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I think my first "taste" of the Internet was in 1987 through a friend who was a graduate student at the University of Arizona in Tucson. While the Internet was nice, I loved using BBSes much, much more. In fact, I'm still running a free BBS. I'm using ProBoard v2.17 under OS/2 Warp 4.52. My board's now available via telnet and my BBS's website (yep, don't need a terminal program to connect). I'm a member of FidoNet and I run my own FTN-style network (have since 2000). I think I've been running my BBS since 1996 and yeah, I was a latecomer to the BBS scene. BBSes are still alive and well. You can find a very up-to-date BBS list at http://www.telnetbbsguide.com/ or, if you are a Synchronet BBS fan, http://www.synchro.net/bbslist.html. I don't get a lot of callers, to be honest, but my board has daily activity. I'm a full-time college student at the age of 39 and while I can't be on the BBS as much as I want to be, I enjoy still running a BBS.

There's still quite a few of us who live in the past, and still run BBSes. SynchroNet BBS Software makes it fairly simple, and is still (very) actively developed. My BBS (listed in my signature!) runs on Linux, gets a few callers a month, and has the old door games that everyone loved. It's primary purpose is for me to make fun of all the conspiracy-theorist nut-jobs in FidoNet. (Yes, FidoNet still exists!)

Was called by the son of an old buddy last week about bring back his dad's old BBS The SmallTime BBS in Phoenix. It was a great place for files and gaming in the 90's. I spent a ton of time playing LoD, LoRD, and Tradewars there. Probably a SynchroNet BBS Software site as well....

There's still quite a few of us who live in the past, and still run BBSes. SynchroNet BBS Software makes it fairly simple, and is still (very) actively developed. My BBS (listed in my signature!) runs on Linux, gets a few callers a month, and has the old door games that everyone loved. It's primary purpose is for me to make fun of all the conspiracy-theorist nut-jobs in FidoNet. (Yes, FidoNet still exists!)

Was called by the son of an old buddy last week about bring back his dad's old BBS The SmallTime BBS in Phoenix. It was a great place for files and gaming in the 90's. I spent a ton of time playing LoD, LoRD, and Tradewars there. Probably a SynchroNet BBS Software site as well....

There's still quite a few of us who live in the past, and still run BBSes. SynchroNet BBS Software makes it fairly simple, and is still (very) actively developed.

My BBS (listed in my signature!) runs on Linux, gets a few callers a month, and has the old door games that everyone loved. It's primary purpose is for me to make fun of all the conspiracy-theorist nut-jobs in FidoNet. (Yes, FidoNet still exists!)

All these years people in the Unixy world gave Microsoft a ton of crap for VB, and now, after all this time, they've come up with something arguably worse... javascript, and now, a javascript compiler.

Javascript was not created by the opensource community (it was created by Brendan Eich and ended up becoming part of Netscape, which was not open source at the time). Additionally, Javascript has reasonable structures that don't deteriorate when the software expands to large sizes.

Check out Synchronet, it has IRC servers, NNTP servers, Gopher servers etc. all written in javascript. The code is completely readable (generally not the case with VB when the code reaches that complexity) and cross-platform.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Javascript language, like there is in visual basic.

Yeah, I thought it was an old-school BBS, too, after reading the headline...

That being said, there are plenty of BBS's still running, you just telnet to them now (99.9% of the time, I'm sure there's still a couple 'true old school' ones around). And many of them have plenty active communities, classic door games, etc, etc.

As a matter of fact, I was playing around with BBS server software called Synchronet about a year ago. I got re-insterested in BBSes after watching that History of the BBS documentary and having a wave of nostalgia hit me. Synchronet is a 'classic' BBS (telnet connection), has an HTTP, NNTP, FTP, GOPHER, and IRC connections among other things. It's pretty cool.

Disclaimer: If you couldn't tell I'm not officially connected with Synchronet in any way, just enjoyed some time at the vert.synchro.net BBS, and playing around with the software.

If any of you (like me) had fun back in the days of dial up BBS's .. and liked OS2 (I kinda liked DesqView also) , Rob Swindell still keeps Synchronet the telnet BBS package alive (along with its OS/2 Build).

While he hasn't made much changes to them over the years the message base networks / online games are still really active. Someone mentions OS/2 and I instantly start thinking back to the days of playing Trade Wars.

Wow makes you feel like a dinosaur and not even much past 30 .. But its good to see they're still alive and kicking.

Memories :) Fun stuff.

Synchronet BBS Software Old-School man, that's what it's all about...

Global War, a BBS door game.

