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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."
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
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.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Kevin Fox
back then the sysops were real men and the users looked up to us in such admiration.
On-line games such as trade wars were great, where you'd plan group strategy through mail and then log in at stepped, agreed-upon times to carry it out.
Back then, on systems with 2+ lines, multi-person chats were the big thing.
QWK packets were fantastic for reading messages off-line and freeing up the bbs for someone else. I kinda miss them now.
Also, networks like FIDONet were an incredible mess to set up (have seen few things so complicated since then), but once they were up and running it was incredibly fun and satisfying to exchange messages with other local boards, as well as with the guys from other countries.
And then the internet came and killed it all!
heheh
You couldn't animate with Avatar graphics.
I'm a 2000 man.
- acoustic couplers
- demon dialing
- connections dropping in the middle of your 57k Xmodem download
- All those modem connect noises
Bah! I don't miss it at all...I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
People really should have looked at BBSes and said "err, no money is ever going to be made out of this internet thingy".
Why did people do them? For fun, but so many of them closed down because the owners ran out of cash (or their wives told them they'd run out of cash and a lot more besides unless they shut them down).
They were fun, sure, When I got my first modem (94 or so) I used to visit them as much as I'd use my IP connection, but as soon as they started to charge I was outta there.
All sound familiar?
- Zmodem was the way to transfer files (I still use it in Linux with CRT!)
- HS/Link came along with bi-transfer support and chat during transfer
- Procomm/Qmodem/Telemate(sp?)
- Busy signals and redialing
- BBS mods like WWIV
- MUD
- Playing DOOM multiplayer (more than two players) the first time with Game Connection with MajorBBS
- You knew what "rodent" (think lamer) meant.
:)Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
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.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
We had a pretty thriving BBS community in our area, but naturally all the best boards were long distance. It's kind of strange to be able to access a server in Australia within seconds now without even thinking about what the line charge is going to be, or chat across five or six countries simultaneously, but there's been something lost in the transition between the boards and the Internet. I've never really felt the sense of community on a website, and nothing really seems to have the same sense of cool. Maybe I'm idealizing it, but communication over a network that wouldn't synchronize more than once every day or two seemed more fun for some reason... maybe people used to think more before posting?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I didn't notice, there are still some around, I actually played some door games TODAY.
I wish BRE didn't have broken year 2000 stuff though.
They are just the gated communities of the online world. They may evolve, but I think they'll stick around in one way or another.
my good friend TheDraw !
Sysops calling you by voice to validate your account. Sheesh! :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I remember when Proving Grounds was taken seriously (I once had a Vorpal Blade), and, then when TradeWars and FoodFight came out, I thought online gaming had gotten as sophisticated as it was going to get.
A lot of things are better these days, but I really do miss the quality of the posting. You were in a little culture of about 100 people, and you knew them all pretty well (even if they called themselves the "Dead Kennedy" and "PhonePhreak"). There were some quality political discussions back in the day, and the people would ally on the traditional idelogical grounds.
Ok, maybe I'm sounding like an Old Fart (TM), but I miss those days too.
Come on, give it up, that's
sigh... those were the days. I remember terms like SysOp, Co-SysOp, etc. You could page the SysOp and talk one on one (that was cool!!!), the sound of the modem connecting (replaced by the weird pings of now slow-compared-to-broadband 56k modems). I remember how excited everyone was when a sysop would add another "node" to the system, either through DesqView with QEMM under DOS or by using a fossil driver and running Windows.
.zip file and upload to another BBS as a response. Then again, now we have spam... hmm... which one is better, the 'net or BBS's? The question is becoming more ludicrously rhetoric the more I think about it...
I miss things like PCBoard and ProBBS... those were the days. Now, with the Internet, not only can anyone hide behind a mask of anonymity but anyone with half a brain (or half a paycheque) can connect to the Internet.
You know what? BBSes were far less commercial (depending on what services they provided). I remember a friend of mine down the street ran a BBS when he was 13 (I did quite a bit of ANSI and ASCII art for him, sloooow over a 2400 though, better at 14400). Back then, advertisements were things you saw on TV, magazines, bathroom stalls (er, scratch that last one).
I remember briding the child internet and aged BBS gap with "virtual" connections: a telnet driver that would respond via the internet and send "RING" or "CONNECT" strings to the running BBS so you could have numerous nodes on one machine through multiple telnet connections.
