a$=”Hello, World!”:sysc(.)
Hello and welcome to Color64.com.
I registered this domain name several years ago when my interest piqued about Color64. Around that time I spent the Veterans day holiday (poorly) writing a jQuery script which mimicked Color 64. That was in 2011.
Fast-forward to 2019 and I have finally found a reason to put the domain name to good use: to track my progress in bringing a heavily-modded Color64 BBS program back to life.
I started running BBSes in the mid-80s as a high school freshman and ran The Fone Company, a Color 64 BBS from 1988 until around 1990 when I switched to Supra 128. The Supra 128 version ran until my 1581 disk drive literally caught fire and died in late 1992. I then moved on to what I thought would be a promising career in radio. That didn’t happen.
Fast-forward and now I have been doing web programming, hosting and development for 23 years. So, Color 64/Supra 128 really did put me on the path to my career choice, though I did not realize it at the time.
I did not write Color 64, I only ran a BBS though I did write a ton of mods for it and bugged the bujesus out of other SysOps. Those who deserve the accolades for Color64 are Greg Pfountz, the original author as well as Sam Lewit who wrote Network 64, a well-before-it’s time version what we consider instant messaging today. Also Julian Burger, the original author of Supra 128 and James Abraham who took over development. It is thanks to you fine gentleman that I and others like me are involved in technology today.
In 1995 Greg released Color 64 v7.37 as public domain software. Bo Zimmerman at Zimmers.net provided downloads for both Color 64 and Supra 128, which are mirrored on this site.
Recently I have been looking for Color 64 and Supra 128 resources around the web. Unfortunately they are not easy to find unless you dig through tons of threads on boards like Lemon64 and PETSCII forums. There are other resources floating around the web but no single resource.
With the interest in resurrecting old BBSes from the dead via telnet I will be documenting my own process in doing so here so that my information may help others to quickly, cheaply(?) and easily get their BBSes back online.
This site has been built (hastily) on WordPress but it does have forums, downloads and a BBS listing so if you are interested in the platform and wish to contribute please, welcome aboard!
Glad to see this domain is still running. If I can ever get my Web Terminal running I would like to see if you would host a copy to allow interfacing with your BBS from your website.
I ran the Quantum Leap BBS back in the early 90’s on Supra 128. Since I lived across town from James, I ended up working with him on the 56k modem upgrade. I know he ended up selling the software rights to someone else, and I lost track of it after that. Nice to see it is still alive.
That’s awesome, Scott! Jim made some incredible mods and games for the software. I’m trying to keep it alive!
I spoke with the current owner of it and got his blessing to run it and distribute it. I actually bought mine from Julian who I got in touch with. Despite the rumors he is indeed alive and well.
Awesome. I would love to revive my old BBS on a 128d I bought. Any chance you or the owner still has any of the old records to see which serial # my bbs was? I think it was under #10 or less, but with my memory. I do remember I converted a Color 64 game to Supra 128. I believe it was a space trader game.