Background

Ken's Den BBS operated for seven years in Saudi Arabia. It was know Internationally and received calls from USA, Germany, Egypt, Bahrain and all over Saudi Arabia.

Ken's Den provided Internet E-Mail, FidoNet Conferences, RIME Echo Conferences and support for IBM, Amiga, Mac and Unix machines. A more detailed history follows:

History of Ken's Den BBS:

<<<Ken's Den>>>

Dhahran

Saudi Arabia



Sysop - Ken Humphrey



Ken's Den ( with one Dial-Up Node ) started on April 27 1991, using a Commodore Amiga computer with an IBM AT Bridgeboard and a 2400 baud modem.

The BBS was later moved to an XT, then onto a 286 system. In 1992, the slow 2400 baud modem was replaced with a high speed US Robotics 14400 modem.



Node 2 was started up on 1st September 1992 because of the "high" usage. This node was installed on a 386 computer with an Intel 14400 high speed modem.

This BBS now comprised two computers connected together as a LAN. One Node on each computer. This was not a good way to use computers so in May 1993, another big change took place.

Making use of one 386DX40 computer and running desqview as a multi-tasker, Ken's Den now had two nodes running on the one processor at high speed (multi-tasking).

A CD-ROM drive was added by my son ( as a gift ) at the beginning of 1994 and a 1.7 Gbyte Hard drive was added 5 months later.

On 1st September 1994, Node 3 was added to the BBS due to continued high usage. Another 1.7 Gbyte drive was ordered for the end of the year.

The motherboard was changed out for a 486DX50, 8 Megs of memory, a SVGA 20 inch monitor and a 400 watt power supply was installed.

In December 1994, I added the second 1.7 GByte Hard drive and replaced the single CD drive to a 6 Disk Carousel.



The BBS now has 3400 Meg of hard drive space of which 2500 Meg is full.

There are 5 CD's online each with 500 Megs of compressed shareware software making a total of 5000 Megabytes of software on the BBS.

There are over 550 active users and the BBS receives 100 - 160 calls per day from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, USA, UK and a few other places around the world.



The BBS supports shareware software for the Amiga, Mac and IBM computers.

It has an active message base and with the high expertise from the responsive users, serves as a valuable learning tool and help forum from how to use a computer,

to solving the most difficult problem with an application or even writing a program. There is always someone there to provide help or advice.



On July 20th 1995, the three nodes phone numbers were added to a hunt group with node 1 number being the pilot. This allows the users to just dial one number and get to any available node.



On July 22nd 1996, the motherboard was changed out for a Pentium 100. This will allow users to make errors faster.

October 24th 1996, I upgraded the software to PCBoard 15.3. I also added a 4 Gbyte hard drive to the system. I now have 7500 Megs of hard drive space and 5 CD's full of zip files available.

On 1st November 1996, Ken's Den offered it's users the International Echo Mail Conference network called RIME.



On 1st February 1997, Ken added Internet E-Mail to the BBS. Mail was being transferred to the United States twice a day.

On 18th February, Ken's Den joined up with BBS's in Jeddah and started pulling many new conferences including World News, Sports, Stock and Business reports.

On 29th May 1997, Ken's Den increased Internet E-Mail runs to 6 times a day which is the current maximum possible.

Ken's Den currently has in excess of 300 calls per day and 200 messages a day on it's four nodes. 1997 ended with a total of 120,000 calls.



1998. Our E-Mail service provider decided to shut down. Ken's Den went ahead and registered it's own domain name on the Internet.

A new Provider was found to host the domain name and supply us with Internet E-Mail. We now do four mail runs a day, transferring 300+ messages a day.

The BBS is still very busy but now has just three nodes for normal free BBS use and one for only Internet E-Mail use.

On 19th March 1998, Ken's Den upgraded to 56K modems on all four nodes.

In June 1998, following a complaint from an "anonymous" person locally, Ken's Den was closed down by the Company Management who owned the phone lines.

It seems that the BBS had become too popular and was in direct competition with other locally run systems.



1999. I left Saudi Arabia and returned to my house in Pevensey Bay, East Sussex. I became a Contractor and worked for NCR, Worldcom, Lucent Technologies in Holland,

UPC in Holland, Secor and now I am waiting to start my next assignments.

2003. While waiting, I setup this website and tried to make it useful to other contractors.

2004. I went to work for Transport for London, then in 2005, I managed to get a contract in South Wales for a Defence Company as a Network Engineer.

This lasted 6 months but set me up with a security clearance so that I got my next position working for the M.O.D. as a Project Manager for the Network Infrastructure.

After two years on this contract, I then moved on to work as a QA Project Manager for General Dynamics. This was just a short assignment.

In all that time, Kensden was operating nicely on my home computer. Now I have just got a new Domain Name, Email accounts and web hosting site so I have moved onto a new platform.

Boy! Kensden has come a long way in 13 years. 2009. Now I have retired so I have little time to do the things I like....I am too busy doing all the other things that seem to need my attention.

I have managed to upgrade my website at last, after doing websites for three other people. It would mean a lot to me to know you visited my website so please drop me an e-mail to tell me what you think and if you were ever a member of the original Kensden, I would love to know.



If you think the website would improve with an additional feature, please send an email with your thoughts and I will think it over.