Now we have popup removals, filter proxies, all to try and eliminate if not reduce the barrage of banners and animations on just about any even remotely-commercial web site out there.
For many people, the hardware technology itself is the same. It's become slightly faster, but you still get your roommate or family member off the phone so you can wait for dial-up, then log in and check your mail. Only now you're responding to the world (neglecting FIDONet, but I had a few problems with that in the past).
The best was to download 1000's of E-Mails from one system for reading off-line, repackaging the
Check out textfiles.com for dumps of a lot of old BBS stuff. I stumbled across it while looking for documentation on the XMODEM (yes, xmodem) protocol.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
This is old news, but it's been updated recently, and it might bring back that BBS feel: Star Wars in ASCII.
Damn I miss Trade Wars. What made that game fun was having like 30 or so real people playing it.
Is there a web equivalent of it?
"Derp de derp."
In fact my good friend still maintains a BBS. It's not as complete as it used to be, but it certainly works and there are a couple of good games of BRE, L.o.R.D., and Trade Wars 2002 going.
http://answeringmachine.org
telnet to bbs2.answeringmachine.org
There will be nothing like BBS again. The internet has superceded it in some areas and has faltered in others.
File downloads are clearly better on the internet, as are games.
Message boards, though, suck on the internet. There are islands of information our there, but nothing like it should be. For instance, for HTML help I go to one message board, for domain name advice another and to web hosting even another one.
Everyone remember Interlink, Fidonet, WWIVNet, RIME (PC Relay), etc? These were message networks that were all inclusive. Every topic under the sun was available and the messages were public. You could download your messages using a QWK compatible door and read them offline. Those were the days.
The closest thing we have now is USENET, where the noise to signal ratio is too high.
PC Pursuit is another vestiage of the BBS age. It was a service by Sprint that allowed you to X.25 into other POPs around the country for a low monthly fee. For instance, I could dial my local sprint number, connect to a pad in Boston and jump on Channel 1 with no long distance.
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.
Other than the anarchist cookbook, I found that "mit lock-picking guide" from the BBS too.
I wonder if there's any "updated version" of these things ?
Teaching kids how to make anthrax or nerve gas, perhaps ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:-)
That was part of the mystique of Fidonet. You had to get it up and running on your machine and successfully send and receive mail before they would let you on. I wish I could remember my node number.
More than anything, I miss NeoNet. 'twas like FidoNet, only it was restricted to my area code. There was a sense of community there I haven't seen replicated anywhere else.
*sigh*
-handler
CiA
iCE
To Lucia of the P&B: thanks for the memories. I still think of you whenever I type a smiley.... you were the one who told me about them. :-)
Miko O'Sullivan
sorry for replying to my own post. I found the TW 2002 & Gold site
http://www.eisonline.com/products/default.htm
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
or when HDs were 100-200 megs?
a floppy could hold almost anything?
any game that used more than 5 megs of disk space was huge?
there were no such things as pop-up/under ads?
if your os used more than 14 megs of memory it was highway robbery?
those were the days
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
I still miss being able to find cool ASCII graphics, text-based RPG's, and the Anarchist's Cookbook all in on place.
You mean, like Google?
-pmb, former 80's sysop.
Land of Confusion, The Diamond mines, Wild Wild West, Triumvirate, etc (Pittsburgh BBSes if you are confused)
:)
These are where I cut my teeth. I downloaded the dos a86 assembler and learned to program. I set up Telix and downloaded with zmodem and h/s link. I entered a world where people had vastly different views than mine and I interacted with them and learned from them. Unlike the cold heartless internet, these were communities. That place, 10 years ago at the age of 14 is where Mark Earnest become finkployd
Never since has computing and networking been such fun.
Finkployd
Free Mac Mini
I always liked ZModem. I wish they would use it more on the internet envirmonet. It had nice features like CRT Checking, if you hade to cancel a Download you can continue DL where you left off. It was a well though out protocall. And it was fast too. The HTTP and FTP Protocals just dont seem as robust as ZModem was.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
Yeah. I spent my senior year of high school (86) dialing up to San Antonio BBSes with my Amiga and a 300 baud RadioShack direct-connect modem, before moving on up to 1200 baud.
BBSing was quite simply _the_ shit, and the kinds of small-town cyber communities you'd build then were really special. Knowing a dozen or so really intelligent geeks and spending weeks debating topics of the day one post at a time.. super cool.
