Taper / Triad

Taper’s journey into the BBS scene began after purchasing a 2400 bps modem from Jerry/Triad. He quickly became co-sysop of Joyride's BBS, The Highway, which served as the HQ for groups like Brutal, Chromance, Coderz, and Oneway. When Joyride lost interest in the C64 scene and shifted focus to PCs, co-sysops Jucke/Judas and Taper took over managing The Highway, though it remained physically located in Joyride's childhood room in Bjuv. Taper would occasionally ride his moped from Ekeby to Joyride's house, carrying a 1581 in his backpack to back up and exchange wares. Unfortunately, during this period, copying wares often took priority over properly backing up the BBS setup.

Over time, The Highway changed affiliations several times before its hard drive crashed in 1994. By then, it had been the HQ for groups such as Noice, Onslaught, and Oneway. After the board’s closure, Taper and Jucke recognized the need for a new C64 BBS in the 042 area.

Building a cure: The birth of Antidote

Taper, who was already experimenting with C*Base and running a test board for select callers at night, saw the next step clearly. They secured a dedicated phone line, and with Jucke’s PETSCII artistry, Antidote went public in 1994. It quickly became the HQ for TRIAD, Alpha Flight 1970, and Wrath Designs.

Though the exact dates are unclear, Antidote suffered a hard drive corruption in late 1996 or early 1997. Despite restoration efforts using incomplete backups, many posts and graphics were lost. The BBS was later relocated to Ronneby, but suffered a second hard drive crash in 1999. Plans to reopen were halted due to the declining BBS scene and a dwindling caller base. When the Taper returned to the 042 area, Antidote was packed away, seemingly marking the end of its era.

Who says you can’t reboot history?

In late 2003, however, Antidote was revived on telnet using a full backup, becoming the first scene BBS running on real hardware to be accessible online. It remains active to this day under TRIAD and Onslaught. Initially operating on a Radar-cracked version of C*Base, it later transitioned to a Tao-modded version, which evolved as Tao continued his development work. The BBS now runs on a CMD HD with an SCSI-IDE bridge and a CF card for storage, SwiftLink for serial communication, and a SuperCPU.

Taper has forgotten more about C*Base than most people will ever know — though perhaps not the experts on this site, of course.