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At the Freeware Hall of Fame web site, formerly a BBS, we have available for free download two versions of PCBoard, one of the most successful and popular BBS platforms. http://www.freewarehof.org/olh... is where to find that and "Door" programs useful on a BBS. We also have a lot to say about life in the BBS days and hints for running a good board. The FHOF BBS was named one of the country's top 25 boards by Boardwatch magazine. More can be read here: http://www.freewarehof.org/hom... . Caveat: PCBoard is a DOS platform, though it can be made to run in Windows, (Not by me.)

At the Freeware Hall of Fame web site, formerly a BBS, we have available for free download two versions of PCBoard, one of the most successful and popular BBS platforms. http://www.freewarehof.org/olh... is where to find that and "Door" programs useful on a BBS. We also have a lot to say about life in the BBS days and hints for running a good board. The FHOF BBS was named one of the country's top 25 boards by Boardwatch magazine. More can be read here: http://www.freewarehof.org/hom... . Caveat: PCBoard is a DOS platform, though it can be made to run in Windows, (Not by me.)

That site hurt my eyes! Oh my word.

Also, does he remind you of the timecube guy? http://www.freewarehof.org/myt...

This guy pioneered the idea of shareware. Microsoft busy trying to rewrite history again ?

I've recently had my eyes opened, by this article, to the hidden costs of advertising.

My own executive summary: Advertising makes products more expensive, because corporations that advertise their products sure as hell don't pay for the ads out of their own pockets.

Meaning: Any money going into gaming (and advertising therein) is going to jack up the price of the advertised products. So if I buy those products, I have to pay a few elite whoring twitch wizards whether I want to or not.

My personal conclusion: I'm buying even fewer games than before. (Gives the finger to (a small subset of) Corporate scum)

According the Ward himself, CBBS stands for Computerized Bulletin Board System. What Ward and Randy had in mind was replacing the cork bulletin board where members woud post buy,sell and trade notes at CACHE meetings with a computer version. It's also commnoly misnamed "Community."

Ward Christensen posted more history here on /. when I tipped him off about a discussion with more incorrect information about MODEM vs. XMODEM.

There's some more history in an interview here.

Ward's a terrifically nice guy who also invented freeware when he gave away all of the useful utilities he wrote. Teh reason for that was more that he didn't want mess with accusations of competing with his employer than an early movement for Free Software.

I've the privilege of knowing Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, the two who INVENTED the BBS (and coined the term) right here in Chicago. Ward is an on-site technical support rep that is working in my office a bit now. We had lunch a few days ago.

When it was mentioned here on /. that Google had posted the USENET archives I checked for Ward's name. I told him that comes up with 700 messages, mostly mentioning his MODEM protocol as "the Ward Christensen protocol." Yeah, he invented file transfers by modem, too. Google returns over 54,000 web page matches for Ward's name. Ward laughs about how many hits you can get when his name is mis-spelled.

In 1978, Chicago had a severe blizzard and Ward and Randy wanted to share programs. Ward wrote the MODEM protocol to send the files back and forth.

During that snowstorm in January 1978, they invented CBBS to emulate the cork bulletin board at the meetings of the Chicago Computer Hobbyists Exchange (CACHE) user group that computer hobbyists used to post messages about wanted computer parts and such. They made use of a pair of direct connect 300 baud modems donated by Dennis Hayes. Randy built the S100 system and Ward wrote the program which they called CBBS. There was no operating system in those days, so the program talked directly to the hardware. It took them a month to have it done by the next CACHE meeting.

Ward is a pioneer that we all owe:
- He invented the world's first BBS program, CBBS.
- He wrote the world's first modem file transfer program, (X)MODEM.
-one the pioneers of FREE OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. The company he works for would not let him sell programs he wrote so he gave them away. If you had an early CP/M system like I did, you knew that there were dozens and dozens of free useful utilities available on BBSs that were written by one W. Christensen.

BTW, they copyrighted the term "CBBS," not "BBS." Oh, well.

I'm sure the documentary team will be looking up Ward. I'll let him know about this and maybe he'll post.

P.S. Randy's Illinois license plate is CBBS. Ward's is XMODEM.

Trivia question: What does the C stand for? It's not what you think.