It's still around. You can download it here. You'll need a BBS to run it any way other than hotseat multiplayer. Or you could log onto any one of hundreds of BBSs that could be running it.

The bbs community may be gone, but in some respects, its be replaced with a wider audience.

Not entirely gone... just more or less an underground community now. There's several old BBS software packages that have been ported from their x86 DOS versions into Win32 and Linux versions and run via telnet (and soon ssh). I happen to run Synchronet BBS software (which is open source) for my BBS, which I started a little over two years ago because I had always wanted to run one when I was a kid, logging into everyone else's systems (via 2400 baud).

You can find the Synchronet BBS packages at http://www.synchro.net

See, the cool thing is that old BBS software is adding in newer technologies and becoming more "modern" while keeping the good old terminal around, too. For instance, Synchronet has (in addition to ye old telnet & console) it's own built in web, mail, irc, and news services -- to name a few.

Long live the BBS! :)
- Steve, sysop of the Bit Bucket BBS

As an example the BBS software I use makes an Object Model to be scripted in Javascript.. the software is called Synchronet, which many who were bbsing in the 90's may well remember... it's still around, and now a *nix as well as win32 bbs software including a rapidly improving http/html interface...

Well you had NAPLPS (more info & pics) which practically no one used (at least in the US) but did get some support from a few BBS packages and terminal programs.

Then there was RIP (aka RIPscript, pics) which got the most implementation, although the tools and actual BBS support were far behind what ANSI was capable of.

Then towards the end of the BBS era, you had Syncronet appear on the scene, which IIRC had ANSI and RIPScript support first, then added a custom terminal program with SVGA graphics. (not sure based on what presentation protocol, but I'm pretty sure it was proprietary) What's really interesting is it's been open sourced and is still in active development.

As a long time BBS operator (Xenogenesis BBS, Sysop HEX, 313 area, first running TAG software then Oblivion/2 which I'm listed as an author for although I never put out an "official release") I'd definately say ANSI was the standard. I still miss my Obv/2 setup and it's tight ANSI menu sets (all produced personally, I'd check out the scenes packs but made my own in TheDraw of course) and I'm hoping to put it up on the Internet someday from my backups.

Jonah Hex

You can do just that with Synchronet. I wrote the code to run external doors through DOSEMU.

i wish there was something like that remotely close to where I am, old computer systems are so cool. i think its a shame that there isn't something that we can do with all that old equipment

While I like what I see of Synchronet Message Base, the system is not as mature as Gcomm in many, many ways.

Note that this is NOT bashing Rob and crew in any way. I have used SBBS in the past, and would likely use it again in the future (actualy have a project I am looking at Synchronet for), just pointing out what parts of Synchronet still need to be developed to be brought up to par with MBBS/Gcomm.

Message base:
This is handeled quite well. The SMB is well thought out. Improvements still need to be made to dynamicly integrate HTML with file/message bases, AND to better handle file attachments.

File Base:
The work started on moving to a file spec based on the SMB spec is well thought out, and should work quite well, but this still needs to be done

Add-ons:
This is what made Gcomm great. All sorts of add-ons were/are avalible (see http://www.adventurecomm.com/advlist.txt for a list of examples). While SBBS supports door games, it does not offer much support for these kind of add-ons.

Hopefuly these things will get fixed in the future. Hopefuly.

Why don't you forget all the technology and just do a Java based chat room that looks like a BBS. You can host it on a server and people access it via a wireless internet connection. Just give out login and passwords to only local people. Other than not dialing in with a modem you'd never be able to tell the difference. The only thing that makes your network unique is that it is geographically constrained. If you can't manage to screen users based on geography find another way, such as having them pick up a login written on a piece of paper at a central place.

Better yet, why not just run a real, modern 32bit BBS? There are both *nix and windows versions and it's opensource ;) Plus, it uses the mozilla team's javascript engine, so you can write your own modules to extend the functionality quickly (the IRC service included with synchronet is written in javascript). I'm currently writing a new command shell for my BBS using JS. And of course, Synchronet runs nearly all of the old 16bit DOS doors (easier to achieve on Windows but not impossible on *nix using a dos emulator). I run LORD, Trade Wars, Clans, and other older games on my BBS that are (interestingly) still popular (over 150 user accounts and climbing - not bad for a new BBS started a year ago in the post-BBS era!)

If you're interested in running a truly oldschool BBS, check out Synchronet. Free, good telnet BBS server.

And if you don't run LORD, you should be shot.

There are still quite a few BBSes out there, feel free to visit mine (theroughnecks.net) especially if you like ansi telnet... :) (can get a telnet client from my website, for dos/ansi..

