My Experiences Of Being A Sysop =============================== Greetings.... I'm the insubstantial Sysop of the Graveyard BBS (01708 452284), my BBS has been running since July of 1995, it started with only 400 graves. Now the number of graves has amassed to over 2000!! I was gathering graves for the BBS the other day when I thought why not write about my experiences in the MiggyByte disk magazine. Hmmmm.... why not I thought.... seeing as Madness of Channel X BBS is advertising my BBS on the mag I might as well be nice and write an article for him. ;-) , I also have nothing else to do in my spare time as all my job entails is digging graves and lugging corpses around. I started in computers with a ZX81.. and yes I can hear thee laughing!!! I then progressed to a Spectrum 48k, (Not the rubber keyed one!) then the Spectrum +3 with disk drive (Ohhh!) then the Amiga 500, Amiga 500+ then the Amiga 1200/hd 030cpu nutter!!!! My dream Amiga would be an A4000/060 50mhz with all the ram it could hold, 1.2 gig drives all over the place, the fastest graphics board possible and the fastest modem going. Oh and probably a monitor as well. The start of it =============== Well, after a year or two of floating around other peoples BBS's nicking, sorry, leaching.... SORRY... trading graves all over the U.K, I found a program called MAX's BBS v1.54. Hmmmm I thought to myself... that gives me an excellent idea. So after 2 weeks and a lot of phone calls to Madness's earthly residence for technical help, I arrived at a working prototype of the Graveyard BBS. At the time it was called Quick'n'Easy BBS, no reference to the speed of my burial skills of course. It did take a long time to accomplish because I did the most common thing that people do with computer programs: 1, Load it and proceed to click on all the buttons thinking I can work it 2, Shout "Bollocks! this program's is oozing with shit!! 3, Erase the program from thy hard drive. 4, Three weeks later, return to it and read the manual. And then say "Ahh that's how it works!!" How many of ye have done that? Hmmm? Sysop Name ========== So, next I spent some time thinking of a name for myself, my true name is too hard for mortals to pronounce, and even in ye did thou would probably summon me to dig ye an early grave! Leaving it at MAX was easy because it was set up in the BBS anyway but it was a bit lazy of me to do so, I scribed a list of viable names. 1, Bollox 2, Helen Shapiro 3, Speedy 4, The Grave Digger Well, the first name was a bit stupid, the second, if I had used it, would have got me sued, the third was because the BBS name at the time was Quick'n'Easy so it sort of fitted, but the fourth fitted better after I changed the BBS name to The Graveyard, this was after a shit night out and I was feeling depressed. Which Also meant changing all the Ansi screens to fit as well. And of course it was my earthly name. The Phone Line And B.T workmen ============================== After I was sure the BBS was working properly, I then thought that I needed a private line to run it on. Some BBS's I know run on their parents line. Sometimes I phone and I get a voice saying "Hello? Who is it?" So I thought I'll get my own line, much better than a big telephone wire hanging down the church stairs and having everyone's corpse tripping over it! Also when thou steps on it thou are liable to break the bloody thing.... as I found out!! Back down to Tandys... When the B.T men finally arrived at my church, the ladders he bought were too small to reach the top of the steeple so all he could do was lay the internal line with a VERY big staple gun!! Then another B.T man came and connected the rest up. It only cost me about 60 earthly pounds for the installation of the line, my first bill was 50 pounds, the last one was over 90 pounds!! All I had to do once the line was in was to advertise and wait for my first caller..... I was out gathering souls when he called..... >:-((( I would like to thank all the Sysops of other BBS's that called and offered advice and encouragement on what I should have and do, with out their help, (And the odd uploads from them) I may not have been running to day. Soon after I gained my first Co-Sysop, Wolvv, then recently I got another Co-Sysop, Rhythm Nation. Both have uploaded lots of graves and if anyone is thinking of starting a BBS think about advertising for a Co-Sysop. They do help a lot!! To PC? Or not to PC? ==================== One mistake I made was to archive everything in .lzx format. Most PC users use .zip or .lha for there machines. So I had to re-archive all the text, Imagine objects etc.. to .lha formats.... I wasn't pleased and was going to ban PC users from the BBS altogether, but... no I thought "Who cares what machine they have as long as they can upload and download! They will all need graves when they die!!" So for all those PC users out there who call, they can now download LHA for the PC free from my BBS. Smileys??? What are they?? ========================== When chatting to users I found that some of them use strange symbols in the text, for example... :-) thats a common smiley. Yes I thought... I'll try that and cam up with this >:-(( its a pissed off smiley!! Some users use abbreviations in their text as well.... 'BTW' means 'By The Way' if thou didn't know! I didn't... Also theres 'IMHO' I thought it meant 'In My Hat Off' but no! it means 'In My Humble Opinion'... How about 'POTW'?? (Means Piss Off Thou Wanker) So if thou art ever on my BBS and I type 'POYW' then thou now knowest what I mean!! Girley Pics?? ============= One question I thought a lot about was wether or not to have Girly pics on my BBS. Well it now seems that most users like them and will want to download then at every opportunity. It seems that everyone like to see the latest pics of a famous celebrity with their dress of showing their bits. I'm sure that if I stopped the Girly pics section then I'd loose most of my users. Some of the users don't even touch the utils section at all! Why is it that someone will pay around 500 to a grand for a PC/Amiga just to download girly pics from a BBS? think of all the videos that a grand can buy thee!! Silly Sods ========== There are also some users that just don't know what they are doing!! They page me and say "How do I mark graves?" my response to a question is this, "READ WHAT IT SAYS HERE!!!!!" I would just love to come round the users house and bang their head on the monitor screaming "THERE IT IS!!! THERE!! READ IT! READ IT!!!" and then walk off..... Why can't some people read what's written for their benefit? Another point is that I used to have a rules page for every new user to read when they logged on. About 80% of them just whizzed past it and didn't bother to read it!! Why? If thou were reading instructions on how to build a bomb thou wouldn't skip past the safety instructions?? Wouldest thou?? Anyone else who asks a silly question, will have a visit from me and MR. Baseball bat with his friends Nail and BreizeBlock. Chatting With The Sysop ====================== On my BBS, when you wish to chat with the sysop you have to enter the reason why you wish to chat. Some people just do not know what to type in. For example: Someone paged because ssssssssssssssssssssss. Someone paged because It is hard to sum up your thoughts in one line isn't it. Someone paged because wsoisi eososg nrkgnpisry. Some people just put HI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That really pisses me of! Others put "Are you there??" Even when they have seen a screen saying THE GRAVE DIGGER IS OUT!! Conclusions =========== Well, despite all the silly things that happen, I would recommend to anyone to startup a BBS and see how far thou can get with it. I enjoy talking to users and helping out with their problems they have, it really is good to know thou hast helped someone. I wouldn't stop doing this at all now. It seems that I was heading in this direction anyway. Another point is, WATCH YOUR PHONE BILL!! It can escalate very rapidly!! Don't say I didn't warn thee! I hope that thou can call my BBS soon and we'll have a chat about something...... Farewell!! The Graveyard BBS Sysop - The Gravedigger Co-Sysop - Wolvv - Spectre 24 Hours Weekends 6pm-6am Weekdays Tel:01708 452284 END ---