The next-generation BBS software

  • No platforms nobody in the middle
  • No hosting fees it runs at your place
  • No outside costs your power, your Wi-Fi
  • No cloud nobody else's server
  • Old and new a 1980s computer can join
  • Real hardware a chip on your shelf
  • Free software GPL v3 or later
  • No internet needed a local network is enough
  • You write the rules and you are the appeal
  • No ads no one sells your time

About the author

Robert Mech. Handles: QuantumRob and Daytona.

He built µnleashed BBS, this site and its directory. The argument for both is on What this is; this page is the person.

On the boards

In the 1990s he ran Psyberchat, a GTalk chat system: ten lines, community supported. He frequented God's Country, a DDial, and many other boards over the years.

In the machine room

He started his career in 1989 as a systems operator on an IBM 4381 mainframe. He worked with DASD, which is what IBM called its disk drives, reel tape drives, a tape library, two band printers, and network controllers that booted from 8-inch floppies. If you were in a machine room then, you know the one.

An operator in a red shirt seated at an IBM 4381 console in 1987. The screen glows red-orange with several windows of text, and the wall behind him is lined with reels of magnetic tape.
What the job looked like: an operator at an IBM 4381's console in 1987, at the Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee, with the reel tape on the wall behind him.Photo: SMSgt Robert Wickley, US Department of Defense. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons
A row of tall blue and cream IBM 4381 cabinets in a museum hall, with a terminal on a stand in front of them.
An IBM 4381, kept at the Technical Museum in Brno.Photo: [Tycho], CC0. Wikimedia Commons
A curved steel band carrying rows of raised characters, lying on a sheet of printed test patterns.
A print band: the loop of engraved characters a band printer is named for. It spins across the page and hammers strike the paper against it. This one came out of a Data Products B600.Photo: Sadg4000, CC BY 3.0. Wikimedia Commons
An IBM Diskette 1, an 8-inch floppy disk half out of its grey paper sleeve, labelled with its part number and a record length of 128 bytes.
An 8-inch IBM diskette, the size those controllers booted from.Scan: Crimson Systems. Public domain. Wikimedia Commons

After that

He worked in software development in the healthcare and banking industries, then moved into delivery leadership and project management, which is the work he still does today.

Still at it

Electronics and programming are still a passion of his. He had the privilege of meeting Ward Christensen once, at a Maker Faire, before Ward died in October 2024.

The photographs load from Wikimedia Commons, so opening this page asks Wikimedia's servers for them. They are the only thing on this page that does not come from this server, and they are sent without saying which page asked.