Slashdot Mirror

Those of you who have been doing the online thing a long time might recall an old BBS door game called "Time of Chaos". In that game, you could have a base with a passcode for the door, but opponents could buy a piece of gear that allowed them to make an attempt to crack your passcode.

The game would show the passcode as a series of periods ("."), replacing a random number of them with the actual codes. By using several of these devices, you could get several or all of the characters in the passcode by repeating the attempt.

A common defense was to use passcodes that consisted of periods, spaces, and alt-255, which on IBM-compatible systems of the time generated a character that looked onscreen like a space but wasn't.

This was especially effective if the attacker was on a system that couldn't easily generate the alt-255 character.

My favorite BBS memory has to be doing modifications to WWIV. It's the way I learned C and it was a lot of fun.

WWIV was the most popular BBS system in my area, and of course it had it's WWIVnet that had message boards networked across the country.

On WWIVnet people would post mods to the source code for WWIV (which was available if you registered for $50). I got $50 from my Mom so I could get the source code (being around 14 at the time). I started downloading the mods from the local BBSes and the message boards and modifying the code. After a while I started trying to make my own modifications and when successful sent them out to boards (a couple of popular ones being a conferencing system and a vertical chat modification).

Anyway, it's amazing to think about how much I sucked at programming back then, but it was a great start.

Oh, and the people were great too. :) I have many friends still to this day that I gained from BBSes. So it's really had quite an impact upon my life, amazing.

(Apparently there's a WWIV 5.0 beta now, years and years later. Occasionaly I check up what's going on, and this seems fairly new (last 6 months?). It's amazing it's taken this long though - I was able to port WWIV to ncurses on Linux in a weekend.)

We'll all just resort to going back to IRC channels or setting up telnet-enabled BBS' and go 'old sk00l' on you. Or, barring that - just resort to installing some 56K modems and running WWIV or some other BBS without hooks into the 'net.

More likely than not, people will simply resort to participating in file- and song-trading parties like we used to in the 80s. Unless you're prepared to raid all the Incredible Flying Pizza Society locations (any Austinintes here?) or other places we're known to gather, how about you just sit back and have a nice cup of Shut the Fuck Up?

The sad thing is, Joe Q. Public will actually buy into the idea that P2P programs are stomping grounds for pedophiles. While there may be an isolated number of child porn traded over P2P (I've never run across any, but I'm not looking for it) I imagine this isn't the norm.

I lived in St. Louis at the time, so many of the BBSs would have a copy of Fire Escape's BBS List (for the Greater St. Louis Area). It appears to have stopped being updated a couple years back, though. I found a number for the BBS, but a quick call finds that I may have pissed off someone (it's 2am here), and that there is definately not a BBS on the other end. I remember being excited when the new Fire Escape Directory came out.

I remember once chatting with the Sysop's son, who happened to be my age, and we almost met IRL.

My usual name at the time was TURTLE, due to my current interest in TMNT. I even had a cool ANSI sig in full color that I was able to map to a key-combo (many BBS Servers allowed Macros, including WWIV, Telegard, and Wildcat).

I remember logging onto my first private piracy board. The Sysop had to call me and talk to me in person before I was given access. While I no longer openly condone piracy or anything, I must admit that it contributed to my development. I remember getting Turbo C++ 3.0 and the source to WWIV among other things (which I don't remember so much, though I'm sure included many games, like Commander Keen 2 and 3). Playing around with WWIV and Modding it helped me learn a little bit about C++ and the joys of logic around the age 14, and ultimately led to me majoring in CS.

Another great experience was Anarchy Files. While I haven't done 90+% of anything I read in such files, I still found myself totally intrigued with them. Phone Phreaking, Bombs, Early Social Engineering to get into systems, even Instructions to make LSD in your kitchen (never tried it, sounded a bit shady). All of it fascinating. Even today, I can amaze my friends with a simple bit of trivia or two, like how to kill someone with pipe tobacco (soak in water, ring out and throw away tobacco, now your have a super concentrated deadly poison). Of course, you always follow up such a conversation with maniacal laughter.

And of course, Tradewars. I can't remember how much time I spent in that game back in the days where it was almost always only 1 user on at a time. I played it a little my freshman year of college, too, but it was quite different, having multiple nodes (more like a MUD), and ran through a telnet client (or mudding client if you're hardcore).

Probably the greatest memory of the time was checking my "e-mail" and having it all be useful. If I wanted a larger penis, I did what every other boy did and exercised it myself, with not one piece of spam to try to persuade me of another method.

--paul

I remember the old BBS days where you could type something, and then backspace over it, and it would save everything you typed, the original, the backspaces, and the new text. So as you read, a word would slowly disappear, and then change.

But you can't leave out all the ways you could work this into your sig! You could have your sig spin out by doing / - \ | and backspacing over those characters, and then spitting out the character in your sig. And you could combine it all with color to make it look cool and pretty. And if you were on a site where you could post ANSI graphics to go in with it, well that was the bomb :) . Ahh... BBSing...

It's amazing if you compare the level of expression which BBSes allowed to something like Slashdot. On BBSes you could use nearly every level of control available to you & the sysop. Eg, color, backspacing, sometimes ANSI graphics. Slashdot you can't even add color to your posts. Imagine how convenient it would be to set the FG & BG to the same color to add a "spoiler" to your post (visible when highlighting with the mouse, or for Lynx viers via View->Source followed by a search for some text previous to the hidden text)... but I digress...

