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           Rusty n Edie's from Beginning to the Beginning.


    In 1985 I bought my first computer.  I bought it to help in
    my insurance business, to tell the truth I had no idea what
    to do with it, but everyone said it would help, so I laid out
    over $4,000 for a Tandy 1200, a straight XT type machine with
    a huge 10 megabyte hard drive.  I paid the extra money for
    the hard drive because I was told it would store everything I
    would ever need on one disk.  I also went for the best color
    graphics, CGA in all it's glory, it was beautiful.

    I did manage to read enough docs to use the machine quite
    well in my business.  In 1986, my company decided to supply
    me with an IBM XT with a 20 meg hard drive and mono, so I
    took home my beauty and wondered just what I was going to do
    with it.

    "Modem", my local Tandy salesman said I could get all the
    software I wanted free, I couldn't believe it, free.  Well
    almost free, I would have to buy a modem, 1200 baud was the
    best money could buy and on sale for only $279 and of course
    software, PC-Talk which I could have for a $6 copying fee,
    SHAREWARE, ah a bit of what was to come, from now on free and
    as much as I wanted, now at last I could have millions of
    programs, and all free.

    That night I called the local BBS, I was told this meant
    Bulletin Board System.  I was so excited, it was a great
    moment, then the nightmare began, I called and filled out a
    very long questionnaire, the system said thank you and I
    should call back the next day and then disconnected me.  I
    couldn't wait, I called right after work and was welcomed and
    told to fill out a questionnaire, which I did, it seemed
    silly since it was mostly the same questions and I don't see
    what the name and age of my cat have to do with BBSs.  I did
    as I was told and was advised I should DOWNLOAD a
    registration form.  To be honest it took me 10 days to figure
    out how to DOWNLOAD, but I finally figured it out and got my
    form, which I printed and filled out, more questions, I
    couldn't figure out what my grandparents political party had
    to do with computers, but I answered every question, I was
    called and verified about a week later and accepted into the
    BBS.  I called right away and found I could have 30 minutes a
    day it I kept up a 5 to 1 RATIO, that is I had to upload
    files, that meant I would have to call long distance to
    another BBS and go through the humiliation of various torture
    routines set up by sadistic SYSOPs, System Operators, it was
    a very humbling experience, but I was hooked a program junky,
    I downloaded everything, printed the docs and ran the
    program, oohed and aahed and threw it on my hard disk, which
    within a few weeks reported it was full, which I was sure
    meant it was broke, since it was impossible to fill.  I Just
    couldn't stand it anymore, so I decided to open my own BBS.
    I told my wife, Edie, that I what I was going to do and why.
    I was going to open a no rules BBS, and I ask her if she
    wanted me to name it after both of us, she had never used a
    computer in her life, but she made the fatal error and said
    she would like that, she would live to regret the honor I was
    bestowing on her.  Rusty n Edie's was conceived!  I called
    the local BBS SYSOP and told him what I was going to do and
    he told me not to use the BBS software he was using, Opus,
    and he would help me get started, so I downloaded a shareware
    BBS program called TCOMM and proceeded to set it up.  I called
    the local board the next day and found that I now had only 18
    minutes a day and wasn't allowed to download, I also found no
    mention of my board going up, so much for help, it would seem
    Edie and I were on our own.  I had a 20 meg hard drive
    installed for $500 and bought a 2400 baud modem for $400 and
    had a phone line installed.

    Rusty n Edie's was born May 11, 1987.  We made our biggest
    mistake that first day we adopted the motto "The Friendliest
    BBS in the World" and have regretted it every day since, more
    about that later.  We printed up posters and passed them out
    to the computer stores and posted them in supermarkets.  Our
    callers were greeted with our motto and our rules:

    1.  Have fun
    2.  End of rules

    We had no time limit, no questionnaires, no ratios, and most
    of all no hassles.  I was told if I did that the callers
    would do terrible things to our system, they never did.  We
    had about 50 files available for the callers to download (we
    have over 60,000, now).  We decided we would make ourselves
    available, we posted our voice phone number and address and
    answered when we were paged.  We turned up the sound so we
    could hear when someone called, we got 6 calls that day and
    watched everyone of them, we were thrilled.  I'll never
    forget the first time anyone ever called us long distance, I
    was amazed anyone would call and pay for the time on line.
    We averaged 10 calls a day (we get over 3,000 calls a day
    now) till December 1987 when we switched to PCBoard, the most
    flexible and wonderful BBS software ever made.  Things
    started happening then, our tiny system couldn't handle the
    calls so we bought a 386 and multitasked with Desqview and
    open a second line.  For some reason, even though we have
    never demanded Uploads, we have always gotten a bunch (we get
    about 20 megs of uploads a day now), it would seem our
    callers wanted to help and uploaded a large number of files
    daily, we outgrew the 20 meg hard drive and installed a 160
    meg hard drive, by our first anniversary we were jammed with
    callers and files.  Edie and I both agreed it was getting out
    of hand by June 1988 we were so busy, callers could not get
    on no matter how long they waited, we started getting real
    hateful phone calls, demanding we let them on line.  Edie and
    I decided we couldn't afford to go on and we would post a
    bulletin, on July 4, 1988, asking for donations, we figured
    we wouldn't get any and would simply close.  Much to our
    surprise the money poured in and we turned the money into new
    nodes, as fast we could.

