Hello everyone, a quick greeting from Italy!

My name is Max, I am 52 years old and I am a software engineer. I recently decided to resurrect my old Shadowland BBS straight out of 1997, dusted it off properly, and reconnected it to the world.

Back in the glory days, it ran on OS/2 Warp with Lora BBS (so many memories with DOS sessions and the rock-solid stability of OS/2!). Today I brought it back to life using Synchronet on a 1 Euro/month Debian VPS, because passion is priceless, but saving money on hosting is always a good thing.

I have been writing code for over thirty years. If you know Panini (yeah, the collectible sticker album giant), I am the author of the digital tactics board, scouting, and video analysis apps used by top-tier soccer teams. I also built the global streaming infrastructure for Radio Maria (on iOS, Smart TVs, Roku, WebOS), the EV Wallbox charging apps for Stellantis/FCA, and various other high-traffic systems. Nowadays I mostly deal with Blockchain, Artificial Deficiency, and other digital monstrosities.

In my free time, when I take my hands off the keyboard, I like cooking real Italian food (no cream in carbonara or pineapple on pizza), drawing, doing tattoos, and enjoying a nice cold beer.

What about you guys? Anyone else start on OS/2 Warp or Lora BBS back in the 14.4K modem days? If you want to chat, swap memories from the dial-up era, or talk about tech, tattoos, and beer, you can find me here.

Long live the BBS scene!
Your friendly neighborhood SysOp

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þ Synchronet þ Shadowland BBS Italy

Re: Greetings from Italy
By: Massy73 to All on Tue Aug 11 2026 03:45 am

Back in the glory days, it ran on OS
Warp with Lora BBS (so many memories

Ciao, and welcome. What part of Italy?
Just the other day I was reminiscing of
going through the train station in Rome
several times, each time getting a
different Topolino comic ;).

By the way, do you remember running
into a copy of OS/2 Warp that was
command-line only on 3 floppy disks? It
was a hacked version by someone.

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þ Synchronet þ TIRED of waiting 2 hours for a taco? GO TO TACOPRONTO.bbs.io

Re: Greetings from Italy
By: Massy73 to All on Tue Aug 11 2026 03:45 am

My name is Max, I am 52 years old and I am a software engineer. I recently decided to resurrect my old Shadowland BBS straight out of 1997, dusted it off properly, and reconnected it to the world.

Welcome!

I'm also a software engineer (46 years old), and similarly, I started running a BBS again using Synchronet (in 2007) after originally running a BBS from 1994 to 2000, using RemoteAccess in DOS (and later, ended up running it in Windows 9x).

Back in the glory days, it ran on OS/2 Warp with Lora BBS (so many memories with DOS sessions and the rock-solid stability of OS/2!). Today I brought it back to life using Synchronet on a 1 Euro/month Debian VPS, because passion is priceless, but saving money on hosting is always a good thing.

What about you guys? Anyone else start on OS/2 Warp or Lora BBS back in the 14.4K modem days? If you want to chat, swap memories from the dial-up era, or talk about tech, tattoos, and beer, you can find me here.

I didn't start with OS/2, but as mentioned, was using DOS in the early 90s, though I started running my BBS in QEMM's DESQView so that I could do other things with my computer while my BBS was running, and sometimes I'd log into node 2 of my BBS locally that way too.

I also used Windows 3.1 and then Windows 95 later, and so on.. But around 1995, I bought a used copy of OS/2 Warp 3 and played with that a bit, and later, I bought a copy of OS/2 Warp 4; I had my main PC set up with a multi-boot setup with Windows 9x and OS/2 Warp (and I believe also Linux at some point), though at the time, I was mainly using Windows. Around 1997, I started to look into an OS/2 BBS package (AdeptXBBS, I believe) and thought it was interesting, though I stuck with using RemoteAccess for my BBS.

In my free time, when I take my hands off the keyboard, I like cooking real Italian food (no cream in carbonara or pineapple on pizza), drawing, doing tattoos, and enjoying a nice cold beer.

