At VCF SoCal!

Red ASCII Wildcat logo hello screen

Playing with Wildcat! BBS 2.6 Test Drive on the 286 from 1992. Look at the cute Tomcat art! I forget this only works with modems with two-digit numeric response codes, kind of a hack to get a modern modem working with it #BBS #vintagecomputing

Testing the dot matrix printer with the 286 and The New Print Shop - graphics design is my passion

Trying to resurrect the family 286 from 1992. 1 MB RAM, some VSLI chipset m/b I can't find manuals for. Used to have CGA and 20 megabyte MFM hard drive (died), now getting VGA and CF card

Found a copy of NetWare 3.12 out in the barn tonight! Floppies and manual sealed, license disk gone. I suspect I got this from a school or surplus way back when and completely forgot about it

Trying out a US Robotics Auto Dial 212A from 1982! Dialed up to the BBS at 1200 bps.
Many more internal photos in the Flickr modem teardown album
#BBS #modem #dialup

Happy Halloween from TuxedoCat Lounge BBS!

bbs.tuxedocatbbs.com:2323
341-221-4808
#bbs #dialup

It's Meow Monday over at TuxedoCat Lounge [sound on!] #bbs #dialup #modem

A tuxedo cat (Charlie) lounging above the TuxedoCat Lounge BBS

BBS business cards! Because why not

Getting onboard the Secure Boot train, there's about as many "disable secure boot" articles out there as there are "disable IPv6".

I for one welcome Secure Boot with PXE installs on IPv6 only networks!

Another Dallas RTC replacement, this time in an Adtran Atlas 550 multipurpose phone switch/router. Unit was losing its config when powered off. Replaced it with a socket and a NOS DS14287, seems to work

Tonight's project, replacing a dead Dallas DS12B887 RTC on a Asus P55TP4N / Pentium socket 7 motherboard with a socket and a DS12887+ from Amazon. Worked first try!

Had a USR Courier HST modem that would not detect dial tone on the "line" jack but would dial when connected to the "phone" jack. Turns out a bad relay was holding the line off-hook even when powered off.

Replaced it, now it dials correctly!

After a couple of years doing the hold-arm-out-to-read-things bit I finally got prescribed reading glasses. It's like re-discovering Retina/high DPI displays all over again! Except now I notice far more compression artifacts in online video and photos now :(

I was today years old when I learned PC serial ports and VGA aren't really DB-9 and DB-15, but DE-9 and DE-15

V.90 (so far up to 54666) call between an analog USR Courier V.Everything and an I-modem, using an Adtran Atlas 550. Also 64k ISDN call between two I-modems

I discovered old USR Courier I-modems only need simple 20 VAC power and will work on 24 VDC just fine, without the extremely hard to find OEM power supply

binaryfury.wann.net/2025/04/us-r...

90s car audio technology applied to 90s server tower in 2025! Loud 5.25" SCSI drive still loud, like an angry coffee percolator

I need to found more content to like here, I'm in some bizzaro land of discussions of mushrooms and body hair

I have to constantly remind myself not to lay my floppy disks for old computers near my iPhone which has a magnet in the back

Seen so many "homelabs" and not much lab, that's for sure

"You need a license to cut hair and be a barber. Anyone with a T1 can become an ISP." -- my friend teep

Instead most peering agreements were negotiated over beers in Doubletree hotel bar during a conference, or over sushi

Feel the need to try out a 1995-era bulletin board system (BBS)?

I run TuxedoCat Lounge, accessible with real dial-up modems or Telnet! www.tuxedocatbbs.com for details, suggested clients.

Modems do indeed work over VoIP!

It's all over IG reels too, last I saw was KFC Ireland showing they turned him into a 20 bucket

Latest toy, a Libretto 110CT. First thing I did was dial up my BBS with it, runs Doom amazingly well too!

I used one of these when I started my ISP back in the day. Saw one for sale the other day and couldn't resist. Brings me up to two hubs!