Commodore 64 User Manual page 81

Talking to a Bulletin Board
Fortunately, all North American PET Bulletin
Board Systems (PBBS for short) operate in the
same way. When you reach the BBS number, it
will ring and then be answered with a loud
tone. When you hear this, connect your own
modem. If it is a VICMODEM, do this by
unplugging the cord right at the handset of
your phone and reconnecting it at the back of
the VICMODEM.
Once the connection is complete, press the
RETURN key on the keyboard a couple of
times. Within a few seconds you should see a
"Hello" message from the BBS appear on your
screen. The message will go on for a while,
explaining a lot about the system, including
your options. Of these, the most interesting
are messages, bulletins, and downloading.
One of the real services a BBS provides is
allowing people to leave messages for each
other in a public forum typically open all night
long. These messages usually remain on the
system until the intended recipient sees them,
even if it is a week later at 3:00 AM. Many
messages ask for help from anyone reading
the message. It rarely takes long for someone
to leave an answer.
For more general information, many PBBSs
provide a bulletin section. Commodore's
dealer-only PBBS, for example, includes a list of
most everything that has been found to go
wrong with Commodore hardware and tells
you what to do about it.
Getting Programs from a Bulletin
Board
One of the most helpful features on a bulletin
board system is called downloading. Down
loading allows you to load a program or file
from the BBS over the phone onto your own
cassette or diskette. Most likely you will be
using the downloading procedure only for
diskettes, though, because of the substantial
amount of time it would take to download
onto a cassette.
You can download a number of programs or
files from other people via the bulletin board
system. Commodore's public BBS in Chicago,
for example, includes several hundred free pro
grams that anyone may download. You can
even tell your computer to send a program to
the bulletin board for a friend to download it
into another computer.
To download, you need a specific terminal
program that uses the protocol which allows
you to talk to any PBBS. This program, origi
nally written by Steve Punter, is in the public
domain and may be obtained from many
users' groups or from the author. Once you
have this program, you may even use it to
download improved versions of itself directly
from a PBBS and give copies to someone else.
Unfortunately, this terminal program only
downloads to the 64, CBM, and PET models,
not to the VIC. At this time, downloading can
not be successfully and consistently completed
with the VIC.
The download feature normally asks for the
secret password, eezoo. This is just to keep
those without the proper program from trying
to download. All other instructions you'll need
to download are in each PBBS as bulletins.
COMMERCIAL COMPUTER NETWORKS
Another kind of telephone information is
found in the commercial computer networks,
such as CompuServe, the Source, and Dow
Jones. These networks act as huge electronic
libraries of information. They store newspapers,
stock exchange information, games, the World
Book Encyclopedia, and general information
on many other topics. You pay an annual fee
to join, plus a fee for each minute you talk to
the network. The advantage of this type of
information exchange is that you can com
municate with non-Commodore brand com
puters, as well as send messages.
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