PC Connection Australia BBS

In June 1984, I upgraded my home IBM-PC to have two half-height floppy disk drives, a 10 Mb hard disk drive, and a modem. It went on-line as Australia's first IBM-PC based Bulletin Board System (BBS) in July 1984, called PC Connection Australia BBS.

The Sendata 2000 auto answer, auto disconnect 300 baud modem was provided by Electro-Medical Engineering via the Melbourne PC User Group. Initially 2 Mb worth of public domain software was available for downloading.

Continuous BBS Improvements

The BBS software was written in BASIC and compiled using the IBM BASIC Compiler. By November 1984 there were four other Australian IBM-PC based bulletin boards systems using the same software. In early 1985, Richard Tolhurst helped me with some significant changes to the BBS software.

I wote an article for Today's Computers magazine in March 1985 titled "Bulletin Boards Booming". It explains the then state of BBS systems in Australia, plus has a directory of BBS systems in operation at the time.

My IBM-PC proceeded to run almost continuously 24 hours per day, seven days per week as a BBS until replaced in early 1989. Along the way upgrades in the form of two half-height 20 Mb Seagate hard disk drives, and later two half-height 30 Mb Seagate hard disk drives were made. The Sendata 300 baud modem was replaced by a Sendata 1200 baud modem.

Transition From Open To Closed System

In December 1985, PC Connection Australia BBS became a closed system where visitors only had limited access and users paid a small fee to register for full access.

Two things led to this change. First, I couldn't afford the ongoing costs of operating the BBS. Second, there were just too many people abusing their free access to the BBS, placing offensive messages on the system and uploading copyright software. Many other bulletin board systems switched to closed mode during this period for these reasons.

PC Connection Australia BBS
Goes Multi-User

In 1989, with the support of MicroHelp Computers & Communications, the PC Connection Australia BBS was upgraded to become Australia's first true multi-user BBS system. I switched to using "The Major BBS" software from Tim Stryker at Galacticomm. Moving on to a fast Intel 80286 based system permitted the simultaneous support of four NetComm 2400 baud modems.

Please download/view PC Connection Australia BBS Promo
(Adobe PDF | 2 pages | 359 KB) — September 1989.

Please download/view PC Connection Australia BBS Flyer
(Adobe PDF | 2 pages | 319 KB)

By late 1990, PC Connection Australia BBS had twelve NetComm SmartModem 9600 baud (1.2 KB) modems available to the public. The hardware involved was a Samsung system with an Intel 80386 20 MHz CPU, with 4 Mb RAM, 120 Mb of hard disk storage and two Stargate PLUS-8 8-port serial cards.

Two NetComm/Telebit TrailBlazer modems capable of 18,000 baud (2.25 KB) throughput were used to exchange mail, newsgroups and public domain software with other systems around the world. A couple of SCSI CD-ROM drives were used to place on-line what were then considered some very large software collections.

At its peak, PC Connection Australia BBS had more than 2,500 subscribers who paid 50 cents per hour to access the system. The services available to the users included:

• Electronic Mail,
• Teleconferencing,
• Forums,
• File Libraries,
• Shopping Mall,
• Polls and Questionnaires,
• plus a number of Multi-user Online Games.

The shopping mall was one of the first online shops in Australia. However, it was BBS based. Internet based online shopping still wasn't a thing at the time.

Two media stories about the BBS in 1989 were:
Board Wants Uploader Charged, and
On-line Access to Support.