If only there were still small town online communities instead of the vast crowds that are USENET and IRC. Some sort of real time direct telnet thing, maybe.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Your account has to be verified before the games become available. It's a annoying way to prevent cheating in the games by people creating multiple accounts.
And the sex you get from the Internet isn't like the sex you had from the BBSes...
I liked Trade Wars and all, but my favorite WWIV games were Dominion, Leech, Pimp Wars, and Dick Wars. :-)
I have a friend who wants to port WWIV to the web: WWWWWIV. I don't even know how you would pronounce that..
cpeterso
I used to be very active "back in the day", myself. At one point around 1994 or so, I had accounts on upwards of 100 BBSes, just in my area code (610)!
:-)
I remember one day, I dialed into a WWIV board (Innovations BBS), and went through the signup procedure. The system said, "Your User Number is: 2", which I found interesting. 5 seconds later, the SysOp (Bob Pacifico) brings me into chat mode and tells me, "You're my first caller!".
I spent a couple of fun years on that BBS, making friends with folks, uploading files, participating in networked message bases, and playing door games against people from other BBSes. Barren Realms Elite, anyone?
Eventually, in 1996 I discovered the Internet and kind of made the transition to it. I called less and less BBSes, and eventually stopped calling all together.
*sigh* I'll miss those days...
I'm curious if there is a site out there like classmates.com , where people can register and associate themselfs with BBS' within the archive?
If it's not, I think it'd be a worth while (and simple) site to set up. I know I'd be more than curious to see where some of my (at the time) fellow 12 year old Tele-Arena cohorts are today.
Toilet Duck (1994-1998) - 619,858
DreamNet BBS
DragonDreams Elite
MCS BBS
LDC
It's funny this comes up now, because I was talking to a fellow modemer from the old days yesterday, talking about possibilities:
1. Take an old 486 running DOS and a multinode BBS package with a multiport serial card.
2. Take a modern PC running Linux with a cable modem or DSL connection and a multiport serial card.
3. Write a program that acts as a login shell. When a user logs in under that special account, it checks for a free serial port and, emulating the behavior of the sort of modem the BBS software on the DOS box expects, sends the appropriate RING string. Once the BBS answers, the program just passes data back and forth between the serial port and the net.
Result: an Internet capable BBS system that would have been the envy of the town back when you had to buy multiple phone lines to support this sort of thing.
Of course, it may be some time before I have a couple of spare weekends to code this (and perhaps longer to review serial programming under Linux), so if you have the time and the expertise, beat me to it!
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
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)
//gs.
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
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.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Probably the most famous would be ice.org with archives from the current day to way back when..
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.
Version 3 is still actively played via email, over the internet. Version 4 is in Beta right now.
go to www.vgaplanets.com, and start playing!
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com: The BBS Documentary, currently in production.
http://bbslist.textfiles.com: My list of BBSes, ever growing, and needing your help (and lists).
- Jason Scott
TEXTFILES.COM
It's really hard to find any mention of Cat Fur ][, MegaTERM, the Cat's Meow, etc. on the Internet. It's as if that whole scene didn't exist.... when 202 was king...
Now I wonder-- why do Macs of 2002 not have the same telephony capability of a 4-voice modem circa 1984?
(as an aside, you don't remember ProTALK BBS, do you?)
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You miss Text RPGs? How can you miss them, there are still thousands of MUDs out there, which are pretty close to old text RPGs and very multiplayer...
Such as Moral Decay
Come play Moral Decay!
I have an extra phone line and want to start up a BBS for fun (and geek bragging rights).
:)
Can anyone recommend a software package? Requirements:
Must allow IP connections in some way (within itself or via addon package)
Must allow modem dial in connection
Should be easy to administer (lazyness)
Can have GUI interfaces in addition to text.
Any OS is fine, even DOS and OS/2
Anyone have a recommendation?
lz/sz modem rock for multiple hopes. I have to jump thru 4 boxes to get to our network. Transfering core files and logs are much easier with I can "sz core" and have it on my laptop. Still use UUENCODE and UUDECODE. Sucks when your on a Xterm that cant save files, Just cut, paste, boom the file is moved.
How could the /. crowd forget bbs.ufies.org? :-)
I saw the story, read it, and then expected to find what I've come to expect in the discussion-- a bunch of yahoos who hadn't even read that wonderful piece.
/.
