Da Prophecy BBS

Da ProphecyDa Prophecy

This page is dedicated to my BBS system, called "Da Prophecy", which was running from June 1997 to December 1998. BBSes were privately ran computer systems offering message bases, files and online games, accessible by a modem over a standard phone line. My system, oriented in Demoscene, Art, Music and Coding, was mostly a message board with very active local conferences. If you want to check how the board looked like back then, you can download an archive containing all the art drawn for it, along with BBS Intros and various adverts. You can also download the BBS Intros individually: BBS Intro #01 (Video) coded by Arrakis (November 1997) and BBS Intro #02 (Video) coded by ONC (April 1998).

I got my first modem on May 29th 1996 and started calling BBSes in my local area from that date. The first BBS I ever called was "Morte Lune", on May 30th. In April 1997, I started to call long distance boards and discovered my first scene BBS: "Dream Mountains", which was running a wicked PCBoard setup with awesome ansis. I was also a frequent user of these fine scene boards: "Data Crawler", "Divide By Zero", "Equalizer" and "Planet Mars", all running very nice looking PCBoard setups. Over this time span, I've made a lot of contacts and experienced the global dynamism and attracting effect revolving around those underground communities, which eventually made me join the scene and take part in artscene and demoscene.

For files and resources about the French BBS Scene, you can check the (French) BBS and Minitel Archives.

If you are interested about BBS history, Jason Scott of textfiles.com released a 3 DVD box documentary called "BBS Documentary". Here is an interview from him, explaining what the documentary is all about. The documentary is now available on the Internet Archive, and the original DVD images are also freely available for download.

Lastly, you can also listen to "Paging system operator" from the late nineties band Barcelona, released in 2000 on their "ZeRo-oNe-INFINITY" album to complete the journey.

Da Prophecy v1.0 - Opening date: 1997-06-21 - Closing date: 1997-08-10

Da Prophecy is finally online! Running a fully modded Remote Access setup. Although it came pretty late, activity was fantastic, with peaks up to 40 calls a day and tons of messages in the local bases. The final backup has unfortunately been lost during a crashdisk in October 1997. Hopefully, I had a backup elsewhere, but dating from June 23th, so reported calls/downloads statistics period is only 2 days worth :( Fortunately, the message base had been almost fully saved in a QWK packet before switching to PCBoard in August 1997, and one of my cosysops had backups from all messages, so the message counting should be fairly accurate.

Running on an Intel 486DX2-66 under MS-DOS 6.22 powered by a 1200Mb Quantum Fireball HD and an USR Sportster Vi 33600bps external modem.

Statistics (Reported by D-Stat v5.20): 1997-06-21 - 1997-06-23
Users8+
BBS Calls26+
Downloads (Files)17
Downloads (Kb)1648
Uploads (Files)20
Uploads (Kb)1172
Messages in Local Conferences
Main Board1523
Delires (Delirium)329
Demos (Demo Scene)231
Adrenaline PC (Supported Demogroup(WHQ))200
Spiritisme (Spiritism)119
Points (FTN Points)59
Test (FTN Tests)27
Total Statistics
Total Messages2488+
Total Calls26+
Running Period (Days)51
Daily Average Messages48.78+

Da Prophecy v2.0 - Opening date: 1997-08-11 - Closing date: 1998-06-21

Switched to PCBoard + QFront! All the ansis were changed, and the Ravnet message network was relayed. The local conferences remained very active until the end, although they had some slow months during the December/January period. The most active message writers were FTN Points, so the board received more mailer calls than BBS calls. Unfortunately, there was a gap in the mailer logs so the calling statistics aren't accurate. Despite a high level of activity, I decided to close the system in late June 1998, exactly one year after its opening, because of some personal issues at the time.

Running on an Intel 486DX2-66 under MS-DOS 6.22 powered by a 1200Mb Quantum Fireball HD and an USR Sportster Vi 33600bps external modem.

Mailer Statistics (Reported by DCount v1.00r2): 1997-08-11 - 1997-12-18
Mailer Connects1869
Outgoing Calls447
Secure Sessions793
BBS Connects583
Mailer Statistics (Reported by DCount v1.00r2): 1998-03-20 - 1998-06-21
Mailer Connects625
Outgoing Calls114
Secure Sessions123
BBS Connects426
Statistics (Reported by Aegis Statistics PPE v1.0)
Users94
BBS Calls1177
Downloads (Files)472
Downloads (Kb)66873
Uploads (Files)204
Uploads (Kb)14867
Statistics (From PCBoard Waiting For Callers Menu)
Calls1016
Downloads (Files)878
Uploads (Files)185
Messages in Local Conferences
Main Board4392
Delirium1250
Private Messages623
Coding560
Adrenaline PC (Supported Demogroup(WHQ))286
Demo Scene214
Underground17
Total Statistics
Total Messages7342
Total Calls3671+
Running Period (Days)315
Daily Average Messages23.30
Daily Average Calls11.65+

Da Prophecy v3.0 - Opening date: 1998-08-02 - Closing date: 1998-12-11

Back online after 6 weeks of downtime, running a new setup built from scratch with an upgraded PCBoard version, new ansis and new local message bases. The hardware was also upgraded, as it was running on a Cyrix P200+ box. At this time, the Ravnet message network died, most of the boards carrying it were closing down, and the French BBS scene was almost completely dead. As the board didn't carry any networks, mailer support was dropped, resulting in no support for FTN Points. It later carried CCI message network, with FTN packets feed by Internet. There wasn't much activity anymore, as most of the users never came back, and the BBS closed forever in December 1998 as it hardly got any calls in the last weeks of its life.

Running on a Cyrix P200+ under Windows 95 powered by a 1200Mb Quantum Fireball HD and an USR Sportster Vi 33600bps external modem.

Statistics (Reported by Aegis Statistics PPE v1.0)
Users25
Calls172
Downloads (Files)80
Downloads (Kb)8205
Uploads (Files)20
Uploads (Kb)269
Statistics (From PCBoard Waiting For Callers Menu)
Calls170
Downloads (Files)155
Uploads (Files)20
Messages in Local Conferences
Main Board246
Pager Report81
Private Messages15
Delirium13
Philo (Philosophy)9
ANSi/ASCii7
Girling3
New Filez3
Emulatorz2
Music2
Demo Scene1
BBS Scene0
Calculatorz0
Commz/Internet0
Graphics0
Hardware0
Unix Systemz0
Video Gamez0
Total Statistics
Total Messages382
Total Calls172
Running Period (Days)132
Daily Average Messages2.89
Daily Average Calls1.30

All-time Statistics

Total Messages10212+
Total Calls3869+
Running Period (Days)498