Chapter 163 Setting up a BBS server

Matthew was deeply convinced of Lin Hong's words. In fact, he also had a similar idea: "STONE is right, we must rely on the power of the Internet. Since our cracking program was released on major BBS, many people have uploaded their own games and software. Five of these eight games are uploaded by BBS users!"

"Do you mean... our members are not limited to Latin schools?" Arthur is thoughtful.

"Hmm." Lin Hong nodded, "If we want to quickly become a Latin school or even an influential community in the whole state and the whole country, we must abandon the complaid and unchanging tradition of other associations, and recruit members nationwide and even worldwide, just like those famous hacker organizations, so that we can make the world's most When the excellent group of people gathered, there is an old saying in China called 'Three stinky cobblers, better than Zhuge Liang', which can be called... the wisdom of the masses.

The reason why Lin Hong has such an idea is completely inspired by Matthew's last post to solicit the bug of the calculator. At that time, Matthew's post received a large number of very valuable replies in a very short time. If it hadn't been for the information provided by those people, the cracking of the calculator would not have been so smooth.

If you want to make better use of the power of the network, it is best to have your own base, so next, they decided to set up an official BBS belonging to the SAM Association to gather calculator users from all over the country and the world to discuss and share their creations.

SAM Association, together with those football teams, chess clubs and music clubs, is a technical club, so it must keep up with the pace of social development. Publicize yourself with the latest network technology and gather the wisdom of the masses.

The technology and process of building BBS have learned a lot from Hawkeye last time, and there is basically no threshold. If there is any problem, you can also ask Hawkeye for advice. After the last contact, they found that Hawkeye is actually a good communicative person and will definitely be enthusiastic to help them.

But the next problem is the hardware device.

If you need to set up a BBS server, you must have a computer with good performance. In addition, you have to open the network, and you have to pay a service fee every month. These two are not a small expense. Their association provides free services to the outside world, and there is no income at all.

Finally, we discussed it and decided to adopt two main ways to raise funds. On the one hand, it is to raise funds, explain the situation to everyone, post posters in school, post posts on BBS, and publicly collect donations from everyone. If you support them, you can donate some funds voluntarily, not limited to how much.

Another way is to go to companies in the business district to lobby for sponsorship funds. They can consider advertising for merchants in games or software.

At the beginning, they each advanced part of the money to buy the server first, which was regarded as the loan to the association. After receiving everyone's donations, the corresponding amount will be extracted and returned. If there are many funds, it will be used for the development of the community, set up bonuses to reward authors who have written excellent software and games, etc.

The meeting of the "SAM Association" is of very important historical significance, especially the establishment of its own BBS website, which is no longer limited to Latin schools, but the decision to absorb members from all over the world, which has contributed a very important impetus to the rapid growth and development of the association since then. Function, of course, this is the last word.

Matthew estimated that a good-performance computer plus the money connected to the Internet is about $4,000. According to the economic situation of the four people, Matthew and Pearson each pay $1,500 each, and Lin Hong and Arthur each pay $500 each. The main reason why Arthur had no money was that he had just bought a super luxurious computer. He had to borrow money from his parents this time.

Matthew's money was originally saved to buy a better car. The cars he drove before were all his father's, but since the SAM Association needed them, he temporarily put them up.

Although Pearson looked silent, his family was very rich. Originally, he directly asked him to pay the 4,000 dollars, but he was rejected. Everyone thought that this was the business of the association and it was better to do business.

After collecting the money, everyone went to downtown Boston to buy a server and some necessary accessories.

In order to get the best performance with the least money, they decided to buy various accessories of the computer and then assemble them by themselves. Anyway, they are very familiar with computers. After all, brand machines have the added value of the brand, which is not cost-effective for their current economic conditions.

But later, through understanding, it was found that there was no suitable server solution on the assembly machine. In the end, they had to choose Apple's APPLE-IIe. At present, the only solution suitable for personal server installation is to use Apple computers, which is used by the official server of the Blue Eagle hacker organization. This type of computer.

