I’ve been adding some old files from the Rising Sun BBS, that I found on backup disks a few years ago (amazing they were readable ~15-20 years later and that I had a drive that would read them!)

You can browse some of it here, and I’ll be adding more as time goes by, there are a lot of other files in the backups.  I’m also going to try to put some of them in context so people know what is going on:

http://www.phonebook.com/old-information/the-rising-sun-bbs/

There are a lot of cool things in there, dealing with online communities in the early 1980s through the early 1990s and then on the internet more than BBSs thereafter.

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Something Rick Lambert wrote back in the summer of 1984 which kind of sums up the fun we had.  Ran on an Apple ][+, and an Apple ][ clone from Franklin, a Laser clone briefly (I think) and an Apple //e at various points.

Rick died in 1989 (heart attack) and both Alan and I lost a good friend and all around good guy.  Alan and I still keep in touch by email since we are 1000s of miles apart (instead of 30 minutes), although not nearly as much as we used to when The Rising Sun was up.

T H E  R I S I N G  S U N

—–  ———–  —–

The Rising Sun was born after the three SYSOPs met at

a COF luncheon.  Dedicated to the free exchange of information between users

their motto has become:  The Sysop provides the medium, the users provide the

message.  This System provides a meeting place for modem users regardless of

the computer that they use.  The Sun has 325 members right now and is

continually growing as new people call.

Together, Chris Riley, Rick Lambert, and Alan Lobel make up the

Delegation.  Their BBS was the first local BBS to have such things as the

Welcome message, Boarderline, Breaktyping, Message Search, Stringing command,

Stats, and a Poll — to name a few.  Todd Nochomson of the Billboard ratings

calls it “spectacular,” “unique,” and “The most active BBS in Broward County”

— facts to which the number of messages and calls can attest.  Currently the

Rising Sun has 18 sub-boards, over 180 files, and one can access the BBS at

300 or 1200 baud.

As you can see when you call this Bulletin Board, new features and

files are added often to keep up with the users wishes.  It is the most

automated BBS locally.  The heart of the Automation is A.U.R.A. — a program

that creates the statistics file, backs up files and deletes users who have

not called in sixty days.  This leaves the SYSOPs more time to spend on

keeping the board active, up-to-date, and as one user put it: “keeping it

the best board I’ve seen.”

The Rising Sun Shines!

at [305]-473-6348

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2011 Update, here is Rick in 1983 with my parent’s cat: