Welcome to my annual #MARCHintosh project! I run Hermes II v3.1.1 BBS software on my Mac IIci, which also hosts my GlobalTalk zone, for the month of March. As far as I know it's the only Hermes BBS still in existence.
What's new for 2026:
How to connect via GlobalTalk:
For Pre-System 6 users, I suggest using the preconfigured version of MacTerminal here. Follow the instructions in the README FIRST file and you should be BBS'ing via AppleTalk in no time! Unfortunately you won't get ANSI graphics and you can only download via XModem.
For System 6-9 users I suggest using Christopher Swan's excellent Black Night terminal program, which supports full ANSI graphics and allows X, Y, and ZModem downloads. Download the preconfigured version here and follow the README FIRST file.
Those already using Black Night terminal program can just put the ADSP AppleTalk Tool into the System's Extension folder and reboot. Launch Black Night and under Edit -> Session Settings -> Method select AppleTalk ADSP Tool. Click Setup and select Zone "Captain's Quarters II" and name "The Crow's Nest". Click OK twice then select Session -> Connect and you should be BBS'ing via AppleTalk!
Other connection methods:
You can also connect to the BBS via Telnet (crowsnestbbs.ddns.net ports 6801-6802) and via a real dial-up modem at (952) 456-4017. Visit the Captain's Quarters II website for my recommendations for the best terminal programs and how to get them "dialed in" for best results.
What's there to do on the BBS?
History of the project:
2024
My #MARCHintosh project for 2024 was to get an old-school Hermes II BBS, called The Crow's Nest, up and running on my restored Mac IIci. For more history about Hermes BBS, check out their site here.
Back to the project, I was looking for something to do with my 40 MHz 68040 Carrera-accelerated IIci and had a bunch of WiModem232's sitting around, so why not combine the two? I was able to gain 4 serial ports to the IIci by adding a CSI Hurdler II 4-port serial NuBUS card, a favorite for Sysops back in the modem era. Fortunately I don't need to pay for multiple phone lines in this day and age! But unfortunately the 4-port serial card arrived DOA despite being "new in box". I was eventually able to get it working after replacing the electrolytic caps and reflowing all of the solder connections.
The next step of the project was getting Hermes II to work with a wifimodem. Obviously Hermes was developed before wifimodems, and the only wifimodem I'm aware of that can handle hosting a BBS is the WiModem232 from cbmstuff.com. I was able to get it to work properly with a proper Mac high-speed (hardware handshaking) modem cable @ 57,600 baud by adding "&Q0*D1*C0" to the end of the init string for the Zoom 14.4/28.8 modem driver and using the "DCD Pin 7/Chip" for carrier detect. With this, the wifimodem will properly hang up and detect carrier loss.
A BBS is pretty boring without door games, so next was locating some that were compatible with Hermes II. I had to dig through many BBS in Box & AMUG CD's, The Eagle's Nest BBS archive, archive.org's Wayback Machine, and the info-mac archive. Eventually I unearthed around 30 door games, but the vast majority of them were not compatible with the latest version of Hermes II, v3.5.1. So I ended up going with v3.1.1 which allowed for the most door games to be run. The downside with this older version of Hermes II is that it does not allow for telnet connections (thus the need for the 4-port serial card), and it is not open source like the latest version.
One limitation of using v3.1.1 is that the software only allows for a 30 day trial perior, and I was unable to find any working serial numbers for it. Hackers have tried to find workarounds for this, but the copy protection is very tough. According to the original developer, Will Price, "The serial number system I designed was way, way ahead of its time sadly. I spent the next 20+ years leveraging what I learned there to some degree working in cryptography."
At one point I thought I had found a working serial number, but then the BBS started doing strange things like disconnecting the user while they were typing in a message or completely crashing during a download. I asked the last developer of Hermes II, Michael Alyn Miller, if this was due to a bad serial number and he replied, "Any leaked serial numbers were baked into the Hermes binary and are rejected if you try to use them. Hermes had a lot of copy protection code built in to deal with people that were leaking serial numbers, and I could see it having that kind of feature. And on that note: older versions of Hermes have remote killswitches for disabling the BBS, and even include a remote hard drive wipe feature! In theory that stuff should only be accessible to someone that knows the entire serial number, but code like that always seems to get into the wrong hands, which is why I purged every last trace of that when I took over the project. [v]3.5 includes none of that stuff."
The original programmer of Hermes, Will Price, responded to one of my posts about my BBS on reddit, and was actually trying to buy back the Hermes franchise from Michael Alyn Miller at the time. Once the purchase was complete, I was able to get the Will, the master of encrytpion, together with Sidd Hartha, the master Mac-cracker, to break the encryption on v3.1.1. So we now have a working serial number generator and no 30 day limitation to run the BBS!
2025
