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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.
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!
I would settle for a database mapping old, non-working e-mail addresses into current ones.
This one is maybe even better for this: http://www.fidonews.org/
Whilst I do dislike the US centricity of slashdot sometimes I actually looked for more than 2 seconds on the page and clicked the "Advanced BBS Search" button. Here you can find a Country field, filling only this in with "UK" or "Australia" returns relevant results (few though there might be).
So yes on the front page it requires US codes (as do alot of forms I am asked to fill in) but they do have a Country option.
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
This guy probably hasn't been outside Texas
Certainly not to Europe, where bombings are just a normal part of everyday life. "Look Marge, another van just blew up killing 20 innocent bystanders! Pass me the crumpets please".
Whad'ya expect from a land that kissed Hitler's ass untill the US had to go over there and save their butts once again.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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.
Anyways... enough history. There is something somewhat scary about the thought of hooking up with old BBS denizens. I don't know about you guys, but the BBSes I used to frequent were 10% geek, 5% relatively welladjusted but non-techie people, and 85% freak. I didn't go to "geek meets" then, and I certainly don't want to see what the passage of time has done to people who were barely human 10 years ago. Its not worth the risk, I don't want to get bitten or licked or see anyone in a Pulp Fiction Gimp outfit.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
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!