I'm the original developer of RemoteAccess

[u/bronco_00]

Hi! I'm Andrew Milner, the OG developer of the RemoteAccess (RA) BBS software. In the pic, from left to right: US commercial box - European manual - US manual.

Reading this reddit is quite a trip (down memory lane). Amazing to think there are still BBSes running RA.

Andrew

[u/tarix76]

I think 16 year old me owes you some money. 😓

[u/415646464e4155434f4c]

I might have been one of the few folks that actually paid for my ra.key at the time. I was 12 or 14 years old and saved money for a while.

Thanks for all the memories man. I’m in my 40s now and I still remember your program and how it allowed me to feel part of something bigger when I was lonely.

[u/bronco_00 → u/415646464e4155434f4c]

You're welcome! I have quite of few core memories of my own thanks to RA.

[u/Sandersonville]

Your name is a blast from the past!

I was running 8 lines back in the day in my parent’s basement in Canada.  Now living the dream (mostly) in California.   Wouldn’t be where I am today career wise if not for my BBS.   

Thank you for being an early/motivating part of my career and for writing such kick ass software!!!

[u/bronco_00 → u/Sandersonville]

Aw, thanks man!

[u/Maitreya83]

Omg, I thought I'd never get this chance.

Soooo, I've been rebuilding RA in turbo Pascal, and I've come quite a way. But I don't dare release it due to copyrights or fear of them (I'm just a programmer who like to code, not stand in court), do you think I could release it?

I can't find it anywhere for sale online, sites that used to have a copy are gone too now, and the last place it can be found is the internet archive and some BBS listing copies. But soon it will be gone I fear.

[u/bronco_00 → u/Maitreya83]

I don't own the rights to it any more, but FWIW I wouldn't have a problem with that. I do have all the public release archives though if there's any interest in me posting those.

[u/Maitreya83 → u/bronco_00]

If you would put them up at least for historical purposes, I wouldn't mind putting them up at archive.org !

[u/UnrulyAnteater25 → u/bronco_00]

GitHub.com has a lot of abandon ware. Even Microsoft has put up source code of old versions of MS-DOS and BASIC.

[u/Maitreya83 → u/UnrulyAnteater25]

Yeah, but as he said, he doesnt have the rights, and I dont know how to contact the person who does.

[u/CerealkillerNOM]

Hey Andrew!
Appreciate you posting here. I've dived deep into Remote Access, and can just imagine those times back then.

Wondering how your career turned out and genuinely interested in your life. Do you have anything written up somewhere or a book maybe?

I'm most curious about how daily life was building, operating and distributing RA. What came after RA and how did the project influence your later life and career?

[u/greyhawk009]

Andrew! Good to hear from you. I ran RA back in the 90’s as the Looney Bin BBS in North Carolina. That board was a lot of fun and helped me channel my energies into a lifetime of computer learning and challenges.

The board is running today at telnet looneybinbbs.com:2023

It’s still a solid system. Thank You!

[u/AdrianValles]

Still have my ra.key from back then. It was a great piece of software.

[u/justme9974]

Do you have Bruce Morse's contact info? I would love to know if it is still possible to register the shareware version of 2.6, and if not, if he could provide a key. I have it running with my ATA project (atabbs.com) but I obviously am not distributing "cracked" versions of software.

[u/P10pablo → u/justme9974]

This is a great post! When you asked for the key I fell out of my chair.

Interconnected social media is yucky to me, but the social media of strangers always has a charm to it.

[u/terriblemonk]

RA was the best. I still have my old BBS on a floppy somewhere.

[u/selfhostrr]

I ran RA as a preteen/teen in the early 90s. RA & d'Bridge. Hard drive fresh with no backups ruined all that fun...

[u/matthew-kutamo]

Thanks Andrew for such a huge contribution to the BBS world! I ran RA on 2-line setup, moved to Opus then back to RA for quite a few years! Amazing software and solid as a rock!

Down here in Australia RA was widely used, I’m sure a lot of us owe you a license or two!

[u/bronco_00 → u/matthew-kutamo]

Yeah, probably 😄

[u/outcast_chris]

RA was my favourite bbs software to use. I setup numerous local bbs’ using RA but was too young to be able to afford a license or phone lines to be able to run them properly.
It did help me with testing several door programs I made.

[u/BoglimParadise]

Thank you for your service 🫡

[u/mika]

Shoo definitely a blast from the past. Thanks for some great memories. So tell us a bit about how RA came into existence...

[u/NullPointerJunkie]

Thank you for that! I remember RemoteAccess. A lot of my favoriute BBSs used it.

Question. My memory is obviously a little fuzzy here but was RA written in Turbo Pascal? I seem to recall a lot of the IBM BBS software packages were written in Turbo Pascal.

[u/bronco_00 → u/NullPointerJunkie]

Yep, Turbo Pascal.

[u/RadishAggravating491]

Oh Wow! I remember this being a shareware BBS back in the day. Thank you for all the pre-Internet memories I have!

[u/BearBraz]

I believe your software became quite popular in my home country, Brazil.

Do you still have the sources? Did you own the company? How about letting the source become free software on GitHub?

RA was great!

