The Love God
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Registered: Aug 2008
Posts: 7 |
Yes, Jazzcat, I suspect it's name is inspired by Rush too. At one point, half of the C64 BBSs in Toronto had either run it, or were running it. It was the poor man's alternative to DarkStar BBS since it's editor/messages used DarkTerm's control keys for background/foreground color setting. No idea about the ESI member. Who knows ?! :)
Here's all I can remember
Program: By-Tor BBS, By Tor BBS, Bytor BBS
Author: Crazy Al Hershman
Main File Size: Most versions I saw had a main file from 145-160+ blocks, eating up all of BASIC memory, or pretty damned close. Everyone compiled it with Blitz! which freed up space, so you might find compiled versions.
The program had a file which loaded in upper memory at $C000. Sorry, cant remember it's name though it might be "ML". The first few bytes were JMP instuctions, then a small buffer of text which was dumped to the visitor upon connection telling them to hit a specific key in Darkterm, then after that came the Punter.C1 file transfer code.
The text in this upper memory file would contain these phrases since it is intended for both ASCII and color visitors.
"By-Tor System"
"Hit Commodore (R) once"
"You MUST Use Darkterm 3.0"
MdZ:
The term Pocket refers to the Pocket modem which was compatible with the Commodore 1650. If someone said "pocket modem" or "1650", it meant these modems or any other like it. There were many companies churning out compatibles such as Bot Engineering, Tiahaho, etc. Dont search for any of this stuff since almost every BBS or terminal program at that time would support them all.
Keywords to search for "By Tor" or "By-Tor" (Now that I think it over, its probably By-Tor), or Bytor. I've already looked on the net, and have had no success.
If you are searching your hard drive, however, there are other things you can search for.
Supporting file names include "STOR", "LIST", and "DATA" in reverse field characters, and the "CREATOR" program (normal characters) which created these files on the BBS data disk. DATA would be a relative file, STOR and LIST sequential files. There was also a file "SET-UP" in reverse field characters (The "-" would not be reversed). These files would exist on a disk separate from the main file.
I can remember some of the prompts or BASIC lines you would get in the program which are probably unique.
"l0802" was a default user level setting for the program. First char is lowercase L, the rest numbers.
Another user level setting prompt would contain, in one BASIC line, these phrases exactly - "Mode (L/D)" "Device" "Drive" "Access".
An INPUT statement "Month,Day" followed by two variables separated by commas. Unusual, since it is inelegant. Most programmers would use two separate prompts. The variables would be M,D or M$,D$
The BBS's main prompt routine was at line 2880. There were hundreds of GOTO2880 statements in the main program. Byte sequence (decimal) 137, 50, 56, 56, 48
By-Tor had a bug which caused it to crash, caused by a GOSUB2880 (Should have been a GOTO). Should only occur once in the same file which contains hundreds of the above sequence. Byte sequence (decimal) 141, 50, 56, 56, 48
No one had fixed this bug in By-Tor while it was popular or in use. I was only told about the error many years later by someone that ran the program. So chances are very slim that the errant GOSUB2880 would be corrected.
Added Note: Another sysop (Hard Copy) that ran it said it also had another name - "IPS". What IPS stands for, I cant recall. This may or may not be true. He may have been referring to By-Tor being based on these other BBS programs. This was 20 years ago, remember :)
Anything else I can remember would have been modified by some or all sysops running it.
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