AXIS Underground BBS
A real old-school telnet bulletin board system on a 2.8 inch ESP32 touchscreen. Axis Micro BBS Firmware is written from scratch in C++: message bases, file areas, real DOS door games, Oblivion/2 style menus and ANSI art, and multinode chat across every board on your network.
Ready to plug in: $79.00 + $9.00 shipping (US). Firmware installed and tested; you just set it up on your WiFi. microSD card not included.
What it does
Multinode, for realUp to four callers per board, and every extra board on your LAN joins as more nodes of one BBS. Teleconference, node messages and Oblivion/2 style split-screen chat.
Oblivion/2 styleA lightbar matrix login, your own ANSI screens with pipe colours and MCI codes, or the drippy orange AXIS look. One tap switches.
File areasZMODEM and XMODEM, an upload checker, archive listings for ZIP, RAR, ARJ, TAR and GZIP, search, new files and ratios.
Messages and emailMessage bases with quoting, a new message scan, private email with a new-mail notice, taglines.
Real DOS doorsAn 8086 runtime on the board itself runs Legend of the Red Dragon, BBS Black Jack and more, plus an ANSI art viewer with ANSI movies.
The screen is the consoleA live activity screen with status lights, a touch sysop menu and a local login right on the 2.8 inch display.Plug in, pick WiFi, call in
Plug the board into USB power, pick your network on the touchscreen, then run the setup over telnet (sysop name and password, BBS name, location). Callers dial in with SyncTERM, NetRunner or any telnet client. Add your own microSD card (not included) for file areas; without one everything else still runs from internal flash. The setup can also take a free No-IP dynamic DNS name, so callers can reach your board from the internet even when your home IP changes. Put cards in more than one board and they work as one file library, with mirrored areas.
Like it? Buy me a coffee.
New in version 0.51: a Renegade-style Waiting For Caller screen. The board’s touchscreen shows it sized for the CYD, and telnet sysops, the panel console and the serial console get the classic 80×25 version. It shows live calls, posts, uploads, every node and the event schedule, and it is fully skinnable: pick a WFC skin of its own or let it follow the theme, with eight looks included and pipe codes for the live values in your own ANSI. The Renegade sysop keys work from the WFC, and sysops can type // from anywhere online to jump straight in. The two sysop menus are now one. Linked boards now share a secret cluster key, and every message between them is signed, so a stranger on your network cannot join or take over your BBS.
New in version 0.5: the sysop runs everything from inside the BBS. One layered sysop menu, the same online and on the touchscreen: users, file areas and files, message bases and posts, every setting, and a menu editor to rename items, change hotkeys and choose which commands appear. The board’s screen is now an Iniquity-style activity screen showing every node in the cluster, there are three full looks (drippy orange Axis, Oblivion/2 and green-and-grey Iniquity), and a PC app serves a control panel to your phone with a live wall of every node’s screen. Over 150 classic scene artpacks ride along in the ANSI Packs area.
In the works: an SD disc changer. Every card becomes a hot-swappable disc, the way a Night Owl shareware CD worked on a 90s board: push a card in and its areas appear on every node with a DISC IN toast, pull it and they go, with descriptions pulled from each archive’s FILE_ID.DIZ.
Every setting, key and command is explained in the docs.
Our test board is up and running
AXIS UNDERGROUND CNC is live. Want to call in? Ask for private test access and you’ll get the address and a login.
Email: therealrevjmoney@gmail.com (subject “AXIS private test access”)
Open source under the GPL-3.0. Made by Rev. J. Money, the maker of RotatoCAM.