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ISCABBS

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ISCABBS, aka simply ISCA, is a bulletin board system (BBS) based at the University of Iowa. Dave's own version of Citadel, an early branch of the Citadel/UX BBS software, was developed to run ISCA. Like most Citadels, the focus is almost entirely on conversation between users.

Contents

History

Governed by, and named for the Iowa Student Computer Association (ISCA), ISCABBS was started in 1989. Prior a computer conferencing software program entitled "Participate" made by Unison (Iowa students referred to it as "Parti") resided on the University of Iowa's UNIX mainframe computer and was accessible to all University students. Parti users developed a tradition of social picnics which exist to this day. Parti-picnic --> ISCAnic.

Precursors

Many of the Parti users had migrated over from a student created BBS called BBS1 (circa 1985) which ran on the Prime computer account "astran". It had been originally designed as a means for its creators to converse with one another. The board was promoted across campus on flyers placed in computer labs. Users took on handles and developed a culture of their own with socialization being the main use of the board. The software eventually was pirated ["stealth"] and the message system files, residing in "astran", were no longer safe or private. The anonymity of a handle was proven to be non-existent as the pirated software allowed anybody to read any file they chose and track users back to their originating personal accounts.

DOC Creation

Several student programmers began to create an improved code using the Citadel frame work. As several were named "Dave" - including two key developers of the early software - it was coined "Dave's own version of Citadel" or "DOC" (Note: Often, this has been written "Daves' own version..." to note the plurality of Daves involved in the project). The Daves include the project leader Dave Lacey who is now an M.D. Originally ISCABBS was run on the University of Iowa's Engineering Departments Iowa Computer Aided Engineering Network "ICAEN" and accessibile only by engineering students. However, soon ISCABBS was made available to all University of Iowa student and then to anyone with an internet connection. In addition to the BBS a file sharing system was made available for freeware and shareware.

ISCABBS's Peak

At its peak just before the rise of the World Wide Web, it supported more than a thousand users online simultaneously and a virtual velvet-roped queue in which hundreds more waited to log in when the system was very busy. The popularity of ISCA as a meeting place, hangout, and occasionally a virtual dive bar gives a glimpse of what modern day chat rooms would become. Between serious discussion on topics ranging from social issues and politics to computer and home repair, lighthearted babble about almost any topic can be found. In addition, instant messaging (called eXpress Messages - or simply Xes - in the lingo of DOC BBSes and other citadel-derived systems) provides a venue for private discussion and conversation.

Before the rise of the Web, ISCA was one of the largest free public bulletin board systems in the world. It continues on today as a likely candidate for the most active telnet-based BBS in the world, followed closely by Eschwa BBS and ITESO BBS.

BFM

In the BFM (Big Freaking Mess), the President of ISCA turned over user information to the Campus Police. A Sysop felt this violated the confidentiality pledge and informed the BBS at large. This Sysop was sanctioned by another Sysop, who was in turn sanctioned by yet another Sysop who felt the original post should stand.

Moving to new software

At one point the BBS was poised to cut over to a new platform called Gestalt. It was a project developed almost entirely by Lee Brintle (a.k.a. "Tanj"), an ISCA member and former BBS Sysop. ISCA (the Iowa Student Computer Association) was offered free license to use this new BBS platform which offered not only integration with the old BBS platform but also enabled developers to construct instant messaging, email, and web-based interfaces to the BBS, much like many modern messageboards have today. The cutover was scheduled for "sometime in 1998" and would have enabled the BBS to very easily run on commodity hardware (Intel PCs) rather than expensive, proprietary, and increasingly-hard-to-obtain HP workstations. Conflicts over licensing terms, ownership, and other interpersonal issues caused the cutover to Gestalt to never happen.

Infrastructure

ISCA originally supported over a thousand simultaneous users on a 50 MHz PA-RISC system with 64MB of RAM, which ran HP-UX. Today, the system is 80 MHz with 128MB of RAM, though the active user base is much smaller. Connectivity was and is provided by the University of Iowa. Due to the popularity of the BBS and its limited resources, much effort went into shrinking the size of the BBS process in memory. Stripped-down versions of standard libraries were written that included only the handful of functions that the BBS required to operate.

Features

Topical Discussion Areas

ISCABBS has the capability of having 200 forums (formerly known as rooms) for discussion of assigned topics. Forum Moderators are assigned to each forum are responsible to ensure compliance with the topicality of the forum as well as ISCABBS boardwide Policy

Instant Messaging

eXpress messaging is another functionality which allows users to send up to five lines of an instant or "express" message to another user. These messages are not permanently stored; only messages received and sent during the current user session can be reviewed.

Internal Mailing

A special Mail> forum allows for private messages of unlimited length to be sent to and from users. These messages are stored for a significant period of time (typically three to nine months).

Client Interface

Multiple clients have been created to ease interface with ISCABBS, provide additional features as well as distribute a portion of ISCABBS's overhead from the ISCABBS machine to the client machine. Client programs gained popularity amongst BBS users during the mid-1990s, when client users were able to shorten their wait in queue before login. Clients remain in common use for their various graphical, navigational, and communication functions, as well as one-click ease of connectivity. Clients can be found at [BBSClient.net].

Note: it has since been revealed that email and eXpress messages are stored indefinitely.

XML Feeds

Recently RSS feeds have been added at http://rss.iscabbs.com/ .

Other WWW features

In 2006 forum related web sites were officially implemented on the iscabb.com domain for some of the most popular forums. Eventually every forum will have a web site as a convenient place to host information and raise the BBSes profile:

Events

ISCANic

ISCABBS has semi-annual picnic or "ISCANIC" events held in Iowa City, Iowa, typically with parties and/or gatherings following. Recently annual camping or "CampNic" events have been added. Various regional "NICs" have been held on a more irregular schedule. These events have been held for nearly fifteen (15) years.

CampNic

Recently an annual "CampNic" is held at Whitebreast Campground at Lake Red Rock near Knoxville, IA for more "outdoorsey" meetings of the members of ISCABBS.

External links

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