    In economics we are told that their is economy in size, we
    have found that not to be true with BBSs, the larger we get
    the more the problems of size are exposed.  Heat, static
    electricity, and speed are the main ones, our house is heated
    by the BBS and even then we have to open the windows in the
    dead of the Ohio winter to keep the heat under control, in the
    Summer it is much easier to keep cool, we simply installed a four
    ton air conditioning unit to cool our basement (this unit normally
    cools a 4,000 sq. ft. house, but works hard to keep the basement
    cool).  We have our BBS in a basement, we moved from our apartment
    when the spare bedroom we were running the BBS out of, got so full
    we couldn't get in the place, it was so hot no human being could
    stand it, Baby our cat loved it.  It must have been 120 degrees in
    that room.  Baby's, favorite pastime then and now is running across
    the keyboards blowing callers away and sleeping on the computers,
    frying his brains on the monitors.  we bought the basement with a
    house on top of it for it's space and beauty.  We have 2 huge
    humidifiers running day and night trying to keep some moisture in
    the air, we can't do it well and still have down time caused from
    thunderbolts suddenly erupting out of our bodies paralyzing
    one of our nodes or servers.  OK, now for the killer, keeping
    up the speed.  Our setup is as follows:

    We have, 5 386 33mhz servers with 32 megs of memory each,
    they each have a caching controller, we need that memory to
    cache the 14, 780 meg SCSI drives and 2, 386 meg ESDI drives,
    the 16 drives format to something over 10 gigabytes.  We have
    99 16 mhz 286s, one for each node, in addition we have 4, 20
    MHZ 386s, 1, 16 MHZ 386 (our original server, our original
    Tandy XT type machine died about a year ago.), and 5, 12 MHZ
    286s, these last 10 machines are so we can work on the system
    without taking it down.  We have 16, Anchor 2400 baud modems,
    23, 14.4k v42bis US Robotics HSTs and 17 US Robotic's Dual
    Standards 14.4k V32, V32bis V42bis, 16 CompuCom 9600 baud
    Speedmodems, 3 Hayes V-Series V42bis modem, and 16 direct connect
    CONNECT-USA lines.  We have all of this networked together
    with five copies of the wonderful Novell Netware 386, it works
    great.  We have the whole thing hooked up to huge batteries that
    supply 10 KV of uninteruptible power.

    Even with all this the system started to slow a bit, so we
    installed 99, 20 meg hard drives, one in each node, with them we
    were able to take a lot of the work off the network and can now
    honestly say, we are very quick, almost like a one node system.

    We now have 2 of our sons and our daughter. Edie and I and of course
    our wondrous assistant SYSOP and friend Carl all working full
    time (and then some) on the system.  We have worked very hard
    to keep our original intent stated in our motto, "We are the
    Friendliest BBS in the World". that motto has almost killed
    Edie and I, we still post our voice phone number and our
    address, we still answer pages, even so, no matter what we do,
    we hear the deadly "I thought you were friendly".  Poor Edie,
    from the beginning every time I wanted her to help, I would
    nail her with "You wanted it named after you, you have to
    help."  It works great, all you SYSOPs out there, if you
    want your wife to help you, name it after her.

    OK everybody, what can you expect when you call Rusty n Edie's BBS.
    A different kind of BBS, "We are the Friendliest BBS in the
    World" Our name says it all.  Edie and I are a couple of burn
    outs from the 60's (Edie's 46 and I'm 53).  We didn't like rules
    then and we don't now.  Come on in and relax you will be among
    friends.

    We have a huge adult section, including over three gigabytes of
    adult graphics, as well as a fine selection of public domain and
    shareware programs, including over a gigabyte of family type
    graphics.  But that's not what sets us apart.  When you call the
    first time you'll know what no amount of words can tell you, you
    are home.  that's right put up your feet and enjoy yourself, we
    have 15 on line interactive games and one of the most active chat
    and message sections in the world.

    With Edie's help we have made Rusty n Edie's a place for the
    whole family, including the ladies.  Yes a large portion of our
    callers are from the fairer sex, they too can feel at home at
    Rusty n Edie's.

    We live by the three no's:  No Censorship
                                No Rules
                                No Hassle

         You will find us like no other BBS:
                                    We answer your messages and comments
                                    We answer your on line pages
                                    We post our address
                                    We post our voice phone number

             That's it folks, that's why we call Rusty n Edie's BBS

                       "the Friendliest BBS in the World"


                          Russell & Edwina Hardenburgh
                            1480 Fredricksburg Drive
                              Youngstown, OH 44512

                             Our Phone Numbers are:
                         Voice:           216 758-8342
                         Fax:             216 726-3595
                         2400 baud        216 726-2620
                         HST:             216 726-3589
                         V32:             216 726-1247
                         Compucom:        216 726-3620
                         Hayes V-Series:  216 726-3619
                         Starlink Node:          #4909
                         Connect-USA:           RNEBBS

              *** 10+ Gigs ***                     *** 99 Nodes ***
