| I started in computers in the Navy in 72, basically data entry. When I got out I continued with computers learning Basic and COBOL.. We used punch cards back then and it took boxes and boxes of cards to hold even the most basic program. After College I lost interest in computers because only businesses had computers and the PC hadn't come into existence yet. In the late 70's video games came out with games like Pong and Space Invaders, I bought one or two of these game machines until the early 80's when Commodore brought out the Vic-20. I was back into Basic programming again! But the future was right around the corner, the modem, and the beginning of the Internet! I immediately bought a 300 baud modem and a subscription to CompuServe. It opened up a new world! You could talk to people all over the US and play games with them too. Other services jumped on the bandwagon quickly, Delphi and Prodigy had dial in services. You could write mail, play games, download games and even naked pictures in the "Art" photography sections! This was awesome, but I needed more power, more speed! I bought a C64 and a 1200 baud modem! Wow, the increase in speed! Then the C128 and tape storage, even an external Ram chip you plugged into a port you could store programs. But the PC revolution was moving fast now, the business machines had the 8080 out in the early 70's the 286 PC was within affordable range now. I bought one with a 1200 baud modem used in the mid 80's but the 486 was quick to make it's appearance. I was quick to go into debt on a Packard Bell 486 DX/ 25 MHz and a 2400 baud modem. I was introduced to local BBS's by the salesman. I was in awe, there were local numbers to call where you could play games, download files, write people locally, join discussion forums about topics of interest and all Free! Most were only 1 line in though, so it wasn't like CompuServe, Delphi or Prodigy, but it was free. I had to get on this kick. I looked on all the pay services and investigated prices and features I downloaded a fairly obscure software called PowerBBS, fairly easy to setup, compatible with most games and very stable. I opened up in the mid 80's with the first Entertainment Connection BBS, a name I and my girlfriend came up with, she was also Co-Sysop and a wiz with computers! We ran out of Santa Maria, California. We were new and it took awhile to get known, but soon the modem was connecting at all hours of the day and night. Wasn't long before the local FidoNet representative got in touch and wanted us to hook up to his network For those unfamiliar with FidoNet, you had forums setup you discussed topics of interest like Sci-Fi, Computers, TV shows, even Sex! Then you sent and received your comments with others through a "Hub" who connected to other Hubs all over the Country sending and receiving messages. Sometimes it might be hours or days before someone replied. But messages were coming and going automatically all day and night, similar to MajorNet but not limited to MajorBBS. The Hub needed a unique handle to send mail and Entertainment Connection was too long, so we decided on ENTCONN, and it became well known as that. PBBS was a European software though and getting upgrades or support was hard, so we switched to VirtualBBS, a very popular with Sysop's it had many built in options and handled most games, but it was very unstable at the time, constantly crashing. I looked around and the best looking, most stable, most versatile and on the verge of opening up a new aspect of BBSing, the Internet! Was PCBoard, they "were" based in Utah, had tons of support, we ran it for a year or two and just when they were releasing the "Beta PCBoard" with Internet, the company ditched all of its customers and even held a "midnight computer sale" selling all their equipment in secret and leaving the support board up and the answering machines on for weeks so they could make their getaway! It was a hot topic on FidoNet complete with pictures of the midnight sale! We were shocked, and had hundreds of dollars of obsolete software now, even a useless Internet ready software that had no support. Thank God I didn't invest more in the multi-line version! I had the basic 5 line version that went for about $250-300, I forget. I was going to invest in the unlimited version that was around $2000!. Well, we got scammed but the board went on...... Until someone was selling a MBBS board!, the best, most expensive, most popular BBS software around! I had to have it! I bought a 4 line basic version with Entertainment pack for $1800. I called up the phone company and wasn't long before we were up. Due to the costs of the mods and the phone lines we had to go pay. Charging a mere $0.50 an hour you could play Kyrandia, Fazul, Hangman, GWAR, and TeleArena to your hearts content, 24/7. We were up about 18 months in the early 90's until the phone bills became unbearable. We announced our closing and I thought that was the end of my Sysoping. I sold the software to pay the phone bill. I was Co-Sysop and Staff on many a fly by night board including Granola BBS one of the first beta MajorMud boards. At first MajorMud was for a select few who had too much time on their hands. People spent hours in the game! The other die hards were scripting Tele Arena and playing GWAR. I didn't really think MajorMud would become so popular. I played by hand to level 4 I think, took forever! I moved to L.A. Glendale in 95 and left MajorMud. I quickly logged on to the local boards in LA, first was Annex, and Brain Toys. Both local and one other that slips my mind but long gone now. The Internet was basically to connect to the Web at this time, Telnet was a way to get to new boards and even old boards I played and Op'ed on. But for every board you logged on you had to subscribe, there were very few free Galacticomm boards, those that were, were most likely pirated. I became staff on Ardvark.com, a board in Oregon specializing in chat and no MajorMud. In '97 I received an e-mail for an auction for Galacticomm software from Adventurecomm.com an ISV company. They had Worldgroup software and mods from just about every ISV in existence. I talked it over with my Step Dad to float a loan to get a Worldgroup 3.1 NT 248 node server with 3.2 paid as soon as it was released (I had high expectations LOL) and I grabbed a few other mods like Hotel Teleconference, TLORD, Lunatix, The Rose, FarWest Trivia........ etc. Then the biggest to make it pay! I called WCC and made a deal on MajorMud and all the mods and Plus, at a discounted price for buying all at once. I had already arranged for an ISP through a fellow OP on ardvark based in Bakersfield, CA where he worked and we would co-locate the server. I started on a P-400 with Windows 98 (big mistake) and we opened in 97 after testing for several weeks off a 56k modem at my home. Win98 was a disaster! We were up a month with daily crashes until I bought WinNT, he had to install it there and his boss charged me $100 service charge. We had ISP problems and conflicts with his boss until I ran across Dialsoft's ISP services, was cheaper, I had 24/7 support and he knew Worldgroup back and forth. So we moved to New Jersey with server. We had very few problems with Marc, we upgraded to Win 2000 server sometime back then, was much more giving as in recovering from crashes and were quite happy until someone mentioned Microsoft offered free ISP services for beta testing Whistler OS (popularly known as XP now) Well free sounded better than what I was paying then and a new OS? I was always open to new "better" stuff LOL. I bought an AMD 1.2 GHz and sent it to Washington, then transferred the board remotely to avoid downtime. The increase in speed of the new CPU plus MS's multiple OC3's was awesome......... for awhile. I bought another Worldgroup and MajorMud on Ebay and opened Entmud in 2001, a No PVP realm....then disaster hit! The bandwidth was being rationed so they could test 1GigaByte network card transfers over Whistlers beta servers, sometimes making the boards look like they were on 2400 baud again. We complained and complained, getting back replies that the servers pushing the newest options and features got priority over bandwidth now. Bah! I was moving! I found another co-location site in L.A. for reasonable cost and was almost ready to move when........ cable opened up in my town finally! I had already signed up at the other host and was getting ready to move server boxes too! What luck! Finally my severs would be home. Well, that was almost 3 years ago, I moved once, the boards were down a few hours while I moved the boxes...... here we are now, here we'll stay unless I move again. Even then we shall go on........ |
The History of Entconn