Now What?

[W3WN]

H

APRS is a viable mode and rather popular too. The TNC is obsolete now that digital is sound card driven, but used in KISS (transparent) mode may be used as an interface.

"I'm really surprised more hams don't have 2M packet BBS's up and running."
You're surprised because you weren't around to witness what killed packet. First, a long time ago in a network far away came Packet Wars, The Radio Forwarding Empire vs. The Rebel Internet Forwarding Alliance aka Land Line Lids. That destroyed the network worldwide leaving a few islands here and there. As remote sysop of the Central NJ Node linking SNJ and EPA to NNJ, NYC and WW that changed callsigns so many times I got dizzy, I worked with my fellow sysops trying to find a path to the rest of the US and Canada to no avail. Then the North East BBS (NEBBS) network fell apart, we were barely hanging on. The last nail in the coffin came when 3 UK trolls attacked the remaining users and chased them away. All that was left were the robots, and I pulled the plug The Day The Packet Music Died.

"Some reason I have an urge to try to resurrect my old packet setup of 20 years ago. Am I crazy?"
With all due respect sir, that you are.

Hmmm. That’s a story I never heard, but I was never into the PBBS system (such as it was) around here. What little activity (that was publicly known about, at least) just seemed to fade away.