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The "Find Your Old BBS Buddies" Database
sloop writes "Everyone wonders what happened to the old geeks we used to see on the local bulletin boards. With "cool" aliases like Lord Nikon and Zer0 C00l they often can't be found in a phone book. Enter BBSmates, a database of most every published BBS. You can associate yourself with BBS's you were on and find other users." Or you can go on to found a website with one of 'em.
Once again it is assumed that nothing happened outside the USA.
Believe it or not there were, and still are, plenty of BBS's out here.
Before you say "well add it" - the site requires USA area codes...
Sigh.
[)amien
From the site -
"PLEASE NOTE: I am currently in the process of switching servers. If you notice anything funny, please email me."
I think something funny is going on.
Bleurgh!
In a related note, MSN will have a board titled "find you old Slashdot buddies" ...
I would settle for a database mapping old, non-working e-mail addresses into current ones.
Hey, this site is as fast as my old 1200 baud days....
or my old 300 Baud.....actually, i think semaphore would be quicker than this site right now..
Burma?
Where are all the underground H/P boards... :(
Long Live 2i5!
This one is maybe even better for this: http://www.fidonews.org/
Google.
In the dark distant past, prior to IRC, WWW (We had Gopher though!!) - I frequented talkers such as Cheeseplants house, usually accessed by telnet on a high port, like a MUD.
I was intrigued whether there was any record of the talkers on the net and here is some of what I came up with:
Talker History
Cheeseplant's House
Crazylands.org
I noticed that crazylands acutally ran a talker so I connected to see who would be online. Pity though, only 2 people were there. The strangest thing was that Grim, who I remember from Cheeseplant's house in 1991 was actually still online!!! what a spod! (we chatted for a while, then I got idle). I found another, although the name goes away, which had a few more people online, but none of the ones from before.
I look back as this being the golden age of the Internet, back in the days before AOL, while so much has changed, it's actually interesting to see that the smaller communities still exist down there in the talker underground.
What a nice trip down memory lane. Sitting at home with a Apple //e, a 300 baud Hayes modem (It was important to remind people that it was a genuine Hayes), and a big gulp from 7-11 autodialing a half dozen BBSs trying to get in.
In certian respects, the golden age of BBSs was better then today's Internet. For example, no logging on at 3.30 in the morning only to find 20+ posts by clueless Europeans bitching about how some website didn't include them.
The Internet is generally stupid
Computrek (used to be able to Telnet to Computrek.org)
Starfleet Academy
Rusty and Edies (the place to go for porn in OH)
BBSing was fun. The wildest thing was when we'd all get into TC (MajorBBS was the greatest) and then we'd chat about of all things, the weather. Tc was better then IRC cause it had actions. You could drop a nuke on someone or send someone flowers.....it was pretty neat! Then there were my legendary BBS parties where I would get snockered and then get online and try and find folks to get snockered with, or to go to Waffle House or Tee Jayes and have breakfast and get sober. Fun fun! MajorBBS dropped the ball when they went to that weird GUI thing. They did not make it a requirement to get in, but after being text based so long, it just seemed, well, weird.
Gorkman
... blow the old BBS buddy listing site off the 'net with one of 'em!
:)
(My apologies if this doesn't seem funny. It did to me, but that may have something to do with my lack of sleep, and it being 04:30. Enjoy!
Locally, it was amazing how much you could read and post when given a 30 minute/day limit, so not to tie up the phone line.
One BBS I was on (Boston Bullet) was kept alive with a provision that the account of a luser ("Skull Bearer") was kept open and available to everyone. His infrequent ramblings were sometimes more entertaining than some of the Discussions/flamefests, and was the source of much NC-17 parody.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Funny though... most of what the BBS's were about are still around here on the net.. your mailing list for your LUG or other group, and slashdot it's self in essence is nothing more than a PBBS forums board with topics thrown out by the board masters.
the biggest thing I miss most is tradewars.. Yeah you can download it and play it now, but it meant more and made the game more when you not only had your limited turns that day but you were sucking down your precious last few minutes alloted on that board for that day. Couple that with the fact that you knew that most of the players were within a 20 mile radius of you and it really got exciting... your friends were players so you could yack about it at school.
I dont miss 300bps, 1200bps or even the rich kid 2400bps modem days... It was horrible.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
One week after i switch from a professional hosting service with redundant OC3's, i opt for the cheaper solution of hosting the site in my basement on a 144k DSL line. I can't even connect to it now from work, so please.. check back in a couple of days...
And for those of you saying this is a US-only site, there is a country field (in the advanced search page), however i will add better world-wide support in the near future.
-nullvalue
"Life is short, Life is shit, and soon it will be over..." -kith
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!
Try getting to website...
Try again
and again
Okay, turn on the war dialer... Wget do your job...
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
"Crash Override" and "Acid Burn"
bbslist.textfiles.com
Oh, hey, while we're talking: Might as Well Mention the BBS Documentary Again.
...before commenting on Web boards. He's running a REAL BBS (Citadel UX) as in dial-up capable and all.
It may be that what you're saying is true, but you seriously diluted the impact of the claim by that little missing detail in your argument.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Heh heh, back when the Computer Shopper listed all major BBSs (and was the size of a phone book). Oh the porn we had -- 320x200 CGA, baby!
Anyone remember what that BBS game was that involved you taxing peasents and training lords and taking over other people, but you could only play once a day? It was on a whole bunch of BBS's...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
For those of you still running BBSes.. let's not forget the bbs archive where you can find every utility, door game, and bbs package ever created (well, almost).
Also there is the BBSnet IRC chat server where a lot of BBS authors and sysops, including the current maintainer of LORD, frequently hang out.
The problem with making it a single textfile is that it tends to get a little big.
Your link has added probably 30-40 new BBS numbers or corrections to the list. Always appreciated.
You'll be happy to know it was just you.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
There's a hell of a lot of text files from the old BBS days at http://www.textfiles.com
Cheers, Orange
BRE had a few problems, but all in all it was the best strategy game I've ever played. Interplanetary, of course. Strategy games should be about sending messages to the players to organize attacks, alliances, allegiances, etc. even more than building units; and that's something that only BRE seemed to master.
I still have fond memories of, some 6-7 years ago, I told everyone on my planet I was going to try to infilitrate the enemy planet (two planet world) by letting them think I would be willing to turn on my home planet if they reinforced me, and I told everyone on my planet that I was going to convince the other planet that I was working for them and then take advantage of them.
In the end, I was receiving countless tanks and money from the populations of both planets, and nobody attacked me. Good times.
-bugg
You want Earth 2025, and Utopia which were written by the same authors as BRE and SRE. In fact they play like a more sophisticated version of BRE on the web, but with a lot more players than your average BBS could ever muster.
I read the internet for the articles.