I have had your DOORWORLD program in my file areas for about 5 months now. I have just now set it up. I find it a very good program and will be registering it soon. In your articles, it tells how to send information to be included in an article as a sysop . I would like to submit this article/info on my system. Name: Tom Brown Handle: Heckle Address: 4617 B Pierce Village Ft Campbell, KY 42223 BBS Name: Diamonds In The Rough BBS Number: (502) 439-7904 and (502) 439-9220 Node Numbers: FidoNet 1:3621/4 FlashNet 7:502/100 MackNet 90:93/17 WarNet 95:2/0 Age: 30 I am married to a wonderful lady whom I met on my BBS back in 1992. We have 6 kids (5 boys, 1 girl) and work as a Helicopter Technician in the US ARMY. I have been running a BBS since 1987 when I started with a Commodore 64 running DMBBS. I am now running TAG 2.7c and am active in 4 separate networks. I am running a Multi-Node BBS with 3 computers. 486 DX2-66, 486 DX-33, 386 DX40. Have over 3 GB of hard drive space and 3 CD-Roms available. I am running a FREE BBS. I only ask for donations to help register doors and utilities. Most of the software that I use with my BBS has been registered (except for TAG which is FREEWARE). I try to keep my door games towards the Multi-Node and Inter-BBS types. I have started an Inter-BBS BRE League that will be running for 1 year. The winning BBS will be awarded a modem or a $100.00 cash prize (depending on what the winning sysop wants). My BBS is a Beta Site for a few door games and some BBS Utilities. Future of BBS: I think that the future of individual BBS is good. Even though the Internet, AOL, CompuServe and other commercial services are picking up popularity, the individual BBS will always be around. There are people out there who are beginners with computers and modems. These people find the Commercial On-Line services somewhat intimidating. They might not want to pay for something that they are not sure of. I think that they will always turn to local BBS's as a source of information and help. In my local area, there are some sysops who go out of their way to help new users (and regular users) when they have a problem. The local BBS scene also has some advantages over commercial services. Let me give you some examples: Example 1: I had a problem with a new hard drive and lost over 900 megs of files (including my ENTIRE BBS) which were not backed up. I had an OLD backup tape and started from there. I had users, other sysops in the local area and even sysops who were L/D from me give me a great amount of help getting copies of files that I needed. Without them, I would have been down for alot longer than I was! Example 2: Here is another sysop related problem. A local sysop had a problem with his video card. This happened on a Saturday night. ALL of the computer stores were closed and I did not have an extra. We made some phone calls and located a video card from another sysop who had extra parts. HE gave him this video card and did not even charge him for it. Example 3: There was a person who had MAJOR problems with his BBS. Try as he did, he could pinpoint the problem. A local computer store (which was very aware of the BBS scene) loaned him a small system to get back on-line until his main system was fixed. Example 4: There was a user who had his modem quit on him. As we all know, this IS NOT a situation to be taken lightly! I did not have an extra modem to loan him but, I did find another user who ended up giving him one. He would not take it for free and they settled on $15.00 for the used 14.4bps modem. So what am I trying to say here? Simply this: Local BBS's are some of the best places to find information, meet people and get help with most ANY type of situation or problem. This is one of the reasons that small, individual BBS's will be around until we all live in a Virtual Society. I am sure there are those who will disagree with me. But, many more will agree! Tom Brown Sysop Diamonds In The Rough BBS þ