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Rusty n Edie's from Beginning to the Beginning.
In 1985 I bought my first computer. I bought it to help in
my insurance business, to tell the truth I had no idea what
to do with it, but everyone said it would help, so I laid out
over $4,000 for a Tandy 1200, a straight XT type machine with
a huge 10 megabyte hard drive. I paid the extra money for
the hard drive because I was told it would store everything I
would ever need on one disk. I also went for the best color
graphics, CGA in all it's glory, it was beautiful.
I did manage to read enough docs to use the machine quite
well in my business. In 1986, my company decided to supply
me with an IBM XT with a 20 meg hard drive and mono, so I
took home my beauty and wondered just what I was going to do
with it.
"Modem", my local Tandy salesman said I could get all the
software I wanted free, I couldn't believe it, free. Well
almost free, I would have to buy a modem, 1200 baud was the
best money could buy and on sale for only $279 and of course
software, PC-Talk which I could have for a $6 copying fee,
SHAREWARE, ah a bit of what was to come, from now on free and
as much as I wanted, now at last I could have millions of
programs, and all free.
That night I called the local BBS, I was told this meant
Bulletin Board System. I was so excited, it was a great
moment, then the nightmare began, I called and filled out a
very long questionnaire, the system said thank you and I
should call back the next day and then disconnected me. I
couldn't wait, I called right after work and was welcomed and
told to fill out a questionnaire, which I did, it seemed
silly since it was mostly the same questions and I don't see
what the name and age of my cat have to do with BBSs. I did
as I was told and was advised I should DOWNLOAD a
registration form. To be honest it took me 10 days to figure
out how to DOWNLOAD, but I finally figured it out and got my
form, which I printed and filled out, more questions, I
couldn't figure out what my grandparents political party had
to do with computers, but I answered every question, I was
called and verified about a week later and accepted into the
BBS. I called right away and found I could have 30 minutes a
day it I kept up a 5 to 1 RATIO, that is I had to upload
files, that meant I would have to call long distance to
another BBS and go through the humiliation of various torture
routines set up by sadistic SYSOPs, System Operators, it was
a very humbling experience, but I was hooked a program junky,
I downloaded everything, printed the docs and ran the
program, oohed and aahed and threw it on my hard disk, which
within a few weeks reported it was full, which I was sure
meant it was broke, since it was impossible to fill. I Just
couldn't stand it anymore, so I decided to open my own BBS.
I told my wife, Edie, that I what I was going to do and why.
I was going to open a no rules BBS, and I ask her if she
wanted me to name it after both of us, she had never used a
computer in her life, but she made the fatal error and said
she would like that, she would live to regret the honor I was
bestowing on her. Rusty n Edie's was conceived! I called
the local BBS SYSOP and told him what I was going to do and
he told me not to use the BBS software he was using, Opus,
and he would help me get started, so I downloaded a shareware
BBS program called TCOMM and proceeded to set it up. I called
the local board the next day and found that I now had only 18
minutes a day and wasn't allowed to download, I also found no
mention of my board going up, so much for help, it would seem
Edie and I were on our own. I had a 20 meg hard drive
installed for $500 and bought a 2400 baud modem for $400 and
had a phone line installed.
Rusty n Edie's was born May 11, 1987. We made our biggest
mistake that first day we adopted the motto "The Friendliest
BBS in the World" and have regretted it every day since, more
about that later. We printed up posters and passed them out
to the computer stores and posted them in supermarkets. Our
callers were greeted with our motto and our rules:
1. Have fun
2. End of rules
We had no time limit, no questionnaires, no ratios, and most
of all no hassles. I was told if I did that the callers
would do terrible things to our system, they never did. We
had about 50 files available for the callers to download (we
have over 60,000, now). We decided we would make ourselves
available, we posted our voice phone number and address and
answered when we were paged. We turned up the sound so we
could hear when someone called, we got 6 calls that day and
watched everyone of them, we were thrilled. I'll never
forget the first time anyone ever called us long distance, I
was amazed anyone would call and pay for the time on line.
We averaged 10 calls a day (we get over 3,000 calls a day
now) till December 1987 when we switched to PCBoard, the most
flexible and wonderful BBS software ever made. Things
started happening then, our tiny system couldn't handle the
calls so we bought a 386 and multitasked with Desqview and
open a second line. For some reason, even though we have
never demanded Uploads, we have always gotten a bunch (we get
about 20 megs of uploads a day now), it would seem our
callers wanted to help and uploaded a large number of files
daily, we outgrew the 20 meg hard drive and installed a 160
meg hard drive, by our first anniversary we were jammed with
callers and files. Edie and I both agreed it was getting out
of hand by June 1988 we were so busy, callers could not get
on no matter how long they waited, we started getting real
hateful phone calls, demanding we let them on line. Edie and
I decided we couldn't afford to go on and we would post a
bulletin, on July 4, 1988, asking for donations, we figured
we wouldn't get any and would simply close. Much to our
surprise the money poured in and we turned the money into new
nodes, as fast we could.
