Dial-Up Nights is a new dial-up only bulletin board, running Max's BBS on MorphOS 3.12 (PowerBook).

The 'beta' version of the board is open 9pm - 6 am, and 24 hours at the weekends (UK time).
(The plan is to increase to 24/7, depending on demand.)

Amiga and general message banks, files. Door games to come.

Call 0208 363 3637 (+44 outside of UK).

How?
You will need a landline and a dial-up modem to connect, as well as a way of connecting the modem to your computer.
On an original Amiga*, this is easy as you have a serial port. Simply dust off your (or buy another) serial modem, connect
one end to the Amiga's serial port, the other to your phone line, and you're good to go. NComm is a good free
terminal package - just enter the number into the dialer and you will connect.

On MorphOS* ?
If you are running on Apple hardware and have OS X installed for dual-booting, a quick and easy way would be to boot into OS X and use the internal modem if you have one. ZTerm works very well.

Why?
Telnet would be easier...if you have an Amiga with internet. For all of those with original machines though, perhaps
with a landline (and even better a free calls package), I think this is just crying out for some traditional dial-up
action. And for me, dial-up has a certain magic. Plus, it's rather cool to be connecting to other machines and
communities, completely outside of the internet.

* N.b. On NG machines, you will need a USB to RS232 adaptor. You might have some luck with USB modems, but I didn't. However, a PL2303 chipset USB adaptor works well on MorphOS and gives you the serial port you need. I struggled to get NComm's fonts to work (weird overlapping problem) but Termite works well. Term also works, but freezes. Not sure about OS 4
or Aros.

Fun project, but I guess the problem is that we don't have landlines anymore :) At least here in Finland we don't have landline phones anymore and all major providers have stopped serving them now.

But I wonder if those USB "4G dongles/modems", or whatever they're called, could be used to call to a traditional dial-up BBS? AFAIK they do work like traditional modems with AT commands, so why not if you can get them to show up in the USB stack?

I heard there’s the same situation in Holland. In London at least, BT (the main phone provider) are increasing the number of landlines numbers - new homes are still installed with them I believe.

I’d thought about the USB dongle modems too - interesting idea. Especially as there are providers selling sims with lots of minutes calling time, for not too much a month. And maybe it’s cheap to call internationally too. As far as I know, Poseidon has some support for USB dongle modems.

It looks like I’m fighting a pretty relentless tide of Internet Everything with this one! And I have to say I haven’t been overwhelmed with callers, yet :) But very early days. I’ll give it a year before calling it quits if there’s no interest!

Here’s one good thing which has come from the idea though - it finally got me to register MorphOS!