Eskimo North was started as a single line computer BBS (bulletin board system), back in 1982, running on a 2 Mhz Z-80 based Trs-80 model III with a whopping 48kb of RAM and two single sided 40 track floppy drives which held about 180kb of data, or 144kb on the system disk.

After getting involved with a project to port Minibin to my host driver and vice versa, it became a Minibin-derived room message system.

In 1985, when we went to a Xenix system, I looked for some way to provide similar functionality and for a while we ran an MMBBS (MicroMagic BBS) that was a Unix Citadel like clone, but it really never enjoyed much popularity.

Still, I liked and missed the old room style message systems because they seemed to promote more intelligent conversations than most other computer media.

I put up a phpBB forum here, which is a web based forum, at first it got some use but that died down.  I think the combination of the old server being painfully slow for PHP applications and spam and the fact that users couldn’t create forums all contributed to that.  The speed issue has been resolved and the spammers brought under control, so I’m hoping it might revive.

But, I’ve also added a Citadel BBS now and opened it up to the public, anyone can join, post, and create rooms (topics).  It can be accessed either as a web forum or you can telnet to it.

To access from the web go to http://citadel.eskimo.com:8080/

To access via telnet, type telnet citadel.eskimo.com

If you are coming in from Windows you can type the telnet command from the DOS command prompt.

There is a bug in the telnet portion that is causing it to not accept connections from MacIntosh machines, but there is also a work around.  If you’re on a Mac, connect to one of the shell servers.

If you telnet in to citadel.eskimo.com, you’ll get the old familiar interface very much like you used to get if you dialed in.  I haven’t created a bunch of rooms because I want you folks to create things that interest you.

To create a room:

If you telnet in, type .Enter Room and give it a room name.

If you access via the web, Select the “Advanced” options from the menu on left, then on the right under Advanced Room Commands, select the Create Room option.

The Citadel is free to everyone that doesn’t abuse it so invite your friends.  Spammers aren’t welcomed and will be ejected.