From Newsgroup: alt.bbs.synchronet

Hey folks,

Just sharing an accidental (unintended) discovery about a certain use
case for the BBS.

First, some history. Occasionally I catch up with Retro Recipes
(perifractic) on youtube and was quite attentive to his purchase of
commodore and his efforts to reboot the C64 platform. Basically, an FPGA
jobber with the original breadbin designed molding, a mechanical
keyboard, wifi and some flashy shit.

For some time, I considered buying one to support his cause but, life is expensive as it is and I can't justify buying a 40 column device that'll
serve to collect dust. Ultimately, I'm not nostalgic for the C64. Never
had one as a kid, none of my friends did. The schools I attended had
Apple. Bought a C64 mini from gamestop, on sale for $20, some years
ago. The games aren't compelling to me. And, I'm accustomed to MS basic
on my trs-80 laptop.

So why am I here? Well, peri said that they've sold roughly 15000 new
c64u's. All with wifi. I operated under an assumption that we'd see an
uptick of bbs logins from C64's looking for a petscii theme. So, i began planning out a petscii theme for my bbs to support them. I figured, by
the time the devices ship, my board would be ready for them.

During dinner in October, my wife suggested submitting a poll on a
forum. I thought, 'what a brilliant idea.' Lemon64 has huge threads on
this endeavor. Hundreds of thousands of views. i thought it would be a
perfect place to go.

So I put out the poll at the end of October and set it to go a
month. With threads surrounding my post with views in the thousands,
mine saw a meager number just under 200 views, three responses, and 11
votes. All this in a month on a very active forum.

So what did I learn from this?

1. It would've been a grand waste of time to do what I thought was a
service to the C64U community.
2. Roughly 5.6% of their community have interests in bbs'ing on a c64.
3. The userbase isn't nostalgic for our scene, it's about games. As
kids, they were gaming, not using modems.
4. The existing boards with PETSCII themes probably have their community already carved out. My entry won't add any 'benefit' to them.

I'm so glad my wife made the suggestion she did. I, otherwise, wouldv'e operated under a bad assumption. Keep this in mind if you have similar thoughts. I mean, I could've just created a petscii theme just for shits
and giggles. True, I'm too lazy for that.
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Re: Easy lesson learned = time saved
By: Daniel to alt.bbs.synchronet,alt.bbs.mystic on Wed Dec 03 2025 07:53 pm

Just sharing an accidental (unintended) discovery about a certain
use case for the BBS.

First, some history. Occasionally I catch up with Retro Recipes (perifractic) on youtube and was quite attentive to his purchase
of commodore and his efforts to reboot the C64 platform. Basically,
an FPGA jobber with the original breadbin designed molding, a
mechanical keyboard, wifi and some flashy shit.

For some time, I considered buying one to support his cause but, life
is expensive as it is and I can't justify buying a 40 column device
that'll serve to collect dust. Ultimately, I'm not nostalgic
for the C64. Never had one as a kid, none of my friends did. The
schools I attended had Apple. Bought a C64 mini from gamestop,
on sale for $20, some years ago. The games aren't compelling
to me. And, I'm accustomed to MS basic on my trs-80 laptop.

So why am I here? Well, peri said that they've sold roughly 15000
new c64u's. All with wifi. I operated under an assumption that we'd
see an uptick of bbs logins from C64's looking for a petscii theme.
So, i began planning out a petscii theme for my bbs to support
them. I figured, by the time the devices ship, my board would be
ready for them.

During dinner in October, my wife suggested submitting a poll on a
forum. I thought, 'what a brilliant idea.' Lemon64 has huge threads
on this endeavor. Hundreds of thousands of views. i thought it would
be a perfect place to go.

So I put out the poll at the end of October and set it to go a month.
With threads surrounding my post with views in the thousands, mine
saw a meager number just under 200 views, three responses,
and 11 votes. All this in a month on a very active forum.

it's worse than you think. the people who were interested weren't really interested. there's a lot of fake people that pretend to be into retro shit but really are idiots who are not interested.
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Re: Easy lesson learned = time saved
By: Daniel to alt.bbs.synchronet,alt.bbs.mystic on Wed Dec 03 2025 07:53 pm

2. Roughly 5.6% of their community have interests in bbs'ing on a c64.

And of that 5.6%, 90% of them only call a retro BBS once...

(my perspective as a sysop of an Atari 8-bit BBS since 1984)

There was a time between 2000-2005, when I basically had one regular caller who called every day. I rememebr the day he told me that he was shutting down his Atari and would not be calling back anymore... and he never has. His account is still active however if he wants to... :)

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Re: Easy lesson learned = time saved
By: Daniel to alt.bbs.synchronet,alt.bbs.mystic on Wed Dec 03 2025 07:53 pm

From Newsgroup: alt.bbs.synchronet
Just sharing an accidental (unintended) discovery about a certain use case for the BBS.
So why am I here? Well, peri said that they've sold roughly 15000 new c64u's. All with wifi. I operated under an assumption that we'd see an uptick of bbs logins from C64's looking for a petscii theme. So, i began planning out a petscii theme for my bbs to support them. I figured, by the time the devices ship, my board would be ready for them.

I thought about adding PETSCII support to my AI-WX door, but I came to the same conclusion you did. I fear it would be a LOT of work for a very small audience. Although if I get really bored and have time on my hands, I may re-visit it in the future. I may have been more apt to do it had I been a C64 owner in the past, but I was and still am a TRS-80 CoCo 1/2/3 user.

Lonewolf
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