LifeForce:About
LifeForce BBS (or as it has been called: LifeForce WHQ[1]) was a BBS system in Hungary between 1989 and 2000. It has been a member of FidoNet since 1992 with the node number 2:370/15. Its creator, administrator and general caretaker was a kid known by the alias grin.
BBS systems, and FidoNet was the "internet of those days". You get phone line (if you can, since in Hungary that was not a simple feat in the early 90s), get a telephone modem (again, it's not that simple since they were bloody expensive) and call a BBS, using a text terminal, and there you can download/upload files (in those days nobody really worried about copyrights), exchange messages with other users (similar to email of today), communicate in groups (like mailing lists or web boards now), play some games (at least later, when the phone call price was bearable), and get the news otherwise you couldn't. East European BBS scene was quite different from both Western Europe or the USA: the users were privileged, tech-savvy and open to communicate.
LifeForce WHQ was one of the first public BBS systems in Hungary, especially outside the capital Budapest.
History
Life was not simple, since a BBS needed not just a phone line ($$$) but a computer ($$$) and a disk ($$$), and electricity too. In the beginning it was supported by a local computer service (in Debrecen), who let an old machine to hide behind a desk in the back room, and use the phone line in the night when the shop was closed. The first version was using a (half-pirated shareware) version of SuperBBS[2] on DR-DOS. The first modem was a plain 2400 bps Microcom, which was upgraded to a seriously better 2400-MNP5 modem later. As time passed, the technology got extremely modern: the ESDI disks were replaced by ultra-modern IDE disks, the CPU was upgraded to a seriously fast i486 and the modem got replaced by various ZyXel modems, which were able to push the original 2 KB/s speed by using 9600, then 19200 bps, symmetrically, using their own developed protocols.
Later it has been moved (due to reasons) to grin's home in 1994, and stayed there for the rest of its life. The operating system was eventually replaced by the ever-mighty OS/2, which ran the system pretty reliably throughout the years. The FidoNet software was replaced by Xenia, the BBS software by RemoteAccess, and it's been collecting users and files in due course. On the FidoNet connection user groups started to born and thrive, and the community was growing.
The system got struck by thunder twice. First it blew the monitor in my face (and also burned the modem), and stuff was mostly replaced; the disk and the machine survived. The second thunder around 2000 was marking the end of the BBS, since theese phone-based systems were in a decline since Internet took over.
Lot of the files were lost. Some was not. Internet was around.
So after a while there was a Wiki system created with lots of files, and started collecting some people.
The MySQL happened. Database was basically destroyed (in a way that backups were of no use at all, which is normal for MySQL). Motivation sunk.
As time passed, I have pulled up another wiki, again. (This time no MySQL around, it's using PostgreSQL.) But lot of files were gone and no motivation to regnerate. So this wiki is here to collect whatever I want to share, or whatever people want to share.
Just like the original LifeForce WHQ have done.
Editing
Registration is open. It means that plenty of spambots register. Since we do not need a lot of articles about penis enlargement and get money fast scams and like, edit permission is handed out manually. If you feel like you can be a constructive part of the site you send your registered account name to @grin:grin.hu on matrix or by email using wiki-reg address under the drop.grin.hu subdomain, and preferably include what you really want to do.
Copyright
Everything you send in is under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike v4.0 international license. You know the drill: you can use everything provided you include the credits and the source, and same for everything you send in. You guarantee that you have the rights to license your contributions this way, or you bear all the responsibility. By using the site you accept these terms, along with the knowledge that your use of the service is a courtesy and not a right: your right to use may be revoked any time for any reason, and you get no compensation for anything, whatsoever.