The Windows Source BBS
A dial-up bulletin board system from Evansville / Newburgh, Indiana, running in the mid-1990s.
Sysop Craig Kohler. ANSI and RIP art by his brother Chris Kohler.
coming back online
About the board
- Name
- The Windows Source BBS
- Location
- Evansville / Newburgh, Indiana, USA
- Era
- Mid-1990s (files dated 1989–1996)
- Sysop
- Craig Kohler
- Art
- ANSI & RIPscrip screens by Chris Kohler
- BBS software
- Remote Access 2.02, multi-node
- Mailer / tosser
- FrontDoor 2.12 · FastEcho 1.41 · ALLFIX file echoes
- Network
- FidoNet 1:2310/3
- Claim to fame
- Evansville’s first free internet email, gated through FidoNet, before Hotmail and Juno (both launched in 1996)
The board was a hub for Windows help and shareware, local forums, offline mail readers, and online door games like Legend of the Red Dragon, Trade Wars, and the inter-BBS league game Barren Realms Elite. Callers saw Chris’s ANSI screens in text mode, or full RIPscrip vector graphics if they had a RIP terminal.
By the numbers
The revival journey
In 2026 a full backup of the board turned up on a home NAS. It has been recovered, inventoried, and its art rendered for the web.
The plan: bring The Windows Source back online as a telnet BBS you can actually call, with the original menus and art. Progress is logged in the journal.
telnet windowssourcebbs.com (planned, not live yet)
Highlights
Friends of the board
Digicom BBS: Gary Barr’s Digicom BBS history site.