| BBS Call | Location | User Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| N6RME-1 | Diamond Springs, covering the greater Sacramento area | 145.09 |
| N0ARY-1 | Mt. Umunhum (south of San Jose), covering the San Francisco Bay, Monterey Bay, and Gilroy area | 145.09, 433.37 |
| W6RAY-3 (SJVBBS) | Park Ridge (east of Fresno), covering the South Central Valley | 145.09, 441.50 |
| KE6JJJ-1 | San Francisco | 145.09, 433.37 |
Basic BBS Usage:
Each BBS works a little bit like a Post Office, your "home BBS" is where you have a PO Box.
All of them share bulletins, messages readable by all users. A personal message is addressed to a specific user at a specific BBS and is only readable by that user.
All BBSs operate more or less the same way. Each should have help files or info files that explain how to use it. Most will understand the command H (help) or I (info).
Please keep in mind that each BBS is operated in cooperation with the others. The forwarding of traffic doesn't happen by magic, each BBS has forwarding files that are maintained manually by the sysop. One can't simply address a message to a BBS that isn't part of the network and expect it to somehow get there.
Personal Messages
A personal message address looks something like e-mail, but please remember this is NOT
e-mail. In this region (Northern CA), one's address is:
CALL@BBS.#NCA.CA.USA.NOAMCALL is your call sign, BBS is the call sign of your home BBS, #NCA is our region code, CA is the State code, USA is the country code, and NOAM is the continent code (NOrth AMerica). Suppose your call is K6ABC and your home BBS is N6XYZ. Another user could send you a message with the "send personal" (sp) command:
SP K6ABC@N6XYZ.#NCA.CA.USA.NOAMFortunately, the BBSs in this region know about each other, so if your friend is also in this region, he/she could shorten that to:
SP K6ABC@N6XYZ
Bulletins
Bulletins are sent to a title instead of a call sign, and are "flooded" instead of sent to a particular BBS. The title needs to be no larger than the longest possible call sign. The distribution range of your bulletin is specified with one of the standard flood designators. The recognized floods in the NCA region are:
Choose the title wisely, it should have something to do with the topic of your message. Titles like "all" are too generic, many people will skip over those. The subject is the place for a more detailed description of the message; however, most BBSs will limit the length of the subject to 40 or 50 characters.
LOCAL (or the call of your BBS) (Limited to your BBS) NCA (No. CA region) CA (the State of CA) USA (The United States) NOAM (USA, Canada, Mexico) WW (World Wide -- every BBS) The most common are USA and WW
Bulletins are sent with the "send bulletin" (sb) command. Some examples are:
SB INFO@WW
SB HELP@USA
SB ATV@CA
NTS messages
National Traffic System messages are no longer sent on the BBS network; however, many BBSs still have the commands to send and receive them. If you use those commands to send NTS messages on the BBS network, they're NOT likely to be picked up or delivered by NTS people.
For BBS sysops: BBS sysop coordination page.