Diamond Mine Online - About Us
The Diamond Mine Online System is an Online Community developed with YOU in mind. This is an interactive community with online message forums, games, and file downloads.
Who Are We?
The Diamond Mine Online System is a Bulletin Board System (or BBS) founded in July 1993. The Diamond Mine Online is a community of users who come together at one location for friendship and competition. The users of the Diamond Mine Online are from all over the world and from all walks of life. The thing that ties them together is the global Internet.
What do you have to offer?
First and foremost, the Diamond Mine Online is a community created for people to express their opinions in an open forum setting. This means that people can leave messages for people to read on a multitude of topics – ranging from common everyday conversations to strange and unique topics. We have you covered!
We
also have friendly competition between our users. We offer a number of
interactive text gaming systems, many of which cater to those who like “Role Playing Games.”
We
also have a large shareware file collection. What is shareware? Easy answer –
“Try before you buy.”
Finally – we do offer E-mail communications within our system and
to the Internet. (Inbound Internet E-mail is available by request.)
We
offer this for our users FREE OF CHARGE. However, we ask that you create only
one account per person. This way the competition is more fair to the other users
on our system. Please leave us your REAL contact information. We don’t spam, but
we do ask since you are our guest on our server, that you pleae give us the
courtesy of letting us know who you really are.
Our History
We have a long and interesting
history. Read the timeline below to gauge how long we have been around, and how
our system has progressed over time with a paradigm shift in communications
technology.
1993 – Diamond Mine BBS is formed. We opened for business
in July 1993 as a dial-up Bulletin Board System for the people of the
northern suburgs of Pittsburgh, PA USA. We started as a small BBS using WWIV
(World War IV) BBS software for a couple of months, and then moved on to VBBS
(Virtual BBS) BBS software in September. We had access to a worldwide message
forum network called WWIVNet and a regional message network called LilNet
(Little Network).
1994 –
Reinvented oursvelves briefly as the “Ring of Fire BBS”. This was short lived
and went back to being the Diamond Mine BBS.
1995 – With a change in employment, the
system operator moves the Diamond Mine Online BBS from Pittsburgh, PA to the
southern suburbs of Washington, DC (Fredericksburg, VA). Still using VBBS as a
dial-up operation.
1996 – Upgraded the main BBS software from
Virtual BBS to Virtual Advanced BBS (VADV) software. By this time, it was
obvious that the dial-up BBS was slowly fading away. Plans were made to make the
Diamond Mine BBS a hybrid dial-up access and Internet access via a protocol
called Telnet. The operating system was changed from Microsoft’s Windows 95 to
IBM’s OS/2 operating system. Special software was installed to facilitate the
access to the Internet during the overnight hours, and dial-up access during the
day.
1997 –
Moved the entire operation to another facility within the Fredericksburg, VA
area. This allowed us to go on-line to the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week. This way we were a full hybrid system, allowing us to have both dial-up
and Telnet customers at the same time. Still ran VADV software as the core
engine.
1998 –
Moved the entire operation yet again to a bigger and better facility in nearby
Spotsylvania, VA. Still ran a hybrid system with both dial-up (under a new phone
number) and Telnet. Still ran VADV software as the core
engine.
1999 – By the late 1990s, high-speed
Internet became available in our area. The Diamond Mine Online immedately was
upgraded to this service when it became available. People could now access the
system faster than ever before. Also by this time, the system had migrated from
a very obsolete OS/2 to Windows 98 software, but still running VADV as its core
engine. A new Windows interface was used to interface the system to the
Internet.
2000 – By
the time Y2K came around, it became obvious that VADV was no longer being
supported. The interface to the Internet was not very reliable and the core
system was not very efficient. Synchronet BBS, which had been domant for several
years, was again being supported by its author. The author created a new engine
that better worked with modern operating system and incorporated many Internet
features built in to the underlying engine. The Diamond Mine was upgraded to
this new engine.
2001 – As
time went on and many people were migrating from the dial-up modem to high speed
Internet, the number of dial-up users had gone down to almost nothing. The
dial-up modem line was disconnected, and the Diamond Mine Online continued on as
a Telnet system only.
2004 – The
Diamond Mine Online was yet again moved to a new venue within the
Fredericksburg, VA area. Still connected to a high-speed system, the underlying
software was upgraded to provide FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and primitive HTTP
(World Wide Web) access to the Diamond Mine Online.
2006
- Moved the Diamond Mine Online to
its own dedicated server. This allows for less downtime and faster access
to the system.
2007
–
Upgraded the core engine to the latest Synchronet software suite that offers
advanced Internet capabilities and improved “under the hood” relability and
speed enhancements. Also, new online games were installed at the request of the
users.
Next
steps – During 2007 and beyond, new games will be added to the
system and other “under the hood” features will be added or
updated.
Please let us
know if there is anything we can do to make your visit more enjoyable. The
Diamond Mine Online can change to the desires of you, our users.
Thanks!
LATEST Upgrades
July 2007
The entire communications engine was replaced from the ground up with
the latest Synchronet software suite. Two new online games were added (the
"Dungeon Master" group of games and "Mines of Gorr") and an additional Legend of
the Red Dragon (version 4.06) was added.