// project milestones, releases, and what's coming next.
austinspring.com relaunched on ATXbbs — the first public deployment of the software. It revives the Spring BBS that ran in Austin from 1996 to 2014, now with a live posting layer on top of the historical archive. The old conferences are readable again, and open for new responses.
Roughly 4,000 archived thread URLs from spring.com and spring.net were captured by the Internet Archive between 1996 and 2013. About 2,900 returned full content and are now rebuilt as a browsable archive; the rest were partial or lost. A 1998 discussion thread that once ran to 14,000 replies is among those back online — and taking new replies.
Because a large share of the original membership is now 55–75, every page ships four themes (Phosphor, Light, Sepia, High-Contrast), four font sizes up to extra-large, and a floating toggle that remembers your choice per device — no account required. Contrast targets WCAG AA. Readability is treated as a feature, not an afterthought.
A discussion board is more useful wired to the things people discuss. ATXbbs conferences cross-link with their subject sites — the film conference with firth.com, the Austen conference with austen.com, TV talk with tvreviewer.com.
Once the API surface stabilizes, ATXbbs source will be released at v0.5 so anyone can revive a different defunct BBS from Wayback. Want to do that sooner? Email terry@atxbbs.com. Track progress on the roadmap and the changelog.