Amiga Love has had a few articles on getting various Commodore machines back online and into the BBS world. From
C64s to Amiga 500s (et al) as well as the terminal programs we use; PETSCII capable (
i,
ii) in case you're trying to hit an C64 BBS from your Amiga or ANSI capable, like
A-Talk III, for most other boards. There are a lot of options out there, and the BBS scene is vastly smaller than back in the day, but it's not dead by any stretch. Oh no, dear reader, it is not dead. (
I see four lights!) If anything, the interest in this form of socializing and connecting seems to be growing lately as hardware options become easier to build and less expensive to source.
Tonight, I finally got my Amiga 1000 online
for the first time ever and connected to some of my favorite BBSes. And oh my god, have you ever seen a more beautiful sight? I doubt it. Well, at least not for about 30 years, give or take.

- Menu screen for The Keep BBS, hosted since 1983 out of Oregon (shown in ANSI mode). The Keep has been around since 1983 and is not a C64 board. I needed to launch A-Talk III from Workbench and hop to ANSI.
Here's what I used to accomplish this pièce de résistance.
- Amiga 1000 with 1MB of total chip & fast RAM. It could probably be done with less, but guaranteed no issues.
- Paul Rickards wifi modem with 1MB of total chip & fast RAM. It could probably be done with far less (maybe .5MB), but this guaranteed no issues. Also required the use of a serial port gender changer, due to the Amiga 1000's port.
- Kickstart 1.3 disk (it's an Amiga 1000 after all)
- 64Door terminal program to connect to Particles BBS and Centronian BBS (there are lots of other active C64 boards, too), both PETSCII capable board that are run off actual C64s. You can connect to them in ANSI but it's not as pretty.
- A-Talk III simply my favorite ANSI terminal program, for hitting non-C64 boards. It requires that you load Workbench (1.3 in my case) to run from there. Or a hard drive. I ain't got no hard drive on my 1000. Old school, yo!
That's it!
And since I already had everything in the list except for the gender changer, once I got it today in the mail it took me all of one minute to hook everything up and get to BBSing.
Damn the 1000's keyboard feels good when you type. They never made another keyboard feel this good.

- Using a gender changer with the Paul Rickards modem makes requires it to flip upside-down. But it really doesn't matter, to be honest, unless you need to hit the reset button (which is almost never). The modem can be seen here behind the red/black audio cables. I should probably put that extra Kickstart chip in a safer place.

- When you load the 64Door terminal, you get a pretty crazy intro screen that was written in 1993, then updated somehow in 2013.

- Particles BBS is my hood. It was first on my list to try. When you load 64Door you have to tap the Amiga's "HELP" key and switch the baud to 9600, and the cols to 80 or 40. Particles looks great in 80.

- Interior menu screen for Particles BBS

- Centronian, another C64 BBS, needs to be viewed in 40 columns. No problemo.

- Going to the subs. The sub message board, that is. Bloop bloop glug. Ping!
Happy BBSing!