Who Are We?

The Diamond Mine Online System started off as a Bulletin Board System (or BBS) in July 1993. The Diamond Mine Online is a community of users who come together at one location for friendship and competition. The users of the Diamond Mine Online are from all over the world and from all walks of life. The thing that ties them together is the global Internet.

What Do You Have To Offer?

First and foremost, the Diamond Mine Online is a community created for people to express their opinions in an open forum setting. This means that people can leave messages for people to read on a multitude of topics – ranging from common everyday conversations to strange and unique topics. We have you covered!

We also have friendly competition between our users. We offer a number of interactive text BBS Doors, including Legend of the Red Dragon and Trade Wars 2002.

We also have a large shareware file collection. What is shareware? Easy answer – “Try before you buy.”

Finally – we do offer E-mail communications within our system and to the Internet. (Inbound Internet E-mail is available by request.)

We offer this for our users FREE OF CHARGE. However, we ask that you create only one account per person. This way the competition is more fair to the other users on our system. Please leave us your REAL contact information. We don’t spam, but we do ask since you are our guest on our server, that you pleae give us the courtesy of letting us know who you really are.

Our History

We have a long and interesting history. Read the timeline below to gauge how long we have been around, and how our system has progressed over time with a paradigm shift in communications technology.

1993 – The Diamond Mine BBS is formed. We opened for business in July 1993 as a dial-up Bulletin Board System for the people of the northern suburgs of Pittsburgh, PA USA. We started as a small BBS using WWIV (World War IV) BBS software for a couple of months, and then moved on to VBBS (Virtual BBS) BBS software in September. We had access to a worldwide message forum network called WWIVNet and a regional message network called LilNet (Little Network).

1995 – With a change in employment, the system operator moves the Diamond Mine Online BBS from Pittsburgh, PA to Northern Virginia near Washington, DC. Still using VBBS as a dial-up operation.

1996 – Upgraded the main BBS software from Virtual BBS to Virtual Advanced BBS (VADV) software. By this time, it was obvious that the dial-up BBS was slowly fading away. Plans were made to make the Diamond Mine BBS a hybrid dial-up access and Internet access via a protocol called Telnet. The operating system was changed from Microsoft’s Windows 95 to IBM’s OS/2 operating system. Special software was installed to facilitate the access to the Internet during the overnight hours, and dial-up access during the day.

1997 – Moved the entire operation to another facility in Northern Virginia. This allowed us to go on-line to the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This way we were a full hybrid system, allowing us to have both dial-up and Telnet customers at the same time. Still ran VADV software as the core engine.

1998 – Moved the entire operation yet again to a bigger and better facility in Northern Virginia. Still ran a hybrid system with both dial-up (under a new phone number) and Telnet. Still ran VADV software as the core engine.

1999 – By the late 1990s, high-speed Internet became available in our area. The Diamond Mine Online immedately was upgraded to this service when it became available. People could now access the system faster than ever before. Also by this time, the system had migrated from a very obsolete OS/2 to Windows 98 software, but still running VADV as its core engine. A new Windows interface was used to interface the system to the Internet.

2000 – By the time Y2K came around, it became obvious that VADV was no longer being supported. The interface to the Internet was not very reliable and the core system was not very efficient. Synchronet BBS , which had been domant for several years, was again being supported by its author. The author created a new engine that better worked with modern operating system and incorporated many Internet features built in to the underlying engine. The Diamond Mine was upgraded to this new engine.

2001 – As time went on and many people were migrating from the dial-up modem to high speed Internet, the number of dial-up users had gone down to almost nothing. The dial-up modem line was disconnected, and the Diamond Mine Online continued on as a Telnet system only.

2004 – The Diamond Mine Online was yet again moved to a new venue within Northern Virginia. Still connected to a high-speed system, the underlying software was upgraded to provide FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and primitive HTTP (World Wide Web) access to the Diamond Mine Online.

2006 - Moved the Diamond Mine Online to its own dedicated server. This allows for less downtime and faster access to the system.

2011 – Upgraded the core engine to the latest Synchronet software suite that offers advanced Internet capabilities and improved “under the hood” relability and speed enhancements. Also, new online BBS Doors were installed at the request of the users.

2019 - Introduced a new website and also updated the core Synchronet software suite to the latest version (3.18).

2020 - Working on moving the system to a 64-bit cloud server

 

For More Information

Please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your visit more enjoyable. The Diamond Mine Online can change to the desires of you, our users. Thanks!

For more information, please also visit the How To Access the Diamond Mine Online page to learn how to access the Diamond Mine Online via Telnet, Web or FTP.