I then I saw the magnificent posts (sorting by highest score) and other stories, and felt like the first time I found
yeah, I'm a little drunk.
---
Or those Commodore 64 losers.
Well. That was rather messed up. Our schools had either apple2 or c64s. I personally bought a C64, Thing was great, 40 col BBs'ing was lame. A few terminals came out that would split the blocks into 2 letters, so you could try to emulate 80 column.
Migrated to a 128D, running DesTerm I was able to get Ansi, 14.4 baud, and 80 columns. Then Amiga+Tcp later....
Hell, the C64 scene was larger then atari, mac combined, it still goes on today! They still have Demo parties for old C64 hackers. Scene Music I still listen to music from the old days, Giana Sisters(Chris Huelsbeck), Rob Hubbard, etc.. The BBS was my way of reaching the UK scene from the US, The real computer gurus. Strange thou, the family up the street, wrote Myst. Strange Strange world.
Well, if you're pretty good with linux, you could try dosemu under linux and run any old dos based BBS software under there. I searched around and found this post on the tux.org. Some further searching took me to the Linux BBS FAQ. Enjoy!
I may be wrong, but I think you can still access it at 312-545-8086 (kudos to Intel there).
I remember the board well, although I started going to it when it had already progressed. I was probably 9 at the time, and I believe i had a full-slot 1200 baud Hayes modem. In the appendix of the bound instruction manual was a list of BBSes all over the country.
My first 6 months of long distance phone bills were over $1600 total. Whoops.
To think, that downloading a 3 CD linux distribution (nearly 2GB! That's like 20 hard disks full, just 8 years ago!), and making it into CDs is something that can be accomplished in a single morning, while using the same computer as if nothing were happening in the background!
It's a whole different mindset these days. The technology has moved so fast...... It's hard to comprehend. It still hasn't sunk in to the population at large that a 2TB file system now costs less than an economy car.
I still barely comprehend it myself. When I was building large RAIDs lately, I kept saying they were 2.1 Gigs, and things like that. My head cannot comprehend a hundred fold size increase in just the last 5 years.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I ran a BBS called "Alternate Reality" in Idaho, USA> It had a whole two nodes which were busy 24/7. I really liked the more personal feel of BBS systems--when someone logged on, chances are they weren't in a different hemisphere and that you could actually meet them in real life(tm), if you hadn't already.
Few people posted trolls or space filler messages on the boards because their names were know, their numbers could be traced, and my BBS required phone call verification of accounts.
The online games were nice because most of the players were probably friends that you could call without spending huge amounts on long distance. You could gloat over killing somebody's LORD character or firing a Gooie Kablooie (sp?) at their empire in Barren Realms Elite.
What is the story of some of the BBSs that other slashdotters have run? It would be interesting to see someone on Slashdot that ran a BBS I logged into many years ago.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Get your Montreal, Canada BBS List at
telnet:juxtaposition.dynip.com
+1.514.364.2937
Get some Telnet BBSes at the same site
I think what really killed the BBS systems had to do with the following reasons:
/. think of Microsoft, you have to admit that the inclusion of dial-up PPP access for Internet connections in Windows 95 was a major factor in the explosive growth of Internet usage.
1. The decision in 1992 to commercialize the Internet. That made commercial public access to the Internet really explode in popularity, to say the least.
2. The development of the Mosaic web browser to access the World Wide Web in the early 1990's. That made Internet navigation very easy to do, and indeed that's how much of the world access the Internet nowadays--through a web browser.
3. The arrival of operating systems with easy-to-setup Internet access. Depsite what many people here on
I remember the first time I "surfed the web," it took a long time to get comfortable with not logging out of a web site. In BBS land, only assholes dropped carrier -- you always logged out so that the BBS could recoup properly. The same gnawing feeling you get when you finish a semester of university and think you should still be doing homework.
Then there were the days where you could download special software (Excalibur BBS?) and get VGA GRAPHICS from sites! Or how about combing through my modem guide looking for cool shit to stick in my init string (at&Z1=5551212 anyone?) Of course, no feeling of exhilaration quite matched the Telix connect bell after 2 hours of redialing an awesome board
I also spent quite a bit of time as a sysop. I remember configuring every damn ANSI screen in the config directory, customizing every prompt in the options menu -- it was labour, but watching people enjoy your OWN BBS was a great feeling.
