BBS Links Database Back Online

leviathan writes "After being down for almost a year, the original BBS Links Database is back in action. Started back in 1999, almost a third of the original entries have been pruned out, and others are in dire need of updating. If you run a BBS related web site, please help us out by adding it to the database, or updating your existing entries."

Comments

Clarification?

[Flashbuster 2000]

Could someone please explain what BBSes are used for now, in 2002? The Internet does a great job for warez and pr0ns of all sorts.

Note to moderators: I'm not trolling, or being offtopic, or being flamebait. This can be a legit discussion.

Re:Clarification?

[throbbingbrain.com]

BBS's provided many of the same things the Internet does, but not in such BULK.

Someone else touched on the community of bulletin boards. In my opinion, the Internet can never approach the sense of community that was offered by bulletin boards.

Re:Clarification?

[Reziac]

Current uses for a BBS:

Secure messaging. I don't know about the others (well, I know of holes in PCBoard and Renegade) but Wildcat is VERY secure. If you place a private message via dialup, only you, the recipient, and the sysop can see it (gotta trust the sysop, who is not readily distinguishable from god :) Nothing is ever sent over the net, so your only risk of interception is if you're already compromised with a keystroke sniffer. Added benefit: since this is a for-really phone connexion, it presently needs a proper warrant to be tapped by the Authorities. This doesn't mean much right now, but it might in the future, if paranoid gov'ts get too heavy on monitoring ISP traffic. And while in the pre-internet days there were cases of unwarranted raids on BBSs, now they're pretty much under the radar.

Messaging for people who don't have access to an ISP of any sort. A great deal of eastern Europe, Russia, and Africa still uses FidoNet (transmitted via BBS) for email, since they don't have internet access. FIDO can be slow (especially in areas where it still relies entirely on BBSs calling each other to transfer mail packets) but it works.

File storage: Sometimes it's real handy to be able to call a dialup BBS and fetch some utility that you need to fix a client's balky machine, which meanwhile refuses to log onto an ISP.

Modem diagnostic: I use the dialup BBS to check whether modem hardware is working (in cases where you can't tell for sure if it's dead hardware or just that DUN got hosed).

Email server hosed? Gotta send something NOW? Telnet into an internet-connected BBS that offers email, and send your mail from there instead.

Anyway, those are some practical uses for a BBS, in addition to the door games and community aspects. Admittedly all these aspects are a niche market, but niche markets offer alternatives, and access to alternatives is always better than a lack of alternatives.

Oh, and before the internet, BBSs were where you'd go for warez and pr0n. Of course, you had to know *exactly* where to go, just like you do on the net today. :)

they are just darn fun

[mt2mb4me]

the thing is people like me just like the nostalgia of playing LORD, or any of that stuff, and I think they are making a mild comeback, as for me and my house i go to telnet://fame.darktech.org. (shameless plug) and it is fun just to stroll down memory lane

Let me count the ways

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Nostalgia
You ever want to play old door games, and hang out in an even tinier, community, just for old time sake? Send emails in a closed system, make postings that only make sense to members? Then a telnet BBS is the place for you to hang out.

2. Cool factor
Cause it sounds so much more attractive (IMHO) than blog.

3. Privacy
The chances of an honest to goodness dial up BBS adds a bit of privacy to every posting and conversation.

4. Community
This is sort of the same, or at least touched on in the first post. We have it here, but not quite so cohesive. BBS's (and now a days blogs) offer like minded people a place to go to share, socialize, and feel welcome.

I have several friends, that even in the day of Everquest and UO continually play MUDs for many of the reasons I have outlined.

Renegade 5u0rs.

[EnderWiggnz]

OB/2 all the way babeee YEHHHH!!!

at least you were advocating WWiV or telegard...

Re:FINALLY

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Arrgh. I am sick and tired of the Slashbot groupthink 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.

Started BACK ... ?

[frodo from middle ea]

1999 is just 3 years OLD.
but some how saying
Started BACK in 1999 makes it sound like

Started BACK in 1899.

Guys get a perspective of Time.

Re:FINALLY

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the big difference between BBSs of now and long ago is the sense of a local community that you got with the dial-in bbs.

By the way, when people say BSDs are dead, they do actually mean dial-in BBSs, and not online ones. No one means to offend people like you who actually run on-line BBSs.

When I was a kid..

[xchino]

I once spent ~12 hours straight one night logging into this one BBS, creating a new login, and using my lmiited temp login download credit to download softcore pr0n jpegs one by one over 2400 baud modem.

Now I can leech full Porn DVD's over cable. Isn't technology grand?

BBSes are *very* efficient file repositories.

[Richard Steiner]

The OS/2 Shareware BBS is a BBS I still visit (via a Zmodem-capable telnet client) in order to obtain software.

Why?

Not only does it remain one of the best file repositories for the main OS I use here (OS/2), but I find its MAXIMUS/2 interface to be superior to the one used by the http or ftp-based file collections out there.