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Every BBS That Ever Was

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the for-posterity dept.

Jason Scott writes: "With a collection of over 30,000 textfiles from the 1980's, I suddenly got a rather weird thought: Why not start taking all the BBSes mentioned in all the textfiles and create a really, really huge BBS list? A few weeks later, I'm up past 77,000 BBSes listed, with many including the Sysop's name, software used, and if you're lucky a relatively accurate timespan for the years that BBS graced the telephone network. I've imported FidoNet nodelists, WildCat! customer lists, and a whole range of other lists as I find them (USBBS List, Darwin List, etc.). Come by and remember what places sucked up all YOUR long distance calls and sleepless nights, trying to get past the busy signals. I'm also making an open call for everyone and anyone to send me old BBS lists to integrate. With luck, we can have some sort of permanent record of all the BBSes we ever knew."

3 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Exactly! by mong · · Score: 5

    FIX was one of the first internet-based BBS's, and continues to do very good business. We have over 5000 registered users, with about 200 who are regular on a dialy basis (with hundreds or thousands more who swing by a couple of times each month).

    We're currently developing some serious new software, as the BBBS software can't really handle what is thrown at it these days - FIX has performed some serious mods on the original BBBS code, but it's getting a bit flaky now.

    Oh, and despite the "retro" look of the webpages, we finally decided it was time to update them :-)

    But anyway, back to the point: Plenty of very good BBBS's live outside of the US. Hell, we even have regular US users at FIX!

    Mong.

    * ...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *

    --

    *...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
    Remember: Nothing is Cool.
  2. why stop there? by wrinkledshirt · · Score: 5

    Why not resurrect the BBSes themselves? Seriously, look at some of the most popular websites out there. They're often community-based. There was a real art to virtual communities that has been lost since the internet was taken over by commercial interests.

    I mean, pr0n sharing, ASCII art and muds aside (or maybe even with them), BBSes (BBSen?) often embodied the best of what the internet could be.

    And considering how low-end these things often were, can you imagine how fast they'd be?

    Just a thought. I guess even though I've become a bit of a karma whore over here, Internet browsing has just become a bit too much of a passive experience for me. I remember many of the BBSes I visited as having been a bit more engaging.

    --

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    Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...

  3. BBS never die (or at the last phone keeps ringing) by raymondlowe · · Score: 5
    I remember that years ago I actually wrote a BBS package for the Apple II (CP/M) - it even had a FidoNet module so it could do email and echos.

    Well after a few years I didn't want to do this and stopped, then I tried to use my phone line as a regular line again.

    But for YEARS (at least 3) afterwards that line would still ring on weekends with people trying to connect... Even after I had tracked down every BBS list in Hong Kong and got my number removed.

    R.