highfield:

I run mine on VM's - have for years. I have no interest in keeping har running. Especially the low cost of VMs that will run a BBS now!

A BBS VM shouldn't even be a blip on anyone's hydrobill...

It costs me pennies. And I have multiple VMs with Static IPs will all ports open, even mail.

It costs me about 67 bucks a month to rent my server but that's pretty cheap compared to other providers. I tried going the cheap route and I had some problems and a few adventures.

One guy actually yanked my access when I was uploading my web files. He ended up being crooked and I got him kicked off paypal and webhostingtalk. He was even editing my support tickets trying to fake it but i sent MY SCREENSHOTS to paypal which got him nuked. Then I had other providers where they were overselling and I was losing resources and connectivity. Can't have that when you run an irc network.

ovh made some rule where if you are american you can't use some of their services and instead you have to use a specific site. I'm not sure if they reverted that but it sucks. I think they were feeling the pinch from the post covid times. That's when they jacked up prices and wanted money per ip.
--- Synchronet 3.19b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* bbses.info - http://bbses.info - telnet://bbses.info
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)

To: Nick Andre
Re: Re: What older computers you got?
By: Nick Andre to Chad Adams on Sun Dec 03 2023 12:14 am

From Newsgroup: micronet.comp

On 02 Dec 23 22:14:36, Chad Adams said the following to Nick Andre:

A BBS VM shouldn't even be a blip on anyone's hydrobill...

It costs me pennies. And I have multiple VMs with Static IPs will all ports open, even mail.

completely silent and more energy efficient. Am guessing the fish and lizard tanks here use more power than that system.

if you don't already have one, buy one of these: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_5?crid=JS2P8XCJUFGN&keywords=kill%2Ba%2Bwatt%2Bmeter&qid=1701592570&sprefix=kill%2Caps%2C109&sr=8-5&th=1

https://tinyurl.com/yc8yhnk8
Yes, fishtanks and heaters for reptiles do use a lot of power.

With a kill-o-watt meter you can see what appliances are energy vampires.
My gf had an old samsung tv that was using as much power turned off as her freaking aquarium filters for a 200gal tank. It must have been defective because I don't see how that is possible. I rigged a remote shut off for the tv for when it wasn't in use.
--- Synchronet 3.19b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
* bbses.info - http://bbses.info - telnet://bbses.info
* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * Telnet/SSH:2022/HTTP (618:250/1)

Hello Nick!

Is it possible to restore a diskimage backup from a Win7 system
into a VM on a Win10 or Win11 pc?

Thought this was already discussed not long ago... I mentioned a very simple shareware program to do exactly this.

That was in relation to a simple image backup in general. You
mentioned a fine program, and I shared my use of DriveImageXML.

But it was preceded with my question on how to do a backup of
some files (no image) offline to the cloud since an external
local drive and internal HDD space was next to nothing for one
particular pc here.

That gravitated to my discovery of rclone and restic. But those
are just for dirs and files.

The pc in question has started to develop a chassis fan
problem. I'm getting reports that the GPU/CPU temperatures
range between 53-63C, and the pc fails to boot sometimes due to
a "fan not detected".

So.. DriveImageXML will be the plan afterall. I have to get the
external SSD kit first.

Then.. the next step is to inspect the fan issue. But I have a
lot of decluttering to do to even get to the pc (a Compaq 100B
SFF) and make room to work on it. I also have some extra 2x2GB
modules to add to the existing 4GB - if only I could remember
where I put them from 5 years ago. :/


--
../|ug

--- OpenXP 5.0.57
* Origin: (} Pointy McPointface (618:250/1.9)

On 03 Dec 23 11:53:00, August Abolins said the following to Nick Andre:

Thought this was already discussed not long ago... I mentioned a very simple shareware program to do exactly this.

That was in relation to a simple image backup in general. You
mentioned a fine program, and I shared my use of DriveImageXML.