Chatting was cool, too. Installing the JModem protocol so that you could chat and download, or download and upload. Then again, listening to your PC speaker play Guns n' Roses' "Sweet Child of Mine" as a page tune was often better than talking to ass kissers trying to get Co-Sys :)
It all goes downhill from first post
If this hasn't already been mentioned... Textfiles is a huge repository of (mostly) old BBS textfiles. Also web.textfiles.com has newer ones.
"I have fallen off the wagon, for I am a slave to tea."
My last BBS was called the PsychedelicCat-Fur BBS in the 409 area code -- Redneck Texas!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The site has been slashdotted before, but you can check out the BBS Documentary here.
I gave my interview in March and I thought it was a blast. Jason Scott (of textfiles.com) is doing this as a solo project and is a great guy to talk to.
If you haven't contributed something to this project, you might want to check this out.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Yeah, my youth was spent searching out text-based entertainment on the computer before the internet really took off. One day I discovered a BBS called The Bionic Dog. It was on FIDONet, of course.
One thing I found there, but haven't seen since, was "The Never-Ending Story", this conversation that was basically a group story-telling experience. Everybody had their nicknames. I remember one person was called the Artful Dodger and another Southern Cross.
Just a memory now...
14 was so cool. :P
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
FFiiggguurriinngg oouutt wwhhaatt eecchhoo sseettiinngg ttoo uussee..
ALSO, EVERYTHING WAS IN ALL CAPS CAUSE YOUR TRS-80 DIDENT HAVE LOWERCASE
Oh and a shift-2 got you a quote, not one of those fancy 'at' symbols.
Whisteling 300 baud, 'cause your cheap ass modem diden't have an answer mode.
Misdialing.. and hearing some old lady cuss you out on the modem speaker.
Having to use Pulse dialing, cause your phone-company haden't updraded their system after man walked on the moon.
Acustic couplers.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Novation AppleCat ][
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The name of the system was CBBS, created by Randy Seuss and Ward Christensen. Ward was also the creator of the Xmodem protocol. The original phone # was 312-545-8086, and later 847-545-8086. It was offline for some time, unless someone has resurrected it. If memory serves correct, it was an S-100 machine, definately pre-PC. The CBBS "community" migrated to chinet ( A machine run by Randy Seuss, an AT&T 3B2/300, one of the first USENET nodes in Chicago ) in the mid 1980's.
IMHO, many of the roots of the open software movement originated in the original BBS community.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Situation: BBS runs Wildcat 4.20 via a Netware 3.20 server with two nodes on their own dedicated boxes. WC4 does not do telnet out of the box, but doesn't really care where a login comes from.
We also have a DOS-based router which handles a cable modem, and a linux mail gateway machine for the BBS's UUCP account.
The object here is to combine this mess so as to make the BBS telnetable (even if indirectly) -- any suggestions? I've heard it can be done, but have been unable to locate any info on how to do it. Any info or leads appreciated!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I can remember reading mail using a QWK reader Blue Wave, which I still have around, and reading messages that had ANSI graphics. These could be animated and programmed to some degree. Of course, this could be used to play practical jokes.
One such joke mimicked a computer virus, which were just starting to become known.
You would click on the message, and you would see this full Red Screen with the big Label "Computer Killer" and the warning to not shut off the computer because it would hurt the hard drive. You would then see a series of progress bars marking how far along the computer was in erasing the drive, then the format, etc.
Of course, it was only a graphic display. If you had the presence of mind to look, you would see that the hard drive light would be completely idle.
But the sheer panic before figuring out what was going on ....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Arrgh. I am sick and tired of the Slashdot editors pushing this idea that the BBS is a thing of the past. The BBS community is alive and well on the Internet. It's single-line dialup systems that are dead.
BBS's still provide the greatest sense of a cohesive online community out there. Better than "blog" type nonsense, and certainly better than what the likes of MSN and AOL have to offer.
I've run UNCENSORED! BBS for 14 years and I'm not about to stop now. And the 200+ users aren't going to stop logging in, either. Modern BBS's offer access via telnet/ssh or web, your choice. And the Internet-connectedness of it all has made it possible for BBS communities to attain geographic diversity, something which was not possible when you had to deal with long distance modem calls.
Please, people, let's get the perspective straight. The BBS is alive and well, so stop pushing this "bygone era" myth.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I started out with a 300 baud modem on a C-64 when Fido networks were the hot new BBS thing.