In economics we are told that their is economy in size, we
have found that not to be true with BBSs, the larger we get
the more the problems of size are exposed. Heat, static
electricity, and speed are the main ones, our house is heated
by the BBS and even then we have to open the windows in the
dead of the Ohio winter to keep the heat under control, in the
Summer it is much easier to keep cool, we simply installed a four
ton air conditioning unit to cool our basement (this unit normally
cools a 4,000 sq. ft. house, but works hard to keep the basement
cool). We have our BBS in a basement, we moved from our apartment
when the spare bedroom we were running the BBS out of, got so full
we couldn't get in the place, it was so hot no human being could
stand it, Baby our cat loved it. It must have been 120 degrees in
that room. Baby's, favorite pastime then and now is running across
the keyboards blowing callers away and sleeping on the computers,
frying his brains on the monitors. we bought the basement with a
house on top of it for it's space and beauty. We have 2 huge
humidifiers running day and night trying to keep some moisture in
the air, we can't do it well and still have down time caused from
thunderbolts suddenly erupting out of our bodies paralyzing
one of our nodes or servers. OK, now for the killer, keeping
up the speed. Our setup is as follows:
We have, 5 386 33mhz servers with 32 megs of memory each,
they each have a caching controller, we need that memory to
cache the 14, 780 meg SCSI drives and 2, 386 meg ESDI drives,
the 16 drives format to something over 10 gigabytes. We have
99 16 mhz 286s, one for each node, in addition we have 4, 20
MHZ 386s, 1, 16 MHZ 386 (our original server, our original
Tandy XT type machine died about a year ago.), and 5, 12 MHZ
286s, these last 10 machines are so we can work on the system
without taking it down. We have 16, Anchor 2400 baud modems,
23, 14.4k v42bis US Robotics HSTs and 17 US Robotic's Dual
Standards 14.4k V32, V32bis V42bis, 16 CompuCom 9600 baud
Speedmodems, 3 Hayes V-Series V42bis modem, and 16 direct connect
CONNECT-USA lines. We have all of this networked together
with five copies of the wonderful Novell Netware 386, it works
great. We have the whole thing hooked up to huge batteries that
supply 10 KV of uninteruptible power.
Even with all this the system started to slow a bit, so we
installed 99, 20 meg hard drives, one in each node, with them we
were able to take a lot of the work off the network and can now
honestly say, we are very quick, almost like a one node system.
We now have 2 of our sons and our daughter. Edie and I and of course
our wondrous assistant SYSOP and friend Carl all working full
time (and then some) on the system. We have worked very hard
to keep our original intent stated in our motto, "We are the
Friendliest BBS in the World". that motto has almost killed
Edie and I, we still post our voice phone number and our
address, we still answer pages, even so, no matter what we do,
we hear the deadly "I thought you were friendly". Poor Edie,
from the beginning every time I wanted her to help, I would
nail her with "You wanted it named after you, you have to
help." It works great, all you SYSOPs out there, if you
want your wife to help you, name it after her.
OK everybody, what can you expect when you call Rusty n Edie's BBS.
A different kind of BBS, "We are the Friendliest BBS in the
World" Our name says it all. Edie and I are a couple of burn
outs from the 60's (Edie's 46 and I'm 53). We didn't like rules
then and we don't now. Come on in and relax you will be among
friends.
We have a huge adult section, including over three gigabytes of
adult graphics, as well as a fine selection of public domain and
shareware programs, including over a gigabyte of family type
graphics. But that's not what sets us apart. When you call the
first time you'll know what no amount of words can tell you, you
are home. that's right put up your feet and enjoy yourself, we
have 15 on line interactive games and one of the most active chat
and message sections in the world.
With Edie's help we have made Rusty n Edie's a place for the
whole family, including the ladies. Yes a large portion of our
callers are from the fairer sex, they too can feel at home at
Rusty n Edie's.
We live by the three no's: No Censorship
No Rules
No Hassle
You will find us like no other BBS:
We answer your messages and comments
We answer your on line pages
We post our address
We post our voice phone number
That's it folks, that's why we call Rusty n Edie's BBS
"the Friendliest BBS in the World"
Russell & Edwina Hardenburgh
1480 Fredricksburg Drive
Youngstown, OH 44512
Our Phone Numbers are:
Voice: 216 758-8342
Fax: 216 726-3595
2400 baud 216 726-2620
HST: 216 726-3589
V32: 216 726-1247
Compucom: 216 726-3620
Hayes V-Series: 216 726-3619
Starlink Node: #4909
Connect-USA: RNEBBS
*** 10+ Gigs *** *** 99 Nodes ***