Junkbox BBS, Perth, Western Australia

Counter

61 8 9344-2462

Australian Weather Satellite (image courtesy of JCU)

Welcome to the web page dedicated to the appropriately named Junkbox Bulletin Board (BBS) located in Perth, Western Australia. This BBS just keeps on chugging along whilst most of the other BBS's in Western Australia disappeared from the scene altogether.

Q: How do you connect to a Bulletin Board?

A: You use a "Terminal" program such as Hyperterminal (Win 95), Terminal (Win 3.1), Telix (DOS) or ZTerm (Mac) and direct dial the above telephone number with your modem. BBS's are text driven and very easy to use.

The original objective of the Junkbox BBS was to construct a Public Access BBS from compu-junk that was considered to be obsolete and of no value to general industry. Surely this equipment could be put to a good use!

The Junkbox BBS was assembled from recycled compu-junk!

Needless to say, so far the BBS has not cost very much. The lack of expenditure means that we have virtually no overheads (apart from telephone line and electricity charges). This is the main reason that the system is available free to the public.

The file areas have increased in size over the last few years. More than 6.3 gig of free DOS, Win 3.1, OS/2, NT and Win95 files are now available for download. The latest antivirus updates and utilities are received regularly via the File Distribution Network (FDN). BBS users are welcome to download all the software they want.

EQUIPMENT
The Junkbox BBS uses genuine IBM computer equipment online. This is one way to stay 100% IBM compatible. The sysops have found that genuine IBM equipment regardless of it's age, offers reasonable levels of reliability.

When you dial up the BBS, you could connect to one of the following units:

IBM Valuepoint 6482-C3B (486DX4 100) with 2 Pioneer DRM-602X SCSI CD-ROM changer units
IBM PS/2 Model 8580 ( 2 of these units, 386DX microchannel architecture, 28,800 bps)
IBM PS/2 Model 8565 (emergency back-up, a 386SX microchannel architecture, 28,800 bps)

MODEMS
The Junkbox BBS uses Taiwanese made Lightfax modems exclusively. Currently we use Lightfax 2880VFC and Lightfax 3360 metal case external modems online. Drivers for Lightfax modems can be found at the Lightfax web site.

BBS SOFTWARE
The Junkbox BBS uses a Caldera DR-DOS 7:02 operating system with Maximus BBS software from Lanius Software.
Maximus is a flexible bulletin board system (BBS) for the DOS, OS/2, Windows NT and Windows 95 operating systems. Maximus allows remote users to connect to the system by modem, read and write messages, participate in public conference areas, send and receive files, and much more. The software is well supported and is Y2K compatible, many utilities for Maximus can still be obtained throughout the worldwide web.

The Junkbox BBS is on line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except for the Zone mail hour which is between 0100 and 0200 WAST when the system may be unavailable.

Background midi music is "War of the Worlds" by Jeff Wayne.

Feedback to the Junkbox BBS