There are quite a few free, and non-free options.. I run on synchronet, while mystic and elebbs also get some use...

Synchronet is being actively developed under windows and linux(x86), in addition to big-endian ports in the works. There is also MBSE for linux..

Guess what? There are a great many BBSes accessible via telnet these days. So, they are not quite gone. Matter of fact, I run a BBS using Synchronet software for windows. Synchronet is an actively developed, and now open-sourced BBS package (see this page for more info).

Synchronet was orginally a DOS BBS app, but was ported to Win32, and recently *nix (it will compile on *BSD and most Linux distros, and work is in progress to port it to big endian architectures). In addition to telnet access to the BBS, Synchronet has a built in FTP service for file area access in addition to using the old Zmodem transfer way, and also included in Synchronet are NNTP (for accessing message areas) as well as finger (for inter-bbs instant messaging), and soon a web interface (built in web server).

Some of the old door game authors are resurrecting their old projects and actively developing their doors again. LORD (Legend of the Red Dragon) is once again under development. I am running the latest beta, v4.07. I am running Legend of the Red Dragon, Barren Realms Elite, The Arcadian Legends, Falcon's Eye, Falcon's Honor, Ambroshia (a brand new door game written in the internet era), several of the Sunrise doors, The Clans, DoorMUD, Sim-BBS, and the Virtual Sysop 3 (ported from TBBS systems).

... and I should know, for I run a modern day BBS (see .sig below). Have a look at this BBS software suite and you will see that the world does indeed have a great open source BBS suite that runs on both Windows and *nix. Telnet has done away with dialing in, and also does away with long distance charges. If you look at this page , you will see that there are quite a few Synchronet systems in existence with new systems coming online and connecting into DOVE-Net almost weekly. (DOVE-Net is the QWK message network that is supported and run by the author of Synchronet). Also, thanks to telnet doing away with long distance charges, we have many large inter-bbs message and game networks today. (Of course, good old FidoNet is still around, too, with most nodes interchanging mail via telnet these days).

... and I should know, for I run a modern day BBS (see .sig below). Have a look at this BBS software suite and you will see that the world does indeed have a great open source BBS suite that runs on both Windows and *nix. Telnet has done away with dialing in, and also does away with long distance charges. If you look at this page , you will see that there are quite a few Synchronet systems in existence with new systems coming online and connecting into DOVE-Net almost weekly. (DOVE-Net is the QWK message network that is supported and run by the author of Synchronet). Also, thanks to telnet doing away with long distance charges, we have many large inter-bbs message and game networks today. (Of course, good old FidoNet is still around, too, with most nodes interchanging mail via telnet these days).

Yes, to elaborate further in the comment in the story, the best way to establish this kind of 'identity' scheme is to make use of a set of services. Andy Church makes a very good IRC Services package which is available at http://www.ircservices.za.net which is more than capable for performing the task at hand.

You'll need an IRC daemon which is also able to be tightly integrated with services, and for that task, I recommend using Bahamut (available at http://bahamut.dal.net. As the URL implies, it's the same IRCd that DALnet uses. In particular, you're looking for a channel mode which restricts channel access to registered clients only. In Bahamut, this is the +R channel mode (which is different from +r.)

Services has a channel option known as 'RESTRICTED' which will only allow people who are on that channel's access list into the channel. Everyone else will be kicked and banned automatically by services. Thus, you can have reasonable assurance that everyone who's in the channel has A) identified to their registered nick with services, and B) is supposed to be in the channel, since they're on that channel's access list. Furthermore, the status of someone's identity can be checked by doing '/MSG NickServ STATUS ', where is the nickname you want to know the status of. NickServ will then tell you if the nickname is identified to properly (i.e. via a password.)

Some of the more advanced IRC options include replacing the ancient 'ident' system with something more modern. On IRC, anyone who isn't 'identified' has a tilde (~) prefixed to their username. However, since almost anyone can put anything in the ident reply these days, this has become practically useless (it used to be that you could tell, with reasonable assurance, what user was coming from what Unix box with ident -- not so anymore.) Instead, it's possible to setup an authorization scheme that makes use of IRC's 'PASS' command to also 'identify' to a unique username.

My Synchronet IRCd (http://www.synchro.net/docs/ircd.txt) makes use of this scheme by letting users be 'identified' whenever they provide the correct password and username that corresponds to the local BBS account (Synchronet is a very nice piece of BBS software for Linux/Win32/BSD/etc.) That way, a user coming online from a certain BBS without a tilde in their username is an indicator that they've identified correctly to their local BBS account. That's just one of the ways ident can be replaced to provide something more useful.

