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Remembering the BBS

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the back-in-the-day dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "Nice reminiscence about BBS's, back in the day and all. Author describes them as "Where a teenage loser could lose himself", which for me would have been pretty accurate. I still miss being able to find cool ASCII graphics, text-based RPG's, and the Anarchist's Cookbook all in one place."

2 of 461 comments (clear)

  1. Re:ANSI archive sites? by rodbegbie · · Score: 5, Informative

    Try http://archives.thebbs.org/index.html

    rOD.

    --
    Rod Begbie done this, and he's not
  2. Re:The business model from hell by King_TJ · · Score: 5, Informative

    I ran my BBS for over 10 years, in one form or another. During its "low point", I was stuck with only 1 phone line and a system shoved in a bedroom closet because the apartment I was living in would only allow a maximum of 2 phone lines - and we needed a voice line.

    Despite all that, I put up with a *lot* to keep it running, but never looked at it as some sort of "business model" for making a monetary profit.

    I also wouldn't say it was "just for fun", because believe me - staying up all those late nights validating users, correcting spelling mistakes and incomplete file upload descriptions and keeping everything updated wasn't exactly a picnic.

    There was a sort of profit to it, but it was more intangible. For me, it was the thrill of going to the local computer store and having techs come running out of the back room to meet me when they heard I was the sysop. It was the opportunity to meet some of the most interesting and intelligent people I've ever run across (some of whom are still good friends of mine today). It was the personal satisfaction of knowing I was doing something that enriched so many other people's lives in some small way.

    Near the end, yes, I did gladly accept donations and even did optional "subscriptions" that bought the user some extra online time and download credits -- but I never so much as broke even on it. I never expected to. Most hobbies are like that. If there's a mistake people were/are making with Internet sites today - it's being too obsessed with making it into a business. Do it because you enjoy and love it, and because the mere presence of it satisfies you in some personal way. If you do this, the money may well follow.... but people can tell if your heart is in a given web site or not.