BBDC Welcome to the Washington, DC area BBS list produced continuously each month since at least 1988 by Mike Focke. This is the last time the list will be issued. As the number of BBSs has dropped and their place has been taken by the Internet, the importance of BBSs to the online community has declined to one where fewer BBSs have fewer lines frequented by fewer users. So it is time, after 11+ years to let the few boards that are left communicate directly to their members. It has been over a year since I added a new BBS and the number of boards I know about has dropped from a high of over 550 to todays low of 38 and dropping. BBDC1299.ZIP contains the December, 1999 DC area list of boards validated the previous month. It is available as a free download on the CPCUG MIX at 301-738-9060. Most users will just view "ascii.txt" and scan the information that is printed (about 3+ pages). The user need only run LIST or some Windows equivalent (like the WRITE applet) against the file ASCII.TXT to see formatted text output. DCBB grew out of a long felt need for a verified BBS list. I had seen BBS lists that had once been current but had not been maintained or had been added to but never verified. Old numbers meant people kept calling the numbers years after the BBS went down and continued to irritate the owners of the new numbers. DCBB was my attempt to develop a verified list and I decided to share the list, as I had done in the Atari-800 BBS community for several years before that. Jeff Morley, sysop of a then-operative board called Interconnect, saw the list and provided a program to format the data in ways a user might find useful. But we were always constrained by the size and number of data fields we had to work with in the communications program I was then using. As DOS faded and I grew to using Windows and then NT, it became possible to use multi-tasking and GUI advantages to make my task easier. So I began designing my dream system and put out a plea for programming help. Larry Robertson, sysop of ElectroTech, saw the plea and answered. All the data import, phone number verification program design and data base programming was done by Larry, an enormous task and one for which I am immensely grateful. Without this automation to ease my verification task each month, there would be no BBDC list. The new format was signaled by the name change to BBDCmmyy.ZIP. It allows the sysop to list much more info than they ever could before. Hopefully, we have removed all the problem areas the sysops pointed out over the years but which we were unable to do anything about until now. Do NOT call me voice please. Not under any circumstances. It irritates my wife. I generally reply quickly to Email. mike.focke@wang.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Technology description: A series of comma delimited files were imported into a Microsoft Access format data base. The data is thereafter maintained in a Visual Basic for Windows 9x program with the classic capabilities to add, delete or edit a record. There is a built in Visual Basic for Windows routine that verifies that all BBS numbers at least still answer with a modem. Multiple passes on various dates and times are done over a month period at different baud rates before a number is listed as down. Disconnected numbers are removed after several months of no connection or at the first sound of a disconnected "voice" message. I'm sure Larry would allow the total package to be used/modified by some other BBS list maintainer in another location. The verify program might well be useful to a person in another location without any changes. It expects a ascii file with a list of phone numbers and keeps dialing until it has verified them all or until you ask it to quit. I run it all night for several nights against my once 500+ number list and it gets me down to about 20 I have to on-line verify. It makes verifying painless for the BBS list publisher, so much so there is no longer any justification for publishing a list that isn't verified each month. If you are a BBS list publisher, you will love this native Windows 9x verification program. Unfortunately, I've lost track of Larry over the last few years of BBS attrition. I can no longer give you access to the source. None the less, the verification module can probably be set up to work with your area codes.