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Welcome to Fantasy Uprising
My fascination with computers began in the summer of 1985 when I bought my first Apple II clone, a Franklin Ace 1000. That summer was filled with adventure—playing video games, learning to code in Basic, and dreaming of becoming the greatest game developer in history. While I didn’t quite achieve that lofty goal, I did create a basic program that synchronized a strobe light to Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album. That first computer set me on a path that would lead to a long and fulfilling career in technology.
Fast forward to 1992, a pivotal year in my life. I married the prettiest girl in town (we’re still married and have two amazing kids), bought a Packard Bell 286sx with a 20MB hard drive and 4MB of RAM, and met one of my closest friends, Lord William, aka Toothgnasher Utgard. Together, we decided to create a BBS. Since we couldn’t afford the WWIV software, we chose to run a TAG BBS system instead. Thus, the original Fantasy Uprising BBS was born.
From 1992 to 1998, Lord William and I ran Fantasy Uprising from my house in Alvin, Texas. It had all the latest features of the time—a 28.8 modem, a single-speed CD-ROM, and even a 40MB hard drive upgrade! The CD-ROM was especially exciting because it allowed us to offer downloadable files directly from the BBS. Of course, anyone who remembers those days knows how slow it was, taking over an hour to upload a 1MB file at 2400 baud.
By 1998, the internet was starting to take off, and the BBS era began to fade. I had moved into a new role as the manager of business technology for an international office supply company in Houston. My wife and I had moved to our current home in 1996, our son was born, and Lord William had become an over-the-road truck driver with limited time to serve as my co-sysop. The last call to Fantasy Uprising marked the end of an era, and it was a bittersweet moment.
Over the years, my career in technology has spanned many programming languages and platforms. Starting with Basic, I moved on to Pascal, ColdFusion, C++, and eventually the .NET framework, working extensively in C# and VB.NET while diving deep into data management. By 1998, I was writing custom programs for major clients like Miller Brewing, McDonald’s, and Guinness Beer, which solidified my expertise in T-SQL and data systems.
Now, in 2024, I’m embarking on a new journey. Texas A&M-Commerce, my alma mater, introduced a Master’s program in Artificial Intelligence, and I couldn’t resist enrolling. However, the coursework heavily emphasizes Python—a language I’ve dabbled in but never mastered. To challenge myself and truly understand Python, I decided to recreate the Fantasy Uprising BBS, combining my love for retro computing with modern programming.
After attempting to track down the original TAG source code and hitting dead ends, I took matters into my own hands. I spun up DOSBox, located working copies of both TAG and Telegard, and began taking screenshots of every screen and feature. My mission: rebuild the Fantasy Uprising BBS from scratch in Python.
This project is a labor of love—a tribute to simpler times when life revolved around the hum of a modem, the thrill of connecting to a BBS, and making it home in time for The X-Files on Friday nights. Join me as I document this journey, blending nostalgia with innovation and bringing Fantasy Uprising back to life.
Published @ December 29, 2024 7:11 pm