Of course, the standard APPLE-IIe can't meet the demand and has to be expanded. Anyway, this computer itself is designed for hackers, leaving enough expansion slots on it. They bought accessories one by one in the electronic mall according to the list given to them by Hawkeye last time, and also spent a lot of money to buy software. The software running on the server is not free at this time, and they can only pay for it.

In this way, there was some surplus, so I bought a few calculators of other models and brands for testing, and then bought some electronic components for upgrading, such as flash memory with larger memory, and some infrared wireless transceivers with better performance, which can provide a wider range and wider angle. Degree of infrared signal.

There are a lot of things in the electronic market. They are all the latest electronic products, which simply dazzled Lin Hong's eyes. Unfortunately, they have to go to the telephone company to install the phone and go through the networking procedures. They don't have time to take a closer look.

If you want to set up a BBS server and then put it on the Internet for everyone to access, the computer is the basic hardware investment. In addition, a modem for dialing is also needed. Of course, the supporting software is also indispensable. In addition to these, you have to go to the ATT telephone and telegraph company to handle the network and apply for a fixed IP, so that after the BBS is set up, you can use the TELNET client software to log in and access through this IP.

BBS in this period does not have a graphical interface, and the browser has not been invented at all. It uses the TELNET protocol and can only access the pure text interface.

Of course, if you want users to remember your URL more easily, you can also go to the domain name registrar to register a domain name, and then bind the domain name to the IP address, so that when you directly access the domain name, you can log in to the website directly.

Originally, in Arthur's and Lin Hong's opinion, registering domain names and renewal fees are an expense every year. If you can save money, you can save it. After all, many hacker BBS use IP addresses to access, and everyone can also remember. However, Matthew doesn't think so. He said that the IP address is very detrimental to memory. If the SAM Association really wants to go to the whole country and the world, it must register a simple and easy-to-remember domain name, which will form a brand effect and is very helpful for future development.

Finally, everyone was persuaded by him to agree to register a domain name and register the domain name of SAMTF.0RG according to the acronym of "SAM Technology Frontier Association". The reason why the C0M domain name is not registered is mainly the domain name of this suffix. At first, it was mainly used in the commercial field, and they wanted to set up a non-profit BBS, so they used the suffix ORG.

Several people were busy for half a day and went to several places before they finally finished the matter. They successfully prepared the computer and the corresponding software in the headquarters room, waiting for the staff of AT&T to come to install the phone tomorrow.

Back home, Lin Hong has a lot of things to do. The calculators he bought today are for him. He has to take time to crack these different models of Texas instrument calculators as soon as possible. They are all on the same system. It's not very difficult, but it's a little cumbersome and takes some time.

It has been almost two weeks since he came to the United States. Lin Hong has also begun to gradually adapt to life here and made a lot of friends at school. Of course, the best ones are Arthur and Matthew. These days, every day is quite fulfilling. Although the efficiency of the class is very slow, Lin Hong can't do his own things in class, because the teaching methods here are very different. He often has to participate in the discussion. Fortunately, he can learn something that can't be learned in the textbook every time.

In the past few days, Lin Hong has also begun to read the books listed by LINUS for him, especially the Operating System: Design and Execution. He has read it two or three times and can recite it directly. Through this book, he also has a certain understanding of Unix, and at the same time, he has a deep understanding of the operating system, the largest and most basic software.

During this period, Lin Hong and LINU have also contacted several times and learned that the other party's terminal simulator is progressing well. He has completely figured out how to implement it. Now he is writing code and debugging, and I believe it can make it work soon.

Because Lin Hong was also interested in Unix, and his progress was very fast, LINUS felt that he was fully capable of participating in the development of the project, so he offered to send him a copy of the minix that he had modified, so that the two of them could follow the Internet. We communicated at the same time.

The postal system from Finland to the United States is quite developed, and the air transportation should arrive in two to three weeks. Lin Hong is looking forward to it.

After dinner, Lin Hong returned to his room. Just as he wanted to study the calculators he bought today, the phone on the table suddenly rang. His phone has never rung since it was installed. His number seems to be only known to his family, so his first reaction should be from China. The cross-ocean phone.

But after answering, I found that it was Cook who called.

"STONE, this is Cook. Didn't I ask you to call me last week?" To be continued