The image backup with the solution I suggested can be restored to different hardware. You enable Hyper-V on 10/11 and restore the image.... simple.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)

Re: What older computers you got?
By: August Abolins to Nick Andre on Sun Dec 03 2023 11:53 am

Howdy,

That gravitated to my discovery of rclone and restic. But those
are just for dirs and files.

FWIW, restic also backs up stdin. So not sure on your process for backing up drive images, or the OSes involved - but "cat device" pipe "restic" may be another workable solution. (I use this to backup DBs from DB dumps).

Restic might not be the right tool for large drive images, but for small images, it works well...



...oEoN
--- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
* Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (618:510/2)

Chad Adams wrote to Shawn Highfield <=-

I run mine on VM's - have for years. I have no interest in keeping hardware running. Especially the low cost of VMs that will run a BBS
now!

Snapshots.

There's no better feeling than screwing up your BBS running as a virtual machine, then reverting to the snapshot you took before screwing it up.
:)

Compare to the times I screwed up my BBS on bare metal and had to look
for my backup script and put everything back manually - then missing
messages dating back to the backup date.



... Is this now?
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (618:300/16)

Nick Andre wrote to Chad Adams <=-

Same here, running a full mail system and telnet port 23 on Vmware EXSI without any problems. Went from some HP rack hardware to a single I7 system completely silent and more energy efficient. Am guessing the
fish and lizard tanks here use more power than that system.

Mine's an i7 laptop! Silent, and built-in UPS comes standard.

I'm limited to one ethernet port. Theoretically I could add a USB
ethernet NIC, but this seems to work for my admittedly low-end workloads
- the BBS, a small AD test environment, and a couple of Linux VMs.





... Where is the center of the maze?
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (618:300/16)

Same here, running a full mail system and telnet port 23 on Vmware EXSI without any problems. Went from some HP rack hardware to a single I7 system completely silent and more energy efficient. Am guessing the fish and lizard tanks here use more power than that system.

Nick

Nice,
I just use vultr and host my own private infastructure. When I dev (CyberBBS) I was using that. That reminds me, I need to get back to it.

Thanking about converting it to a mailserver solution, instead of bbs.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The ByteXchange BBS | bbs.thebytexchange.com (618:200/33)

There's no better feeling than screwing up your BBS running as a virtual machine, then reverting to the snapshot you took before screwing it up.

THIS!! I can just revert back.
Makes things a bit easier.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The ByteXchange BBS | bbs.thebytexchange.com (618:200/33)

Hello Kurt,

Sunday December 03 2023 10:02, you wrote to Chad Adams:

Snapshots.

One thing I love about FreeBSD: both UFS and ZFS have on-the-fly filesystem snapshots. A nice feature.

-- Sean

... Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
--- GoldED/2 3.0.1
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN * bbs.outpostbbs.net:1032 (618:618/1)

On 03 Dec 23 10:05:00, Kurt Weiske said the following to Nick Andre:

Same here, running a full mail system and telnet port 23 on Vmware EXS without any problems. Went from some HP rack hardware to a single I7 system completely silent and more energy efficient. Am guessing the fish and lizard tanks here use more power than that system.

Mine's an i7 laptop! Silent, and built-in UPS comes standard.

I actually seriously considered a laptop when planning the phaseout of the noisy HP servers... but did not find a model that had auto-poweron after failure in Bios. One Ethernet and no Raid was another reason I passed.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)

Sean Dennis wrote to Kurt Weiske <=-

One thing I love about FreeBSD: both UFS and ZFS have on-the-fly filesystem snapshots. A nice feature.

I've wanted to play with ZFS on my Proxmox "cluster" (2 systems).
Apparently it supports high-availability when you share ZFS filesystems
via ceph.



... Adding on
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (618:300/16)

Nick Andre wrote to Kurt Weiske <=-

I actually seriously considered a laptop when planning the phaseout of
the noisy HP servers... but did not find a model that had auto-poweron after failure in Bios. One Ethernet and no Raid was another reason I passed.

