Where Did Doc’s Place BBS Go? The Long Painful Story

Update 04/26/24: This is the long, painful story about what happened to Doc’s Place BBS, which is forever offline. My Fidonet BBS first went online in 1991 with one dedicated dial-up POTS line. It was online for 32 years after becoming one of the first Internet-accessible BBSs in 1998. When the Internet became publicly accessible, Doc started studying its potential. After my angel from Bangkok, Thailand, whom the lord sent to clean me up in 2008 after my divorce earlier in the year, had her second stroke at Nexus Thai Church of Sarasota in Dec 2019, which took her life, she went to Heaven to be with her Father God. 🙏

Meanwhile, the BBS computer was on an old off-lease Dell Optopllex operating on my home network, running on Windows Seven, that would run for months without a reboot. I rarely logged in. However, as many as 100 callers from all over the world logged in daily. They downloaded their daily QWK mail packets to be read, responded to their echomail, logged back in, and uploaded their reply/outgoing Docs-REP packets. The system processed the packet and added the messages to the appropriate conference. Next, the front-end mailer Platinum Express by Santronics Software waited until everyone was offline, scanned the conferences and extracted anything outgoing while adding a sent flag to the conference. This was used to stop duplicate messages, which could become a nightmare for the network. Fidonet public messages were called Echomail, meaning every conference message was copied to every BBS on the Fidonet Network—the meaning behind Echomail.

QWK packets to be read, responded to their echomail, and then logged back in and uploaded their reply/outgoing Docs-REP packets. The system processed the packet and added the messages to the appropriate conference. Next, the front-end mailer Platinum Express by Santronics Software waited until everyone was offline, scanned the conferences and extracted anything outgoing while adding a sent flag to the conference. This was used to stop duplicate messages, which could become a nightmare for the network. Fidonet public messages were called Echomail, meaning every conference message was copied to every BBS on the Fidonet Network. The meaning behind the term Echomail.

The final process was the mail scanner’s job to send the mail using a sysop-built IP utility called Binkp, commonly called Binkley. It was a very high-tech system in its day and had its own technical standards (FTSC). Fidonet was an ASCII text network with no graphics or hyperlinking capability. I used to say the FTSC network never got out of its dark ages. Regardless, there were still what we called callers from the dial-up POTS days, who faithfully called to get their daily Fidonet fix 😆

Meanwhile, I had found another love, and after dating, we decided to live together. Things were good, but the relationship differed from when we had been dating. On May 14, 2023, I went to a church that was having a blood drive. As I watched the day’s service, I realized that I had never donated blood in my 71 years on God’s good earth. I took it as a sign from God that I should donate my blood after the service ended. To make a log mentally painful story short, I had entered the bloodmobile and wound up outside the bloodmobile, landing hard on my left side, breaking two ribs and mangling my left leg up badly.

I spent 28 days in a rehab facility. During this time, she found another person in another town. She gave her home to her Daughter and her husband and left town. The daughter’s husband told me he sold my possessions, including my computer and mechanics tools, some of which I’ve owned for 45 years. Doc’s Place BBS, I assume, was sold, too. But that’s not quite the end of Doc’s final chapter of his life story.

I can no longer walk and am in an SNF facility. After getting out of rehab, I went to my former residence to get my clothes that were stuffed in garbage bags. I was feeling weak, and being now homeless, I drove to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge Memorial Park to spend the night, but as soon as I got out of my car, my left leg collapsed on me, and down I went. It’s been nearly a year since my initial fall, and I have been a revolving door of rehabs and hospitals, and I still can not walk.

To make matters even worse, soon after being hospitalized, Social Security cut off my benefits. Something about being in a Rehab/SNF facility SS cuts off benefits. So here I sit in Brooksville, FL, With no family or friends to help, nearly flat-broke and still homeless, with all my possessions gone.

Part of my girlfriends and my breakup were my fault, But that’s not an excuse to dispose of my possessions, including my mother’s antique bible. However, after nearly a year of rehab hell, I realized what parts were my fault and wrote her an apology blog post. It’s also my opinion that the rehabs and hospitals have been milking my Medicare and Supplement for all they can get. I have an artificial left hip, and that’s the side I fell on. But none of the doctors or rehabs have suspected it could have been damaged when I fell. What blows my mind is I was trying to do a good deed at church, and I never thought my life would turn out like this! 😥

So, that’s the truth. Speaking of Truth, I am a MAGA Republican and also a vocal Trump Supporter who has been a PITA to the Biden Admen. I wonder if someone💸 got to her and convinced her to give me the boot?💸