A Brief History of the Boot Factory BBS

I graduated from Hermitage High School in 1973 at the age of 17 (you do the math) and went to Virginia Tech for a few years afterwards.  Married in 1980, divorced in 1989 with full custody of my kids.

I bought my first computer in 1983  (a Commodore 64) which wouldn't sync up with my new TV so I had to take it back to the store.  The salesman suggested I try the Atari 800 instead and it was the most intelligent thing that ANY computer salesman has EVER said to me.  Needless to say, it did sync up with the TV and away I went.  I wrote my first basic program (a simple text game which I called Crapola) that same weekend and immediately decided I needed more stuff.

My first 1050 drive came with DOS 3 on a bad master disk that would not boot fortunately.  In trying to get my drive to function, I met one of my good friends, Alan, who hooked me up with a copy of DOS 2.6f.  That day, Alan also showed me this thing called a modem which would allow me to "get online"... something he felt I needed to do.  He was right.  I needed to be up 'til 3am every night calling long distance at 300bps to get on other Atari BBS's.  I needed a new name - abdul.   I needed those $500/month phone bills.  It sure was fun though.  And I really met some nice people across the country through this new medium, including Jerry, who felt that I needed to run my own Atari BBS since Richmond didn't have one.  He was right.

Eventually, I had a fairly good size BBS system running on an 800xl, a USD 1050, an AMDEK double 3" drive (I wish I still had that thing) with 3 external "Quad" density Teac drives hanging off of that, and a 2400bps modem.  I went through several BBS programs, AMIS, FoReM, and BBCS to name a few.  And then I met Keith Ledbetter.

Actually, I already knew Keith from his old Skeleton Isle BBS (an Apple system) and G.R.A.S.P. here in town but he had just started fooling around with Atari and said he was toying with the idea of writing an Atari BBS program.  I said I would help with beta testing because, hell, I loved setting up and running different systems and I knew anything that he wrote would be GREAT.  He had already written the first versions of his Express Terminals and they were my favorites.

About the same time I started running Express, ICD released the MIO expansion device and I got one of the first ones.  At a local Techfest, we all picked up used 5 meg hard drives for $40 ea and mine was the only one that worked.  Now I had a hard drive on my BBS and I needed some tools for it so I wrote my Hard Disk Toolkit which consisted of a directory sorter, a File killer w/verify, a File counter, and a Park utility.  Except for the Park program (hah), I still use updated 1999 versions of them all today.

Sometime around 1987 (here's where things get real foggy), I started fooling with PC's and looking at PC BBS systems.  Delirium set in and I switched the  Factory over to an IBM program... AND SOLD ALL OF MY ATARI STUFF!!  I must have been totally crazy.  I lost much of my source code (not all) and all of the great hardware and software I had accumulated.  A couple of years later, I came to my senses (somewhat) and started buying back what Atari stuff I could find.  I was able to acquire many of my old copies of diskettes from Blake (thanks man) but the majority of my source code was history.  Even though the original BBS would never run on an Atari system again, I now have more Atari hardware than I have ever had.

In 1996, after well over 300,000 calls, I shut down the PC-based Boot Factory for good.  It had been a long 12 year run full of good times and great friends, but I had tired of sysoping.  I continued to buy Atari hardware whenever I could find it... on eBay, in thrift stores and at yard sales.  Over the last few years I have really acquired some nice vintage equipment as well as some great new stuff, like the APE WARP OS, and the FlashCart, both by Steven Tucker.  I sure would like to have that Amdek 3" drive back though.

I currently have one Big Atari 8-bit system set up in my room. Click on the small image below for a full size image (it is really big - 1632x1280 I think - for those of you with slow connections):

Some of my other 8-bit stuff not shown above:
(List Updated: 9.21.08)

1 - ICD MIO 1MEG
1 - CSS Blackbox interface
1 - XF551 Stock floppy drive
1 - Percom AT88-S1 floppy drive
1 - RANA 1000 floppy drive
1 - Astra Big 'D' double floppy drive
1 - 810 stock floppy drive
3 - Happy 1050 drives
2 - US Doubler 1050 drives
1 - XF551 3.5" 720K floppy drive
Many - 1050's stock (AFAIK)
1 - 65XE stock
1 - 800xl Rambo 256k
1 - 800xl Rambo 256k with APE 4n1 Warp OS
1 - 800xl with Mega-HZ 512K and APE Warp 32n1 OS
Many - 800XL's stock (AFAIK)
2 - 130xe stock
2 - 1200XL stock
1 - Atari 800 48k stock
1 - Atari 600xl (NEW in box)
1 - 1064 ram expansion device (for 600XL)
3 - 850 interfaces
3 - Amdek Color 1 Plus Monitors
1 - MPP 1000e modem
1 - AtariMax FlashCart 8MB
1 - XEP 80 Column Video Display
1 - AtariMax MyIDE / FlashCart
1 - AtariMax USB Cart

Many other carts, joysticks & accessories

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In 1999, I started messing around with my old 8-bit BBS programs, and with lots of  help and encouragement from Tom Hunt, I put the new Boot Factory 2k+ BBS online accessible from the internet.  This BBS ran on the A800Win emulator that Tom had modified.  It works great.  Sysoping was fun again.

In Feb 2003, I had to shut the BBS down due to me needing the space in the room.  It is still down now but as you can see from the picture above, the Atari equipment is back up and I hope to put the BBS back online in the not too distant future.  The link above should work when it goes back online and I have been running it on and off recently.

11-30-03 - As of today, the BF 2k+ BBS is up and running accessible via telnet through the internet - See Link Above

{ the saga continues... }

{Boot Factory 2000 website}            {AMF Band Website}