The AXIS Underground BBS running on a 2.8 inch touchscreen board with its USB cable
Two AXIS BBS touchscreen boards and a headless ESP32 on a terminal breakout running as one seven-node BBS
The BBS local console on the touchscreen board
The BBS main menu in the Oblivion/2 style look
The BBS matrix front door with a lightbar menu
Two callers in split-screen chat
A file area listing with descriptions
Reading a message in a message base
Legend of the Red Dragon running as a DOS door on the board
The touchscreen activity screen showing nodes and status lights
The BBS setup screen on the touchscreen

AXIS Underground BBS: a Real Telnet BBS on a 2.8″ Touchscreen (Ready to Plug In)

$79.00

A real old-school telnet BBS in your hand: Axis Micro BBS Firmware comes installed on a 2.8″ touchscreen board. Plug it in, pick your WiFi on the screen, answer a few setup questions, and callers can dial in with SyncTERM or any telnet client. Up to four callers per board, and add more boards to grow it into one multinode BBS. (microSD card not included.)

Try it first: our test board AXIS UNDERGROUND CNC is up and running. Request BBS access by email (therealrevjmoney@gmail.com) or ask on Discord.

Website · Docs / wiki · GitHub · More about it · Buy me a coffee

SKU: JMSCNC-AXISBBS-CYD Categories: ,

Your own underground BBS, ready to plug in

Axis Micro BBS Firmware is a complete telnet bulletin board system written from scratch for the ESP32 “Cheap Yellow Display” (ESP32-2432S028R). It comes flashed and tested. You plug it into USB power, choose your WiFi network on the touchscreen, and run the first-boot setup (sysop name and password, BBS name, location). Then anyone on your network, or the internet once you forward a port, can call in.

What it does

  • Two themes: the drippy orange AXIS look, or a dark grey and cyan Oblivion/2 style with a lightbar matrix login, pipe colour codes and your own ANSI screens.
  • Message bases with quoting, a new message scan, private email, oneliners, rumors, a voting booth, a BBS list, last callers and top ten lists.
  • File areas on a microSD card: ZMODEM and XMODEM downloads and uploads, an upload checker, archive listings for ZIP, RAR, ARJ, TAR and GZIP, file search, new files since your last call, and optional upload/download ratios.
  • Real DOS door games run on the board itself in a built-in 8086 runtime (Legend of the Red Dragon, BBS Black Jack and more), plus an ANSI art pack viewer with ANSI movies and a password-locked DOS prompt.
  • Multinode: two callers per board, and every extra board on your LAN joins as more nodes of one BBS, with teleconference chat, node messages, broadcasts and Oblivion/2 style split-screen chat.
  • The screen is the sysop console: a live activity screen with status lights, a touch sysop menu (users, files, messages, logs, setup, theme), and a local login.
  • Accounts and access: a new user application, sysop validation, security levels on areas, per-user permissions, time limits, a twit flag and a sysop user editor over telnet.

What’s in the box

  • The 2.8″ ESP32 touchscreen board in a clear acrylic case, with Axis Micro BBS Firmware installed and tested
  • A touch stylus
  • A USB cable

You supply a USB power source and a 2.4 GHz WiFi network. A microSD card is not included. Add your own (any size, formatted FAT32) to turn on the file areas; without one the BBS still runs everything else from internal flash.

New in firmware 0.51

  • A Renegade-style Waiting For Caller screen, sized for the touchscreen and in classic 80×25 for telnet and serial sysops
  • WFC skins: eight looks included, pick one or follow the theme, and pipe codes for live values in your own ANSI
  • Renegade sysop keys from the WFC, and // from anywhere online for sysops
  • One unified sysop menu
  • Linked boards share a secret cluster key and sign every message, so strangers on your network cannot join

New in firmware 0.5

  • A full sysop menu inside the BBS, online and on the touchscreen: users, file areas and files, message bases and posts, every setting, and a menu editor (rename items, change hotkeys, pick which commands appear)
  • An Iniquity-style activity screen showing every node in your cluster
  • Three looks: drippy orange Axis, Oblivion/2 and green-and-grey Iniquity, each with full ANSI screen sets
  • A free PC app that puts a control panel on your phone, with a live wall of every node’s screen
  • No-IP dynamic DNS, a new user password option and brute-force protection

Docs, source and the test board

Made by Rev. J. Money, the maker of RotatoCAM.

Additional information

Weight 0.25 lbs

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