Remembering the BBS

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."

Comments

Avatar graphics

[Anonymous Coward]

The story mentions ascii and ansi... but what about Avatar?! I know I was one of the few SysOps/users to use them, but, man, the speed ruled. Sigh... I guess maybe it's like my use of ogg and png today. Maybe the rest of the world will catch on.

I wasn't around for the early BBS days, but I saw them at their peak prior to the internet/web taking off and stealing most callers away. Sometimes, I miss my BBS, and think about setting it up again... and then reality hits me. You can't go back again.

ANSI archive sites?

[antdude]

Speaking of BBS' (fun days!), does anyone know if there are Web sites that keep ANSI art archives (with search engines)? I am trying to find cool ANSI arts that I used to love. I even drew a few (not that great) I regret not keeping them. I miss them. :(

Thanks in advance. :)

Flashbacks

[KFury]

Flashbacks of:

• ANSI animations
• 300 baud connections even a 14-year-old could outtype
• when it was still called 'Elite'
• Telebit 2500 was the coolest thing in the world
• until the HST Dual Standard
• Making a 1-line Hermes board on my mom's fax line in the off hours
• and getting people calling all night
• The guy with the spare VAX and a 16-line BBS was tha coolest pimp in tha Valley.

WWIV ... still up and running ...

[ProfMoriarty]

WWIV has been around for many years now ... and it's still up and running over at Eagle's Dare BBS

The latest software, v4.30, combined with fossil drivers for Windows (new in v4.30), and with a virtual com port software (COM/IP) ... creates an online BBS, that can be accessed like a website ...

Please note that I currently don't have a board up ... since I don't have 24/7 access ... yet.

ah fare thee well

[llamalicious]

my good friend TheDraw !

Computer Shopper

[jag164]

I remember getting the "Computer Shopper" every month, flipping to the back, and hoping to find a new BBS that was a local call away from my back woods town. Never happened. *sniff*

Thirty minutes of long distance calls a month was all I could afford at the time. I missed out on most of that grande era.

Ahhh .. the good ole days

[MowserX]

Hehehe ... BBSs are what got my hooked on computes in the first place. Starting frequenting them as a freshman in high school in 1991. PLaying Doors and downloading files. Tradewars was a fun game. Also used a BBS to pick up a homecoming date or two, and my first girlfriend :)

Learned to suck up to the SysOps of the "elite" WaReZ BoardZ by creating animated ANSI logos for their sites and for the ZIP comments. -=2i6=- RulEz!

I used to frequent the BBS of the dude, Jim something or other (Barry?) who wrote the Searchlight BBS software. His BBS was called Flip Flop. I chatted with him once or twice online.

BBS were also my first real introduction to porn.

Ahhh, the memories. Managed to suck up to one SysOp well enough to be come his Adult Section SysOp at the ripe old, adult age of 14. People would upload the files, and I would have the really tough job of reviewing the new uploads; if the files were good enough, I approved them and gave the uploader ample credit so he could download new files from the adult and warez sections. Tough job, but someone had to do it.

With a 2400 modem I now understand why my mom was pissed about me tying up the phone line all night long, every night :)

I used to have to bum rides home from high school sometimes, and I could usually count on one of my teammates to give me a ride back home - I just had to pass him a floppy of the previous days' porn uploads :)

I was just remembering today about how JPEG and GIF were just becoming popular, and my 386 SX-25 took like 10 seconds to display the damn picture files.

Finding those people...

[singularity]

I was very active on several BBSs in the 502 area code (Louisville, KY). I had some SysOp privs on some of the boards and even had access to a FidoNet feed. My handle was "Merlyn" (once I got on the Internet, someone was already using that on IRC, so I had to change it - thus my Slashdot user ID of "Singularity" with UID #2031)

Once a month (first Saturday of the month) we would have a physical meeting (called "The Meat") at a local mall.

I remember being envied for my 2400 baud modem hooked up to my Apple //gs.

This was about 1991-1993 or so.

I have not talked with any of those people since. Is there any website devoted to reuniting (as it was) any people from these boards?

I did a simple search a few months ago, and foud a few dead message boards dedicated to boards that were mainly out in the Bay Area, but nothing more than that.

Memories

[DigitalDreg]

That brought back many familiar memories. I lived in Queens NY, which used to have the 212 area code. This was before the great split to 718. Of course back then, we didn't have flat rate billing either - it was something obscene like 10 cents a minute.

My machine was a PCjr with 128KB, single floppy drive, and a Hayes 1200. It's amazing how nice the carrier signal sounded. The Hayes 1200 was a beautiful piece of machinery - brushed aluminum, with the black bezel and red lights. Solidly built, to have the old Western Electric desk telephone sitting on top of it. Once you were connected to a BBS, what machine you had didn't matter - C64s, Apples, Commodores, etc - they all joined the party.

Remember PC Board? FidoNet? Doors? File download areas that were meticulously organized? Downloading ratios? Sysops with "god" power? Sysops that you could actually talk to using a "Page Sysop" function of the software? ANSI graphics?

In 1984 a friend and I (John N.) decided to write our own BBS software. The first verion was horrible, but then again so was the language. (Interpreted BASIC.) The second and third versions were so much better - compiled ZBASIC with embedded assembly code. The software ran for two years on another friends computer. (Nick S.) The phone number was 997-1189. I'll never get that out of my head.

Using BBSs and trying to write one taught me a lot, not just about computers either. It was a great experience - much more personal that the Internet is today.

Makes me feel old

[sad_]

Reading articles like that make me feel old.
I was sysop once, had my own BBS running on two nodes, man it was great! (the fun i had with the users together with my co-ops)
I was running that thing on a AMD486/40 with 16Mb ram and 1Gig HD space and two 28.8 USR modems running desqview in dos 6 with PCBoard. (this was at the end, i started with a 386 with 120Mb HD space 14.4 modem, no kidding!). But having a BBS with 1Gb storage space was like BBS heaven, people could upload whatever they wanted it would never get full. anyway my board was specialised in the demo/art-scene.
the demo scene was so alive back then, but what was even more great was the ANSI-scene! ACiD vs iCE vs Apathy vs Fuel vs ... there were even ansi magazines like blender etc.
viewing these ansi-drawings in acidview, switching from ansi to vga mode and drawing ansis yourself in aciddraw/thedraw.
I too was an ansi artist (fuel member) and won several prices in several demo parties here in europe.
Articles like this makes me want to grab my CD's i burned when i took my board offline and wade through those megs of ansi packs again...
(oh yeah and no spam in my mail either, those were days)