A while ago I wanted to run a couple BBS door games on my webserver and allow people to connect through telnet. I found this wasn't a very easy task.

Although I did find there is a very detailed guide on how to do it using Synchronet and as mentioned in this article DOSEMU.

Synchronet is still a very popular piece of BBS software that's used by a great number of BBS's worldwide even today. It's still being actively developed, and is 100% open source, running on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and a handful of others (including Win32.) Its features are beginning to rival even those of WorldGroup, with all its built-in services. It can even run old-school DOS doors under Linux by using DOSEMU. When you compare this to other BBS packages out there (such as Falken BBS, which has all but stopped development since changing owners,) it's nice to see BBS software that's still being actively developed with daily CVS commits.

You can check out a list of BBS's running Synchronet (many of them with friendly, active sysops) at http://www.synchro.net/sbbslist.html, or a bigger list of BBS's (all checked to be active on at least a monthly basis) at http://www.dmine.com/telnet/. You can, of course, find out more of Synchronet at http://www.synchro.net.

In related news, Fidonet is still alive and well, and when you compare it against today's spam-infested usenet, Fidonet is actually quite the attractive alternative. BBS's may be outdated and more a novelty these days than anything, but it's still the only thing out there that has that nice, close-knit 'family-like' atmosphere.

Synchronet is still a very popular piece of BBS software that's used by a great number of BBS's worldwide even today. It's still being actively developed, and is 100% open source, running on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and a handful of others (including Win32.) Its features are beginning to rival even those of WorldGroup, with all its built-in services. It can even run old-school DOS doors under Linux by using DOSEMU. When you compare this to other BBS packages out there (such as Falken BBS, which has all but stopped development since changing owners,) it's nice to see BBS software that's still being actively developed with daily CVS commits.

You can check out a list of BBS's running Synchronet (many of them with friendly, active sysops) at http://www.synchro.net/sbbslist.html, or a bigger list of BBS's (all checked to be active on at least a monthly basis) at http://www.dmine.com/telnet/. You can, of course, find out more of Synchronet at http://www.synchro.net.

In related news, Fidonet is still alive and well, and when you compare it against today's spam-infested usenet, Fidonet is actually quite the attractive alternative. BBS's may be outdated and more a novelty these days than anything, but it's still the only thing out there that has that nice, close-knit 'family-like' atmosphere.

On a lighter note, back in the windows 3.1/Lantastic days, I used to mess around with a program called "The Draw" (i ran a bbs, figure it out or google it) which could turn an ANSI screen into a .COM file

I'm still using "TheDraw" :) I run one of the many Synchronet BBSes that are beginning to make a comeback.

There is plenty of BBS software available today which has the telnet capability built in (no more need for nasty kludges).

The more popular ones are: Synchronet 3, EleBBS, and Mystic.

Synchronet is probably the easiest to set up if you want a board with telnet that supports the old DOS doorgames.

every one keeps talking like BBSs are dead, Im running one and there are more in the interbbs leagues (BRE & FE) now that when I ran it the first time. My LORD games have 3x the active participants (granted, I have 7 internet accessable nodes now instead of one local phone line). look here to see a large list of telnet BBSs... many of which have been around for years!

Then come by my BBS... telnet://www.gargoyleslanding.com

Telegard released a 2.7 version but I believe that was the end of it. Renegade was activly developed right up to the end of the BBS scene.

Message areas are not only availible through QWK packets (can be downloaded via FTP as well) but also through NNTP, and Gopher.

Everyone loves door games as well, and there are many Leages (Inter-BBS) that still run games such as BRE, Falcon's Eye, Arrowbridge, and more.

So, to all of you who think the BBS got left in the dust with the Modem, think again! :)

Yep, I remember it. I'm not sure how active the development is, but they've still got a web page at Synchro.net.

Lord's still around.. http://lord.lordlegacy.org .. Being ported to Win32 w/ door32, OS/2, and Linux. (some people might ask "why os2?" its easy for me to do win32 and os2 versions. change compile target, recompile, poof. done.) A telnet server and web version are both planned as well.

Seth Able, the original author, got burned out on bbs coding.. Sold all of his software (Lord, Lord2, Teos, and TLord) to Metropolis.. They had the games for a good 2 years before allowing me to work on them.. This next June will make 3 years that Ive been working on them.

Want to see what the games like nowadays? telnet://bbs.lordlegacy.org .. Make sure to use a good telnet client, such as Mtelnet..

