[Blindapple] Apple BBS

[Tony Baechler]

Hi.  Yes, I was thinking of the former.  People would connect to an 
emulated Apple with a2.  I am still thinking about logistics.  Security is 
an issue as I explained.  No, there would not be multiline funcitonality, 
it would be one user at a time.  The problem with the later approach is 
that first A2 can run on almost any OS already so there would be no reason 
to have a public access system.  Second, many programs won't work with 
write protected disks such as the Eamon games.  I wouldn't do the 
later.  Besides I don't want to explain to people how to telnet.  It would 
be only for this list and I presume everyone here already has A2 or can get 
it.  This would be more for the fun of it than anything, just to see if it 
could be done.  I have a couple BBS packages but whether they will run or 
not is unknown.  I'm not sure how to prevent shelling out from A2 unless I 
made A2 the shell.  Even that could cause problems.  If I knew of a way to 
not allow the ~ as escape character, thatg would help.  I just wouldn't let 
people escape from the emulator unless they logged off the BBS.  I am not a 
C programmer but the emulator doesn't look that complicated so it might be 
easier than I think.  Maybe I would use Appleemu instead just because it 
doesn't allow shelling and supports an IIe.  I don't know.  If you want to 
look at BBS packages, let me know and I'll send what I have.

At 11:11 PM 7/28/2005 -0400, you wrote:
>Were you thinking of a BBS software package actually running on an emulated
>Apple?  If so, I don't know how that would work.  Each time somebody
>connected, A2 would have to be run.  That would mean the BBS would have to
>be prepared to deal with an incoming connection at the console immediately
>upon bootup.  Also, no multi-line functionality would be possible, as each
>user would be connecting into his own emulated Apple.  Not to mention
>problems with file locking and file use between each emulated Apple.
>If you're talking about a system whereby people can connect and run various
>programs via A2, that could work.  Somebody would have to write a program to
>deal with people connecting, let them choose what they want to run, and then
>run A2 to run the actual program.  A2 would have to be secured.  All disks
>available over the system would have to be write protected to prevent
>accidental or intentional damage or destruction, and probably some features
>like shelling out would have to be disabled from A2.
>Jayson.