They've been talking about a Linux version of WWIV (what I used to run as well), but I don't think it's actively being developed. Kinda fell to the wayside. Here is the official webpage. I remember sending in my $50 to get the C source code back in the late eighties/early nineties to Wayne Bell. :-)

- Eric

WWIV is at least still being actively developed.

http://wss.wwiv.com

Also, Connecticut was split into two area codes in the mid-90s. All the BBSes I dialed in to were in the 203 area code in Hartford, which then became the 860 area code. Those old BBSes are listed under the old 203 numers, but have the new 203 prefix locations associated with them. For example, a BBS that was in a Hartford prefix (say 241) back in 1993, is show as being in New Haven now (where 203-241-XXXX) would ring today. If that BBS was still around today, the number would be 860-241-XXXX. The old BBS list needs to be crossed against the old prefix location lists. The current version of the list is somewhat misleading, as to the locations of the old boards.
==

Also, Connecticut was split into two area codes in the mid-90s. All the BBSes I dialed in to were in the 203 area code in Hartford, which then became the 860 area code. Those old BBSes are listed under the old 203 numers, but have the new 203 prefix locations associated with them. For example, a BBS that was in a Hartford prefix (say 241) back in 1993, is show as being in New Haven now (where 203-241-XXXX) would ring today. If that BBS was still around today, the number would be 860-241-XXXX. The old BBS list needs to be crossed against the old prefix location lists. The current version of the list is somewhat misleading, as to the locations of the old boards.
==

Being a former SysOp and long-time BBS user myself, I watched about the same thing happen. Back in 1993, I used a DOS-based program called Telemate to connect to about forty BBS's in the city, about ten of them on a daily basis. By 1996, most of them were gone. By 1998, all but a handful of die-hard BBSes are gone, and those are generally elated to have a new user.

I used to think it was hopeless and that the community that had helped me realize what computers could do and how they could connect people--the community that had introduced me to Linux--was completely gone. I still had my BBS, but one call per week was hardly enough to justify staying off the Internet for me. And while I loved forums like Slashdot and Freshmeat, none of them gave me the tight-knit sense of community that I had with the old school BBS's.

There was a tiny glimmer of hope, however. Many BBSes had managed to get themselves setup as telnet sites. I found one large and very active one in the Netherlands (Fluxpod Information Exchange) that reminded me of what they used to be like, and the wave of nostalgia washed over me and has not completely abated since. I began to search for other online BBSes (telnet but in the old-style). I found quite a few; The Hard Drive Cafe, Eagle's Dare and quite a few others. I also found that some BBS software is not entirely dead. A lot of the BBSes I used to use were based on WWIV and in fact, they still exist and are developing 4.30 to have telnet capabilities.

I also got in touch with a guy who was developing a Linux version of WWIV. WWIV/X was born and is steadily progressing toward a stable, full-featured release. I wish that I could report that WWIV/X will be Open Source, but since WWIV is not, and WWIV/X uses WWIV for the vast majority of its code, it will most likely be under the same license as WWIV (Shareware 60-day trial). However, I am working on other BBS-related projects that will be under Open Source licenses, but none of them are far-enough along to make any kind of real announcement. If you want more information, e-mail me.

Being a former SysOp and long-time BBS user myself, I watched about the same thing happen. Back in 1993, I used a DOS-based program called Telemate to connect to about forty BBS's in the city, about ten of them on a daily basis. By 1996, most of them were gone. By 1998, all but a handful of die-hard BBSes are gone, and those are generally elated to have a new user.

I used to think it was hopeless and that the community that had helped me realize what computers could do and how they could connect people--the community that had introduced me to Linux--was completely gone. I still had my BBS, but one call per week was hardly enough to justify staying off the Internet for me. And while I loved forums like Slashdot and Freshmeat, none of them gave me the tight-knit sense of community that I had with the old school BBS's.

There was a tiny glimmer of hope, however. Many BBSes had managed to get themselves setup as telnet sites. I found one large and very active one in the Netherlands (Fluxpod Information Exchange) that reminded me of what they used to be like, and the wave of nostalgia washed over me and has not completely abated since. I began to search for other online BBSes (telnet but in the old-style). I found quite a few; The Hard Drive Cafe, Eagle's Dare and quite a few others. I also found that some BBS software is not entirely dead. A lot of the BBSes I used to use were based on WWIV and in fact, they still exist and are developing 4.30 to have telnet capabilities.

I also got in touch with a guy who was developing a Linux version of WWIV. WWIV/X was born and is steadily progressing toward a stable, full-featured release. I wish that I could report that WWIV/X will be Open Source, but since WWIV is not, and WWIV/X uses WWIV for the vast majority of its code, it will most likely be under the same license as WWIV (Shareware 60-day trial). However, I am working on other BBS-related projects that will be under Open Source licenses, but none of them are far-enough along to make any kind of real announcement. If you want more information, e-mail me.

WWIV is still alive and kicking. Version 4.30 is currently in beta testing and should be released soon. FOSSIL support has been added so you can now run a telnet system using virtual com drivers. There is even a Linux version in the works (WWIV/X). The new web page is wss.wwiv.com (Wayne Bell sold the rights to Trader Jack)