BBS's, while not as popular as they once were, are still going pretty strong. With telnet helping out, theyre making a good come back. Check out Synchronet, EleBBS, or Mystic for good telnet softwares.

Maybe looking for bbs chat? Grab an IRC client and go to irc.lordlegacy.org or irc.thebbs.org in #bbs

Looking for a list of boards? TheDirectory has a telnet list and a dialup list.

Looking for the bbs files? TheBBS's Archives is huge.

Looking for some good links? Sysops Corner has them

Lord's still around.. http://lord.lordlegacy.org .. Being ported to Win32 w/ door32, OS/2, and Linux. (some people might ask "why os2?" its easy for me to do win32 and os2 versions. change compile target, recompile, poof. done.) A telnet server and web version are both planned as well.

Seth Able, the original author, got burned out on bbs coding.. Sold all of his software (Lord, Lord2, Teos, and TLord) to Metropolis (http://www.gameport.com).. They had the games for a good 2 years before allowing me to work on them.. This next June will make 3 years that Ive been working on them.

Want to see what the games like nowadays? telnet://bbs.lordlegacy.org .. Make sure to use a good telnet client, such as Mtelnet..

BBS's, while not as popular as they once were, are still going pretty strong. With telnet helping out, theyre making a good come back. Check out Synchronet, EleBBS, or Mystic for good telnet softwares.

Maybe looking for bbs chat? Grab an IRC client and go to irc.lordlegacy.org or irc.thebbs.org in #bbs

Looking for a list of boards? TheDirectory has a telnet list and a dialup list.

Looking for the bbs files? TheBBS's Archives is huge.

Looking for some good links? Sysops Corner has them

You know, Synchronet BBS is still around, and has been completely adapted for the internet... It will work with both dialup and telnet, but you must use an older version of the software to allow dialup access, otherwise 3.0 is strictly telnet only. there is a Windows version and a Linux version availible, visit the website http://www.synchro.net for more info.

You know, Synchronet BBS is still around, and has been completely adapted for the internet... It will work with both dialup and telnet, but you must use an older version of the software to allow dialup access, otherwise 3.0 is strictly telnet only. there is a Windows version and a Linux version availible, visit the website http://www.synchro.net for more info.

Im still running one, telnet only mind you, using synchronet 3.10e beta I have set up about 20 door games and have about 350 users... if you all want to play LORD, BRE, FE, Clans, Tradewars and others drop on by (the addressis in the sig)

SynchroNet (also, visit the home page) is easy to set up and stable as a MUTHA. Does FTP for filesharing, doors are easy enough to set up (more or less); it's ready to rock and or roll right out of the box.
If you're one of those curmudgeons blathering about how BBSes aren't dead, go out and prove it. I did, and have proven to myself that they really are dinosaurs. Ask yourself how long you'd sit around punching away at your TRaSh-80 or your old Apple IIc before you ran screaming back to your jacked-up P3/Athlon? You may be one of the small subset of folks that enjoys that sort of thing and for you, a BBS is a winning proposition. Just that, in my experience, we really are a small subset.

...first of all, let me pimp SynchroNet BBS. Even for a retard like me, I had it up and running on an old box with 6 doors and files and whatnot in an evening or two. (for the more rabidly fanatical of you, SynchroNet also is out on SourceForge, is available for Linux, and is GPL... I think)
As far as fast, latency was never an issue when you were dialing directly into a BBS.
As far as my experiences go... well. When I started it up, it was a fun bit of nostalgia, and I could watch as my computer scrambled to keep up between 12 and 12:30 AM, when my doors did their daily reset and everyone rushed to get in there. Within a few weeks, the people who knew what they were doing in the doors started dominating, so most people started slacking off. Message boards on our website meant people didn't post much to it.
So, uh. Yeah. Nostalgia does wear off sooner or later.

I've got my P/100 (with a whopping 16 MB of RAM) running Win95, and a 5 node Syncrhonet BBS.
It'll stay up for weeks at a time (power outages aside). Plus I play NetHack on it. I've even used Word now and then because my newer box still doesn't have a perfectly legitimate backup copy installed onto it yet.
I'm still wondering how I haven't killed that box yet.

Check out http://www.synchro.net/. Rob Swindell, original author of Synchronet BBS, has begun releasing new versions under the GPL (with the exception of two components that are LGPL). The new version 3.0 for Win32 has (among other things) built-in telnet support, so you can quickly set up a telnettable BBS that allow you and your friends to get a Trade Wars or LORD fix. He's even working on a Linux port.