How I went into running a AMIGA BBS on a i286 PC...

In the late 80s my background on computing was raised from commodore-based 
home computers. Other kids in the school told me about the fantastic power 
of the Personal Computer. They argued the AMIGA is just a gaming machine - 
and the PC is serious piece of computing power.

While being a confident Amiga User with a small budget and an open-minded 
stance I began to become curious about the PC. I guess, what fascinated me 
at first place was the fact, that it is much cheaper to assemble a single 
machine compared to the expensive entry prices for high-class Amiga boxes.
So I decided to give it a try and I spend my hardly earned money as a pa-
per boy to invest into this new era of computing.

Selecting all the required components and assemble them together was fun:
A 12 Mhz i286 board (+4 Mhz than the 68k - I thought), 5 1/4 Floppy drive,
a Hercules graphics card, a sound card, a PC monitor and a case. 
After some trouble with the mainboard, the box finally was assembled 
within two weeks.

After another couple of weeks I studied the DOS and explored dozens of 
tools, software packages and computer games. 
But the more I tried out, the more frustration came up.
I remember, that during PC sessions, I often looked aside the Amiga 500, 
and dropped PC operations to do something more useful.
I finally concluded that the PC was not really worth the efforts and 
money.

However, I enjoyed two facts about the PC; its smooth text-mode display 
compared to the eye-burning TV-based 50 Hz PAL display and the ability 
to exchange hardware parts in successive steps where I can choose from
a much larger list of hardware vendors with much cheaper prices. 
From time to time I replugged the modem from the Amiga serial port to 
the PC and evaluated various modem software.

While being in my first demo group I decided to open a BBS to offer a 
local contact point to demoscene activities in my home town.
Since I still need the Amiga for coding activities and to waht latest
demoscene releases, there was this boring PC and I had an exciting job 
to run 24/7.

Between 1992 and 1994, The Factory BBS opened it lines.
During this period I was evaluating a large volume of PC-based BBS software.
I also wrote some helpful tools related to running a AMIGA BBS on PCs.
AFONT was my first program written in x86 Assembly. It was a 
Terminate-And-Stay Resident DOS tool that allows to exchanges the 
text font between PC and AMIGA while running some software in the foreground.

                                 AFont v0.10
                                  MINI-DOCS

                             Code by Crunchy/TEK
                              100% in Assembly
                          Released on the 15-02-93


                             Welcome to AmiFont !

  This TSR-Tool emulates the AMIGA Standart Font ! It's especially created
  for PC-MODEM-Phreaks that are calling AMIGA-BBSs ! Now you will have the
  pure ANSI-AMIGA-STANDART on your PCs !  Nevertheless you can switch with
  the Hotkey "ALT GR" beetween the IBM- or AMIGA-Font.



                                Hardcore Infos :

                          AFONT.COM is a TSR Program !
                       It steals 4,8 KB from your memory
                          This Product is FREE-WARE !
           Thanx to FUSZY/TEK for generating a font-table on his amiga.




              I'm a poor Student/Sysop/Coder,so if you wanna do
          something very nice to me,do this :

                      = SEND SOME MONEY AS A GIFT OR FOR UPDATING!

                      = GIVE MY BBS A CALL (NUMBER SEE BELOW!)

                      = CONTACT ME


  Here is my Addy :
                                CRUNCHY/TEK!
                                Daniel Adler
                               Beethovenstr.6
                              3400  Goettingen
                                   GERMANY

                            VOICE +49-551-44623
                            BBS   +49-551-43249



  Bye the way, this fantastic tool is my first program coded in assembly !
         ... How about a chat ?! Call my !PC & AMIGA! Board ...


                                     THE
     ______   ________   ______   ________   ________   _______    __    __
    ||~~   | ||~~     | ||~~   | |:~~     | ||~~~    | ||~~    \  ||~|  ||~|
    ||  ___| ||  __   | ||  ___| |__    __| ||  __   | || |~~|. | |: |  |: |
    || |__   || |__|: | || |        |  |    || |  |  | || |__|: |  \  \/  /
    ||    |  ||  ~~~' | || |        |  |    || |  |. | ||   ~~'/    \    /
    |:  __|  |:  __   | |: |        |  |    |: |  |: | |:      \     |  |
    |. |     |. |  |  | |. |___     |  |    |. |__|| | |. |~\   |    |  |
    |  |     |  |  |  | |      |    |  |    |    ~~  | |  |  |  |    |  |
    |__|     |__|  |__| |______|    |__|    |________| |__|  |__|    |__|


  ZyXEL                 +  4 9  -  5 5 1  -  4 3 2 4 9                   ZyXEL
  BBS/FAXLINE                                                      BBS/FAXLINE
                 Running on MAXIMUS BBS = NEWEST DEMOS/PD WAREZ
                           T.E.K. GERMAN HEADQUATERS
                       
                       SOON COMING PRODUCTIONS OF CRUNCHY :

   MAXY v1.00           - WALL,LAST CALLER,TOP USER,LAME USER... FOR MAXIMUS
                          V0.80 RUNNING ON THE FACTORY BBS !
   MULTICHAT            - 3 NODES CHAT RUNNING ON AN 286-AT 12MHZ POWER !
                          V0.01 RUNNING ON THE FACTORY
   CORE-WARS FS         - CORE-WARS ONLINE FIGHT SYSTEM
                          SOON RUNNING ON THE FACTORY