Later, I was a co-sys on a thriving mulitline (I think we got to 16 lines BBS in the SF Bay Area using call-forwarding to get complete regional coverage. We had a thriving community, I'm not sure how many accounts I had... I'll just say that A.Lizard was very well known locally.
There is something to be said for getting automatic "Elite" access wherever I went within my local call radius.
I even put together one of the very first virtual companies (hardware: modems) using a local BBS one of the collaborators on the project owned... we used a sub (=echo=conference) on the system for discussion and a private file transfer area for swapping ECAD files. The company fell apart due to personal conflicts, but I knew that "virtual companies" were a workable idea long before anyone invented that phrase.
I used a BBS my client had for telecommuting (turning in my work, getting work-related messages) before the word was invented. BTW, it was an early MacBBS and it sucked rocks. (No, not because it was based on Mac.)
For me, the most important thing about BBS systems was meeting interesting people of the opposite sex. My interests are a bit arcane, finding women that share them isn't that easy.
Suddenly in 1991, people were talking about something strange called The Internet where e-mail went overseas in hours instead of weeks. I put out messages on several BBS systems asking if anybody could give me access... I got replies within days. I got hooked the first time I had an actual conversation via Internet with a geekette (Hi,Stayka!) living in Germany... the BBS was set up to dial out on demand... message replies were coming back in a few minutes. My main Internet address back then was: alizard%tweekco%boo@Pacbell.com or if you prefer, pacbell!boo!tweekco!alizard
When I got Internet access, my pool of people to fish in went from the few thousand (mostly male) I could access via Fido, WWIV-Net/Link (and several more obscure WWIV-based networks), V-net (though e-mailed file attachments were k3wl)... to millions (this was 1991-1994)... my transition to the Net took a few years.
For meeting people, the Net has been much better for me. It came in just in time to save my sanity. I'm now contemplating a second trip to Holland to meet the second woman I've taken a personal interest in out there. (the first didn't quite work out)
For things like file transfer and other data-driven uses... it was much better even when I was accessing it via Waffle BBS. It suited the things I was trying to do on line a hell of a lot better than BBS systems ever did. All I wanted was a faster modem...
I rarely look back and really don't miss the "good old days". Even with getting viruses every day, having to firewall my dialup connection, and spam, I'm having a hell of a lot more fun online now. If I ever feel like discussing the "good old days", I can always talk to the sysadmins at my local ISP. They ran one of the BBS systems I used to use. I doubt they look back much. They can download via OC-12...
Tech Public Policy stuff
People still don't believe that I used to run a BBS on an 8088 XT clone with a 5 1/4" floppy as the boot/BBS disk and a (then brand new to PCs) 720K 3.5" floppy for data. Every byte was precious.
I used a RAM Disk to improve performance. Yeah, you can make a real big RAM Disk out of the total 640Kb of available memory.
It would always have to go offline when I wanted to debug some Turbo Pascal programs.
"Let me think, there was WWIV, WildCat, VirtualBBS, Renegade, Fido, Searchlight, Hermes, TBBS, First Class in later years. I remember a version of Zmodem that would display GIFs as they came in, so you could tell if you were getting a duplicate with a different name. Those with multiple lines were all either using DesqView or OS/2 for multitasking. I never tried setting one up myself, as I didn't even have a second line to dial out on.
I could go on, but I'm sure I'm starting to bore you guys."
Not at all! I remember TBBS, Hermes (used to run one), WWIV, Fido, and yes, later, FirstClass (oooh... goooooey).
Tsk. I've said it before and I'll say it again: There should be a "Classmates.com" for old school BBS folk, so I can find some of the other couple hundred that frequented Billy's Place, Tommy's Place, Chastity's Playhouse (Val, where art thou?) and a bunch of the other Los Angeles boards...
Kevin Fox
I'd agree with you basically, but I think there's another factor:
When the 56K modem came out, it wouldn't connect at speeds above 33.6K unless one end of the phone circuit was a digital line. BBS sysops couldn't afford to pay upwards of $100 per month for ISDN circuits, just to put 56K modems on them so people could call in and get their 42K, 44K, or 48K connects.
On the other hand, the ISPs did -- so you got quicker file transfer rates doing a PPP connection over the Internet than you did connecting straight to a local BBS.
