THE HISTORY OF SECTION ONE BBS
Section One was started in March of 1993 as Cyberania BBS. I had logged into some other BBS systems and found them to be quite intriguing. You have to remember that the Internet wasn't actually accessible at that time, and the BBS offered everything that the internet would soon offer, but it was free. Free that is, to those of us who had one in our local calling area. At one time, Cyberania sported one of the biggest online game selections around. Of course, they were mostly text based and any of the pictures in the better games were nothing more than fancy ANSI (Hey, I made a rhyme).
The BBS was a hobby for me, and an expensive one at that. The games had to be registered, the phone lines (Cyberania had 3 of them) had to be paid for, not to mention the modems, and all of the software to handle the connections, the callers, and the mail that was going in and out of the system. Then, there was also the fact that it tied up the only computer in the house, due to the fact that computers were very expensive back then. Cyberania continued to grow and probably had a small user base of about 60 people. It was great... but then came the internet.
The internet offered everyone what the BBS did, but it was easier to get to, and on a world wide scale where BBS systems were geared more to neighborhoods and local geographical calling areas. It wasn't long (about 1995) that the local BBS systems started to die out. But not Cyberania. I had too much money invested into it. I kept it up, kept paying for the phone lines, and running a computer (not the main one anymore) for a few callers a day... but it was a hobby, so I didn't care.
In 1998, there were a few changes that came into my life (ie. a new job direction that required much more time and devotion) and the switch to Cyberania was turned off. Actually it was intermittent. It would go up, go down, go up and go down, until one day I searched the internet for the software that I was using (Synchronet) and found out that the "Digital Man" (Synchronet's Programmer) had started to tinker around with the software again. It had gone into public domain, which really ticked me off, because I had paid so much for it years ago. But I got real happy again when Digital Man started to release free versions that ran via telnet - how you logged on today. No longer would we need phone lines and modems and such... we could connect to each other over the internet.
The thought occured to me that Cyberania could go back up....and it did. I'm not sure of the complete time frame, but around that time, I got interested in a TV show called "La Femme Nikita." The show ran for four seasons and was cancelled, but due to fan interaction, a fifth season was written to end the series more appropriately. it was a the end of season five that I decided it was time for Cyberania BBS to get a face lift. And that included a new name. I backed up everything for the BBS (Cyberania is on 4 CDRs and could be restored into working order in the matter of an hour). I reinstalled my operating system, new version of Synchronet and new games and such. I never got the BBS back to where it was originally, and some day would like to get a few more games up and get more message bases running, but it's slow going...so check back regularly. The new name "Section One is in tribute to the series that I loved so much...."La Femme Nikita." (Section One was the spy like agency that pulled Nikita off the streets and put her to work as an agent).
Section One debuted off and on, but never stayed up for long. it is up for good now. If for nobody else, for a group of men that like to play Risk and now can do so whenever we want to with a game called Global Warfare. Menus were designed to give the BBS a spy look and the feeling that you were an agent logged on to Section One's system. The fun of it all is that I get to continue to play with DOS again, and I love that.
Thanks for checking in, and if you hear anybody looking for Cyberania BBS, please direct them to sectiononebbs.com or section1bbs.com
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History of Section One BBS
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