I have my external storage on a Synology and back Proxmox and my BBS VM
to it, worst case I'll need to re-install Proxmox, set up storage and
restore. My new Proxmox server has a NVMe and a free PCIe x16 slot, I
wonder if adding another NVMe would allow me to set up RAID 1?

I watched a homelab video where the guy set up a homelab on a laptop.
Set the laptop on the back of the screen, took the back off, added in a mini-pci card with SATA connectors on it and set up a RAID with bare
drives. It was a self-admitted fire hazard, but was pretty impressive as
a POC.



--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (618:300/16)

Hello Kurt,

Tuesday December 05 2023 06:29, you wrote to me:

I've wanted to play with ZFS on my Proxmox "cluster" (2 systems). Apparently it supports high-availability when you share ZFS
filesystems via ceph.

The FreeBSD team has done a great job with ZFS. Kirk McKusic (sp?), one of the original developers behind FreeBSD added UFS snapshots recently. When I used FreeBSD, I used only UFS (I didn't really need ZFS) at the time.

I enjoyed using FreeBSD as my desktop OS but without certain features I need, I had to go back to Linux. For some reson, Google refuses to port Widevine to the BSDs.

-- Sean

... If God didn't want us to hunt, He wouldn't have given us plaid shirts.
--- GoldED/2 3.0.1
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN * bbs.outpostbbs.net:1032 (618:618/1)

To: Kurt Weiske
Re: Re: What older computers you got?
By: Kurt Weiske to Chad Adams on Sun Dec 03 2023 10:02 am

hardware running. Especially the low cost of VMs that will run a BBS now!

Snapshots.

There's no better feeling than screwing up your BBS running as a virtual machine, then reverting to the snapshot you took before screwing it up.
:)

Compare to the times I screwed up my BBS on bare metal and had to look
for my backup script and put everything back manually - then missing messages dating back to the backup date.

With all the doorgames i run on my bbses, some of them barf for no good reason. i'd rather not restore a 'snapshot'. I've even had my irc bots just stop
working correctly with some functions and when looking at the code i can't figure out wtf is going on because it all looks fine.

That's why i make backups every week, and backup the entire system periodically.

I can drop in an extract backups and get stuff working in a pinch.
I'm not going to overwrite something that doesn't need to be overwritten.

I haven't really had an issue with the actually operating systems(yet).

But i swear, i'm one of the small handful of guys in the bbs community that actually backs up his stuff instead of talking about it. Lots of sysops do not put a small amount of effort into making reliable backups.

I still remember hearing about Roland DeGraff keeping his only sourcecode on one system on one computer. When it failed and he lost his sourcecode, he tossed it on the floor in anger and it smashed to bits.

--- Synchronet 3.19b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
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On 05 Dec 23 06:34:00, Kurt Weiske said the following to Nick Andre:

I have my external storage on a Synology and back Proxmox and my BBS VM
to it, worst case I'll need to re-install Proxmox, set up storage and restore. My new Proxmox server has a NVMe and a free PCIe x16 slot, I wonder if adding another NVMe would allow me to set up RAID 1?

My external storage is two Dell R510's with 4x16tb each in Raid 5, both essentially mirroring eachother. Those run Server 2019 very nicely and no plans to change those... not really that noisy or noticable on the hydrobill, as I explained before that one just serves as an on-demand backup system.

But the HP DL360/380's I had were brutal when the CPU's got spiked. The fan noise was VERY loud, pretty sure my neighbors heard it. They also had limitations with needing HP-specific SAS drives as I complained about before.

I watched a homelab video where the guy set up a homelab on a laptop.
Set the laptop on the back of the screen, took the back off, added in a mini-pci card with SATA connectors on it and set up a RAID with bare drives. It was a self-admitted fire hazard, but was pretty impressive as
a POC.

Sounds interesting. I'm afraid theres no time here anymore for experimentation and lots of stuff here runs on autopilot.

Nick

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (618:500/24)