Heya everyone,

It is I, Al, hyjinx the 3rd of the New Zealand kind.

I wanted to drop by and say hello. It has been too long my dear friends.

Trouble is, I'm always working these days, my business demands so much of me, and then the remaining time I'm either making the odd little video here and there, or I'm with the missus or the kid doing family gubbins.
Now, one of the things I really wanted to do was combine my passion for
working on my old PCs and being able to practically call up BBSes at the
same time. This involved a bunch of things to be a reality. However, today,
I write this from my IBM 5160/XT, now with upgraded Intel InBoard/386
goodness. Yes, my XT (which originally had a sucky 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU and an 8-bit bus), is now running in 32 bits with a 386-16MHz CPU. This is all courtesy of a rare beast of a card from Intel, which I spent faaaar too much money on on Ebay. I will be uploading the video to my Patreon supporters very soon. YouTubes sometime later.

Naturally, I am chuffed about the performance this gives, but it opens up
doors to multi-tasking in a way that the 8088 or 80286 could not. So now, I
can launch the microweb web browser in a separate DesqView window, or write a doc in word, and the BBS will still stay connected. This may sound like 'so what, I have an Amiga pal, I've been doing that shit since 1985', but for the IBM PC under plain-jane DOS, it wasn't a thing. You had to quit an app,
launch another and then do a dance. Then there was networking. If you wanted TCP/IP, you could only ever have one app access the packet driver at once. Anything else, and the app would crash. No longer! I have figured out
something called PKTMUX, which is a packet driver multiplexer, essentially
you can load up multiple packet drivers that pull from the main packet driver and they just have different driver interrupts (i.e. 0x60 for the main
driver, 0x65 for mux1 and, say 0x70 for mux2). Works like a charm!

Some other weirdo out there will find this fascinating.... or is it just me?!
I have Ltning on my Discord channel to thank for this (he runs a BBS somewhere), and I also have Michael Brutman for pointing me in the right direction.

Now, will I say "I'm back, baby".. .Back to the BBS scene? Not totally. I
have quite a bit of busyness that won't go away any time soon. What I will be doing, is coming along more.

Anyways I've prattled on long enough now.

Yours in cyberspace,
Mr "Back to the BBS".

Al / hyjinx


hyjinx // Alistair Ross
Author of 'Back to the BBS' Documentary: https://bit.ly/3tRINeL (YouTube) alsgeeklab.com

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: bbs.alsgeeklab.com:2323 (21:1/126)

Heya everyone,
It is I, Al, hyjinx the 3rd of the New Zealand kind.
Trouble is, I'm always working these days, my business demands so much
of me, and then the remaining time I'm either making the odd little
video here and there, or I'm with the missus or the kid doing family gubbins. Now, one of the things I really wanted to do was combine my passion for working on my old PCs and being able to practically call up BBSes at the same time.

However, today, I write this from my IBM 5160/XT, now with upgraded
Intel InBoard/386 goodness.

Naturally, I am chuffed about the performance this gives, but it opens up doors to multi-tasking in a way that the 8088 or 80286 could not.

Some other weirdo out there will find this fascinating.... or is it just me?!

Now, will I say "I'm back, baby".. .Back to the BBS scene? Not totally. I have quite a bit of busyness that won't go away any time soon.

Thanks for the update, hyjinx!! We love watching your videos and understand when life keeps you away. I'm stoked that you continue to find solutions to current day needs with yesteryears tech - and you have many eyes interested...

Appreciate the update and will be watching, when you're able to post videos. w00t w00t!!



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)

I wanted to drop by and say hello. It has been too long my dear friends.

Trouble is, I'm always working these days, my business demands so much
of me, and then the remaining time I'm either making the odd little
video here and there, or I'm with the missus or the kid doing family gubbins. Now, one of the things I really wanted to do was combine my passion for working on my old PCs and being able to practically call up BBSes at the same time. This involved a bunch of things to be a reality. However, today, I write this from my IBM 5160/XT, now with upgraded
Intel InBoard/386 goodness. Yes, my XT (which originally had a sucky
4.77 MHz 8088 CPU and an 8-bit bus), is now running in 32 bits with a 386-16MHz CPU. This is all courtesy of a rare beast of a card from
Intel, which I spent faaaar too much money on on Ebay. I will be
uploading the video to my Patreon supporters very soon. YouTubes
sometime later.

Good to have you back! YEah that ole real life stuff can get in the way of hobbies we love. Sometimes it's those hobbies that keep us from going crazy with real life. It's a hard balance and usually real life will take priority.

Looking foward to some vids.
Welcome Back!

|02-=|10Cozmo|02=-

... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Lunatics Unleashed (21:3/135)

Good to have you back! YEah that ole real life stuff can get in the way o hobbies we love. Sometimes it's those hobbies that keep us from going craz with real life. It's a hard balance and usually real life will take priori -=Cozmo=-

... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

Good to hear from you again Cozmo!

Drop me a netmail or something with your email address and I'll give you a few links to videos not yet on YouTube :)

Al


hyjinx // Alistair Ross
Author of 'Back to the BBS' Documentary: https://bit.ly/3tRINeL (YouTube) alsgeeklab.com

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
* Origin: bbs.alsgeeklab.com:2323 (21:1/126)

Good to hear from you again Cozmo!

Drop me a netmail or something with your email address and I'll give you
a few links to videos not yet on YouTube :)

Al

OH wow, Cool! Thanks! I netnail you.

|02-=|10Cozmo|02=-

... If at first you don't succeed, blame your parents!

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Lunatics Unleashed (21:3/135)