Just watching some retro CoCo content on Youtube and there was mention of dialing in to a BBS at 300baud in 2023. This got me thinking...

In the UK atleast mobile contracts only really charge their users for Data and premium rate calls/xMS. Does anyone know if someone has fudged together a BBS style system hosted on a Linux mobile? In theory you'd be able to host it on a minimal data contract for a few pounds a month. You'd be limited to 1 or 2 simultaneous connections but you could maybe use SMS as some kind of side channel. Perhaps mainly use SMS as main data channel but queue "high speed" data transfers to use the voice calls?

🐐 drh3xx

2023-12-03 · 6 months ago · 👍 norayr, sparcipx

4 Comments ↓

🐙 norayr · Dec 04 at 02:59:

my friend runs a jabber server on his pinephone.

when he forgets to pay for carrier's service he goes offline.

if the carrier doesnt provide real static ips then there are other options:

argo tunnel (or some vpn providers that give you real ip)

setup ipv6 address en phone and create a tunnel to your server yourself.

🐙 norayr · Dec 04 at 03:07:

and thank you for the idea of dialup bbs server hosted on mobile! it is really cool.

just not all users today have modems, then we also need mobile apps to dial the numbers and connect to our bbses.

well tcp/ip is cheaper than phone calls where you pay for minute and transfer less bytes. (:

🐐 drh3xx [OP] · Dec 04 at 06:50:

@norayr thanks for the comments. Another good way to get around the lack of a static ip (atleast if you don't want lots of control of the domain name) is tailscale tunnels.

🐙 norayr · Dec 04 at 08:19:

true. i just learned about those yesterday.