:) I also like cooking, though I often feel like I don't have much time for it. Other hobbies of mine include playing music occasionally (I like guitar & keyboard), and I like tinkering with computer & technology stuff too.

Nightfox

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com

Re: Greetings from Italy
By: phigan to Massy73 on Tue Aug 11 2026 05:37:52

Dalmine is an industrial town in the province of Bergamo, in Lombardy, located between Lake Iseo and Lake Como.

Regarding Rome, I have actually never been to Termini station. When I was attending the Army Non-Commissioned Officer school in Viterbo, I used to reach Rome by bus and get around using the Metro, so no, I never had the pleasure of visiting the train station.

As for OS/2, if I'm not mistaken, the installation is indeed on 3 floppy disks, but even with the CD, I don't recall if, in the settings, you can technically install just the OS without the graphical interface (like you can do with Linux, for example).

Try looking here: https://archive.org/search?tab=all&query=os2&page=3. You can also find the original version of OS/2 Warp 4.

Cheers. Max.
Your friendly neighborhood SysOp

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þ Synchronet þ Shadowland BBS Italy

Re: Greetings from Italy
By: Massy73 to phigan on Tue Aug 11 2026 03:07 pm

As for OS/2, if I'm not mistaken, th
installation is indeed on 3 floppy
disks, but even with the CD, I don't
recall if, in the settings, you can
technically install just the OS with

Yeah, this was a hacked version I'm
thinking of that installed CLI only.

Seems it was pretty rare.

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þ Synchronet þ TIRED of waiting 2 hours for a taco? GO TO TACOPRONTO.bbs.io

Massy73 wrote to All <=-

Back in the glory days, it ran on OS/2 Warp with Lora BBS (so many memories with DOS sessions and the rock-solid stability of OS/2!).

I ran Maximus, Squish and BinkleyTerm natively under OS/2 - good times!

Today I brought it back to life using Synchronet on a 1 Euro/month
Debian VPS, because passion is priceless, but saving money on hosting
is always a good thing.

Well said!

In my free time, when I take my hands off the keyboard, I like cooking real Italian food (no cream in carbonara or pineapple on pizza),
drawing, doing tattoos, and enjoying a nice cold beer.

Where do you stand on the Pancetta versus Guanciale debate?

Welcome back!





... See you on the other side.
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.

phigan wrote to Massy73 <=-

By the way, do you remember running
into a copy of OS/2 Warp that was
command-line only on 3 floppy disks? It
was a hacked version by someone.

Plus, the 17-floppy fixpak... :)



... Adding on
--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
þ Synchronet þ .: realitycheckbbs.org :: scientia potentia est :.

Re: Greetings from Italy
By: Nightfox to Massy73 on Tue Aug 11 2026 08:13:21

...(I like guitar & keyboard)...

Ah, another keyboard fan. What kind of kit do you have?

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þ Synchronet þ End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com

Re: Re: Greetings from Italy
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Massy73 on Wed Aug 12 2026 06:31:19

Where do you stand on the Pancetta versus Guanciale debate?

We use Pancetta for casoncelli (durum wheat semolina pasta made with eggs, stuffed with leftover roast from the day before, fresh salami meat, parsley, garlic, raisins, amaretti cookies, Spadona or Abate pear, and grated lemon zest).

For Carbonara, Amatriciana, and Zozzona, on the other hand, it's Guanciale all the way!

If you ever pass through Bergamo, contact me!
Max.
Your friendly neighborhood SysOp

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þ Synchronet þ Shadowland BBS Italy

Re: Greetings from Italy
By: Mortar to Nightfox on Wed Aug 12 2026 12:24 pm

...(I like guitar & keyboard)...

Ah, another keyboard fan. What kind of kit do you have?

By "kit", do you mean the keyboard & mouse I have? I don't really have a fancy keyboard for my PC, but it's a Logitech K200; my mouse is a Logitech G502 Hero Edition.

I tend to like Logitech stuff, so when I look for a new keyboard or mouse, I tend to look for Logitech, but I've seen some good looking stuff from other brands too.

Nightfox

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þ Synchronet þ Digital Distortion: digitaldistortionbbs.com