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So, you WANNABE A SYSOP?
Version 1.3
First of all, you have to work on the type of person you are. You have
to be at least thirty years old and act, at most, half your age. You also
need to have the idea that other people will believe almost anything
you say just because you are a sysop OR president of a user's group. You
must be able to tell people what they want to hear even if it isn't true.
Although it has nothing to do with being a sysop, it sometimes helps to
have been nominated for am Emmy at least once. When possible, avoid
shaving or any other form of personal hygiene - and don't worry, you're
never too fat.
The second step is your system itself. You'll need to build up your
system around a central theme. Since you will be a jerk and you have no
mind of your own, try to find a board with a good theme like the PERN BBS
and copy that theme. Next, to run the world's greatest BBS, you need to
have the best computer system around. After you have that, you'll have the
most popular board in existence. Here's the minimum system requirements
you need to have for the world's greatest BBS:
Hardware
--------
1] Have at least a thirty-two bit Atari computer running at 15 Mhz.
(Which you made yourself out of ST spare parts. It's not really
yours, it belongs to the company you do janitorial work for, but
that's not important right now.)
2] 1 Gigabyte of RAM
(Installed by yourself and requiring at least 3 separate
attempts to get it working correctly. Don't be ashamed, just
find another person who is interested in an upgrade, give him
the wrong instructions, then use him as a scapegoat so nobody will
know YOU made the mistakes.)
3] Hughes 19,200 baud modem
(Given to you by your company so you can satisfy one of their
critical needs. In other words, probably stolen! Actually, it's
only 300 baud when calling in, but when you log on locally it's
19,200 baud - just don't tell your users that.)
4] 800 Gigabyte Fujitsu Hard Disk
(You don't really need one - just tell your users that the Hard Disk
is in the mail and will arrive tomorrow which is something you
have been telling them since last year.)
5] Digital Equipment Corporation
16 page per minute laser printer.
Software
--------
1) Bulletproof BBS program
(SuperBug 2.5 which you in turn gave to another sysop who had his
before you did, and without the bugs!)
2) MyDos 11.5q
(Which supports the 800 Gigabyte Fujitsu and allows a 100000000000
sector RAMdisk. Never mind that your copy has bugs when formatting.
Give copies to your users anyway, just tell them that it'll work when
they format the disk the second time.)
Board Status
------------
A] Number of users: 1300
(With at least 95% of these not being used in at least a year, and
4% being bogus accounts of your own.)
B] Number of calls: 87,000
(This is the number that you should inflate when you want to tell
other sysops how well your system is doing. Most of these calls are
made by the sysop. Raise it in 100 caller intervals. Also, never show
your printer's call log to the other sysops who don't believe you as
they would find out you were cheating!)
C] People in users group group: 2,500
(This number is, of course, raised to appear that the club is doing
great, even though many users were scared away by the first meeting
and the user's group is no longer in your control.)
If you want a good laugh, pack all of your user's group members into
an area smaller than a Volkswagen Bus, then feed them junk food and weak
punch. This will almost certainly motivate them into finding a decent
place for the group to meet, as you are much too lazy to do it yourself.
D] Number of sub-boards: 130
(The trick here is to have only 300 DD sectors for the message base and
allow only 2-3 messages in each section. Another trick is to have
only 4 subs and claim the others are for special users.)
E] Private subs for: FBI, CIA, KGB,
PLO, IOU, UPS,
AFL, CIO, CBS,
NBC, ABC, PBS,
FOX, and NPR.
Once you have a board that meets these requirements, you can sit back
and enjoy all the money you'll be making from your user's group. You will
have enough money that you can spend it unnecessarily on meeting places
for the group and also use it for your own needs, such as household bills,
which are only 1 year behind payment. Don't worry if your voice line gets
disconnected; just live without it and use your BBS line for the time being.
It's okay for the hospital to call you to tell you a close relative is in
the intensive care unit and all they get is a high-pitched scream, because
the BBS users will worship you for being so faithful to them and the great
image your BBS gives you is more important. People all over the world will
respect you because you run such a spectacular BBS, and you'll be very
popular in the computer community, eventually being promoted to bag-boy.
By: The NOID!
The Hevmedler!
Mr. I/O!
Courtesy of White Knight and Excalibur.