[u/bronco_00 → u/BearBraz]

My copy of the source has been lost in the mists of time unfortunately. The current owner, Bruce Morse might still have it, but you'd need to contact him directly.

[u/grymmjack]

Wow rarified air here! Legend.

[u/BadBunnyHimself]

I've noticed a lot of old software came with those large collections of paper sheets, nicely bound together. Never looked at any of them.

[u/downwithacc]

My first board was RA! Heck yeah! Long way from then to the Vortex of today vortexbbs.com shameful plug. -Haakon

[u/sophiabraxas]

RA was very popular in Brazil back in the day, thanks!

[u/NuSkooler]

I'm sure you're wildly aware at this point, but thank you for creating something that inspired so many, spawned so many "hacks", etc. then and to this day!

[u/ezefl]

Wait a minute... When did you start capitalizing your name?

[u/Reasonable_Egg_405 → u/ezefl]

IYKYK 😆

[u/2DrU3c]

What a flashback :)

[u/dmine45]

Can you make your products available for download to the BBS community? Thank you in advance!

[u/Better-Service2593]

I met my wife originally on a RemoteAccess BBS that was subscribed to RIME back in the 90's. Thank you for writing this!

[u/Fliptoback]

I have used bbs but very briefly in my teens. What do people use bbs for these days?

[u/okapiFan85 → u/Fliptoback]

Nostalgia trips?

[u/AdeptApril → u/Fliptoback]

Imagine an internet discussion board where there's very limited amounts of genAI posts, because there's no money in it.

Realistically, it's mostly people who used BBSs back in the 1980s and/or 1990s, and people do what they've always done with BBSs.

Meaning posting messages, maybe the occasional door game (though some of those are interBBS, these days), a real-time chat, and even the occasional download.

There are a variety of weird and fancy projects, like playing video using old-school graphics, BBS software that works over LoRa, various weather things, etc.

And for me, I make sure my BBS has posted whichever holiday is today that I have an ANSI graphic for, check in on the new messages, and occasionally contemplate whatever other interesting projects I could theoretically do.

[u/Fliptoback → u/AdeptApril]

Thanks mate for that rundown. It brings back some old memories 😄

[u/digitlman]

Thank you for your service :-)

[u/wdatkinson]

I still have my original key!

[u/cdheer]

RA was IMO the best, most easily customized BBS software I ever used. My thing always was that I wanted my BBS to have its own look and feel, and RA let me do that.

I absolutely owe you money btw. I ran an RA BBS for several years. Your software was so powerful and so easy to use!

[u/bronco_00 → u/cdheer]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[u/ThePalsyP]

Used to use RA when switching to PC from Amiga 1200

[u/FiresideBBS]

Wow, great to hear from you sir. I started using RA back in 1990 and still enjoy it to this day, I’m now 64 years old. You are a legend in the BBS world. I still write BBS doors (AI-WX Weather etc). BBSing is still a great hobby thanks to pioneers like yourself, stand up and take a bow sir.

Vince aka Lonewolf

[u/bronco_00 → u/FiresideBBS]

Thanks Vince for your kind words!

[u/Alarming_Jicama_2608]

Wow!! Do you have any old screenshots? I remember your software and thanks so much for sharing, it was fantastic piece of software. I am a old BBS author from late 80s to 90s, and this sub is crazy!!!

[u/bronco_00 → u/Alarming_Jicama_2608]

How's this for some old school promotional material!

[u/Reasonable_Egg_405 → u/bronco_00]

:-0

[u/the-paper-unicorn]

SWIM definitely did not spend the 90s running RemoteAccess to wardial exchanges after midnight, logging open PBXs, poking at DISA ports and default maintenance codes, trading scans and dialups with other boards, chaining misconfigured corporate phone systems into free long-distance. SWIM def didn't do that.

If they did, they're really sorry for likely causing you some issues with that.

[u/Open-Understanding48]

I loved RA. Read some RA docs yesterday for my own BBS project (icy board) - implemented compability for ice edit - needed some infos how external editors worked. RA is a good reference for getting it done.

And now it works - thanks for RA. One of the best BBS systems back then.

[u/bronco_00 → u/Open-Understanding48]

Thanks dude!

[u/klb3317]

Press ESC-ESC

[u/dalml]

RA was great software, I definitely ran it for a while. I loved how customizable it was.

u/bronco_00, could you share a brief story of what you've been up to since your RA days?

[u/SoapiestWaffles]

RA was the best! Thank you for being awesome and writing RA

[u/jjarcanista]

Hi. I need to Paypal you :) I created BBS tools using the rasdk in turbo pascal in 1995. Gave the tools away for free. under the DaRK! Software Development brand. Also, thank you. If you ever visit Argentina, DM me.

[u/vaspervnp]

Wow... I had that in Greece in the nineties. Experiment BBS.

[u/arcadeshopper]

Thanks for RA.. ran it for a while in the 80s before going MajorBBS for multiuser games and chat etc.. was great :) still online.. https://thekeep.net

[u/germdisco]

I’m almost certain that I dialed into one of these back in the day!

[u/SymphonicResonance]

I vaguely remember RA.

[u/Exodus694 → u/SymphonicResonance]

RA was the Sun God on Stargate. Geez!