As a sysop myself, back in the day, I saw BBS's evolve (devolve perhaps?) into file sharing systems first and foremost. Multi-line chat was always better on large information services (AKA. Compuserve CB chat) because you simply had a lot more people online at the same time to talk with. BBS multi-line chat sort of petered out as users discovered IRC, AOL chat rooms, etc. Some BBS's still made messages their primary focus, but the trend went towards people using BBS's to get their "warez fix", download GIF and JPG photos (pre-Internet porn), and other types of data. This meant a fast transfer speed was critical, expecially as the average program size grew and grew.
Man... remember on commodore 64, the game EMPIRE? I'd log on 5 different bbses a day to play my rounds, then there was global wars on PC, oh and tradewars of course, then came the multi-line BBSES with games like telearena, those were the days...
Games, message boards, chatting with the Sysop, leeching with ratios, following the craze from 2400 bauds to 9600, to 14,400HST that wasn't compatible with anything else than USR modems, and you needed that Veverything that you couldn't afford, copy parties with people from a BBS, real GTs, argh... I miss those... sorry for the memories the olders will remember all this
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I choose kermit for downloading.
I thought that Muppet download would go faster.
I was wrong.
I downloaded porn.
I had a Tandy HX 1000
I saw images that looked like they were in infrared
My keyboard never got sticky
I went on Prodigy.
There was a maze game or two.
And some dumb game about making money
I stuck to blowing up my towns in SimCity.
I played with my modem.
I got it to call people.
I could keep hearing them say, "Hello", "Hello"
Me and my friends laughed a lot.
Nobody knew what a modem was back then.
Oh, the good old days.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I remember that the totally l33t hax0rs ran Celerity...
Another BBS system that's survived since way back then is Monochrome. It used to run over the UK academic network JANET even before JANET had TCP/IP, but it migrated to an independent system a few years ago. It's classified into sections covering a whole load of different topics (news, technology, lifestyle, user diaries, music, humour [always worth a read], and so on), each with section moderators, and just like in the Elder Days, none of the files have threading.
(PS: I have nothing to do with Mono other than being a satisfied user.)
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
RIP The Parole Board
Click here or here.
:)
- Jimbob
I've got an emulator around here somewhere...
Thank the genius folk who created the emulators. Without them I would not be able to enjoy the vast libraries of software that have been preserved by the software pirates. All of these programs would have been lost to the bitspace of deleted files if not for these important archivers which disregarded the concept of "only archive the public domain" and the "don't copy that floppy".
Every time a pirate ring gets busted I honestly weep for the software that will be obliterated by that short-sighted police raid. The next generations will never delight in what we enjoyed if everyone is forbidden from preserving these gems for the future. Even worse is the trend to release buggy betas as gold versions. Most pirates will not store the patched files as this requires sometimes 3 or more steps. The children in our future will see our games (the ones that survive by piracy) and think "Wow! This is buggy crap!" because they are playing the unpatched version and the patches no longer exist anywhere.
Business has a right to protect their profits, but history and culture doesn't give a damn when the hardware & OS's no longer exist. The people that actually wrote the software might care about a bit of a legacy when there is no profit from decades-old computer programming art. They should retain the right to make new versions of classic games and programs, but we the community request that we have the right to delight in the software of our more innocent years.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
Anyone remember "g-philes," little instruction books on hacking/phreaking/applied chemistry? I believe the term came from "general files" text file listings on RBBS's.
What is funny is that they are still out there, stuff me and my friends wrote back in 1986, probably on a handful of BBS's. And let's not forget about Phrack.
Who remembers Quantum Link? The Commodore only online BBS thing. Quantum Link was AOL.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
...who wrote a weird Atari program.
Mine would list itself on the screen, reposition the cursor to the top of the program, and turn on some 'auto-carriage-return' feature that caused the system to behave like you were holding down the enter key. The first command in the program was 'list' or somesuch that would list out the approximately 12-line BASIC program. The last command in the program was 'new' which wiped out the program from memory -- but it was still listed on the screen. Once control was returned to the OS, it would start auto-CRing until it entered the
program back into memory, then it would auto-CR over the 'run' command on the bottom of the screen, and, viola, it would start all over.
Useless, but cool, to have a program that would both delete itself, re-enter itself, and run itself. Heh.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
I'm refering, of course, to CDC Hawk disk drives, c. 1982. I had one in my bedroom, connected to an Alpha Micro computer system, when still living with my parents.
You could've hired me.
Yes, I'm on it. Seven times. I moved a lot. :-)
Money for nothing, pix for free