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-------------------------       Editorial       -------------------------
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This text contains some information about the history of the Pandora
bulletin board system.

The Pandora BBS is written by Jan.Paul Middelink and Jac Kersing. For
suggestions and/or questions send a NetMail message to Dr.Falkens Homebase
(2:508/17).

Once upon a time, long ago.... about april 1986 some bulletin boards
in the Netherlands started using Fido. After being a user for a few weeks
we thought it nice to start our own BBS. But there was one (little)
problem. Fido is written for IBM and compatible computers and we only
owned a CP/M computer.

After a few days discussion we started writing our own program in Turbo
Pascal. This went on for almost 2 months but then Turbo started compaining
about the length of our program.

Jan-Paul addapted everything to BDS C in the holydays and I started
learning that language (couldn't do without it now..). The first
(incomplete) version was ready in november. No message editor and totaly
no file-system those days.

After a few months the file-system was ready (it's totaly rewritten
afterwards -no complains, it was my first C project). The message editor
was build and, yes, it really looked like a BBS.

The next problem was FidoMail. From the start we wanted to be FidoNet
compatible so only a message converter and a mailer had to be written.
Sounds easy but it's quite a job. I started with this part and we agreed
that Jan-Paul would continue adapting, improving and debugging Pandora.
No little job. He rewrote it to a more Unix compatible C so it could
be used on IBM and Atari ST also. And the major part is implementing
enhancements....

The mailer was ready (CP/M version) and my BBS runned ok for a couple of
months (with about 6 'newer' and 'better' versions of Pandora a month).
During holidays there was only a little problem. The system clock stopped
running. Jan-Paul solved that problem by hitting the computer.. When
I came back I started to repair that little problem. But more and more
parts started troubling (I know what you want to say, I should have brought
it to the shop so they could repair the problem. But my guess is that they
wouldn't have recogniced that computer. Only the mainboard was 'original')
and finaly the computer broke down totaly. (BTW no software problems
during those 6 weeks! Quite a surprise to me....)

And now a Atari ST is used for this BBS, Pandora is adapted. The mailer
and utility's almost...........



                                        Jac Kersing