Eighteen boards answering :: alpha ANSI · 38400 8-N-1 · CP437

Call a demo board

Every board ATA supports, all eighteen of them, is running on ordinary shared hosting and answering in your browser. Pick one, make an account, post a message, trade a file, and play Legend of the Red Dragon.

AlphaRead this before you call

This is an alpha. It has bugs, and probably a lot of them.

Think of these demos as a technical proof of concept. What they prove is that real boards from the 1980s and 1990s, unmodified, can answer calls in a browser from hosting built for WordPress. They do not prove that ATA is finished, polished, or ready to run your board on. Expect things to break: a call that hangs before the board answers, a screen that draws wrong, a transfer that stalls halfway, a door that drops you back at the menu.

  • The boards may be reset at any time. Your account, your posts, your files and your game characters can disappear without warning.
  • Give the boards nothing real. Use a handle, a password you use nowhere else, and made-up answers to anything personal a sign-up asks.
  • Breaking it is useful. When something goes wrong, tell me what happened. That is what an alpha is for.

▓▒░ Every supported board

Pick one and call it.

Each one is the real board, unmodified, with a message area, a file area and Legend of the Red Dragon in the doors. Fido is the one without LORD, and The Major BBS adds Galactic Empire.

The Major BBS 6.25 Alpha

Galacticomm's multi-line giant, with Galactic Empire running natively in its doors.

Call it: The Major BBS 6.25

How many callers a board takes at once is a setting, up to the board software's own limit: most run six lines and can be raised, a shareware build stops where it stopped (two lines on RemoteAccess, VBBS and Virtual Advanced, three on GAP), and Citadel-86e and Asgard-86 are single-line boards by design.

▓▒░ Before you call

What a call is like.

  1. Give it a moment. Your browser is booting a small DOS machine, and the first call has to download it, so the board can take a little while to answer.
  2. Use a keyboard. These boards were built for keyboards and typed commands, so a computer is the best way to call.
  3. Sign up on the first call. Every board signs up new callers its own way, with its own questions, just as it always did.
  4. Say goodbye. When you are done, log off with the board's own command rather than closing the tab. On most of them that is G for Goodbye; on The Major BBS it is X. The board hangs up the way it would have on a modem, and your line is free for the next caller.

▓▒░ When it breaks

Tell me what happened.

Bug reports go to the support forum, which ATA shares with ATDT and Usurper. The more of this you can include, the faster it gets fixed:

  1. Which board. And the node number, if the board showed one.
  2. What you were doing. The menu you were in and the keys you pressed, as near as you remember.
  3. What happened instead. A screenshot beats any description.
  4. Your browser and computer. Chrome on Windows 11, say, or Safari on a Mac.
[F]Open the support forum

▓▒░ Run one yourself

The alpha is out.

ATA 0.1.67 Alpha is out for download: one small file installs any of these eighteen boards on your own shared hosting, with the manual beside it. It is the same early alpha the demos run, so the same warning applies.

[G]Download ATA [M]The manual [N]Get notified

Every board here is its authors' work, and runs exactly as released. Legend of the Red Dragon was written by Seth Robinson, and Galactic Empire by Mike Murdock.