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Best BBS Memories?

Posted by Cliff on from the reminiscing-on-the-new-year dept.

TerryAtWork asks: "What are Slashdot readers' best BBS memories? The BBS ruled before the common man got on the Internet and a lot of older Slashdot reader's first on-line experiences were with them."

13 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. In the UK... by skinfitz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    High phone bills.

    You see, we pay even for our local calls here, which did put rather a downer on the whole BBS thing.

    I remember being envious of the US with the free local calls thing.

    "Back in the day" in the UK it was not uncommon to get phone bills of around $300 a month for BBS usage at wonderful 2400 baud.

    Then of course we got the "high speed" 9600 model modems. Ahh nostalgia.

  2. In the third, no wait, fourth world ... by nandix · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In Uruguay, and most of South America, BBS ruled for as late as 1996-97, when internet access finally made it's way to the public.

    I remember expensive phone bills (which my dad covered at the time of course, it's a good thing DSL finally found our little country by the time of my financial independance), and a terrible sense of envy for the folks with 9600 and 14400 connections (i had a 2400 modem).

    On a more positive note though, i got a 24 hour reminder of the whole 'BBS era' thing, since i met my wife in one of those networks :). (and no, it was not a dating service, it was a geeky BBS that suddenly got crawled with not-so-geeky types, my wife included, which gave us nerds the chance to meet and relate to people with real world experiences!).

    1. Re:In the third, no wait, fourth world ... by bhtooefr · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Hmm, there wasn't local internet access where I live until mid 1997. We were one of the first subscribers in the area. The box we used? 386DX-33, 4MB RAM, 120MB HDD (compressed to 170), 14.4Kb/s modem (when we got the tower, we were told it was a 33.6! It was still a good deal, though, as it came with a monitor, keyboard (no mouse) and a dot matrix printer), Windows 3.1, DOS 6.22, and IE 3.01 (we tried 2.1 because it was faster, and almost tried NS 1.22). Damn, if I had known Opera was around back then, I'd have downloaded that! (except I was told to only download to floppy disks, and then extract to the hard drive, so I couldn't download anything more than 1.44MB - so we couldn't update IE, but I guess we could have downloaded Opera)

  3. Re:When I was 10 years old... by PhaseBurn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yea, when I was 11 or so, I had a Tandy 1000 RL with a 1200 BPS modem in it...

    Memories of playing Legend Of the Red Dragon in the early 90s, my first chatroom, learning what shareware was for the first time... All things I fondly remember. Getting laid by Violet back then somehow made me feel like more of a man (er, boy) :-)

    And the cool thing is they were all local for the most part ('cept those comming in from telnet, of course). Some of the best memories I have, for instance, are from years after that BBS shut down, and I met a few of the old time members in real life (highschool, work, etc).

    If anybody else was from Techlands BBS in South Florida, please e-mail me... I used to be "Davy Crockett" back then :-)

    --
    -PhaseBurn Welcome to Linux country. On quiet nights, you can hear windows reboot.
  4. Soundtrack music files by forged · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Long before mp3s the demo enthusiasts would be downloading from their favorite BBS MODs, S3Ms, ULTs, XMs and others at a fraction of the filesize of a typical mp3 (100K/file vs 5MB). We were then using some form of advanced sound card (Gravis) or player (Cubic) to play it all. And it was all free, and mostly kicked ass.

  5. Virginia Tech ROLM Phone Network by SmoothOne · · Score: 2, Interesting
    VT provided each dorm room with an IBM ROLM phone which had a built-in 19200 BPS modem. In its heyday in the early 90's, there were at least 50 running boards at any one time. The boards were accessible from the outside world, but access to the network was rather obscure which made 99.9% percent of the users VT students. Of course the eventual ethernet connections in the dorms killed off this community.

    RIP Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate

    --
    Fish do not make good desert travel companions.
  6. RDI by The+Infamous+Grimace · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Red Dragon Inn, a BBS I ran off of my Franklin Ace 1000. Written in AppleSoft BASIC. At first I had to run it only at night, but I was finally able to talk my mother into getting me my own phone line. Amber monitors, 5 1/4" floppies, and cracked versions of Ultima IV. Ah, t'were a simpler time. A 9600baud AppleCat modem was the state-of-the-art. I even remember the first GBBS I ever logged into. Can't remember the name, but I remember 'drawing' line graphics in posts.

    To be young and phreakin' again...

    (tig)

    --
    Ignorance and prejudice and fear
    Walk hand in hand
  7. Re:Trade wars 2002 by caboosesw · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm trying to recall some of the other "great" BBS Door games back in the day. In fact, there was a very, very good BBS system that had "DOOR" in it's name ... it essentially was a shell for running 100's of pre-packaged door modules.

    Anyone? Bueller?

  8. My first BBS experience? by bhtooefr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Had to be over Telnet, into ExecPC (doesn't seem to REALLY exist anymore). This was two years ago. My town never had any BBSes, and got dialup in 1997, so it was all dialup until I discovered telnet.

  9. Meeting my wife by theinfobox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I met my future wife for the first time in a chat room on the Compass Rose BBS. That was April 26, 1992 out in California. Nothing can top that memory. I even have the chat log saved from that day.

  10. Chat-BBS by DarkDust · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When I was 15 years old I got my first modem. And my cousin was sysop for two local (I'm from Munich) BBS's, one was a chat-BBS called StadtNet.

    It literally changed my life, since for the first time I met people with whom I could talk about computers (noone in my suburb was into programming, and by the age of 15 I already knew four or five programming languages). But the most important part was that since we were all from Munich or from suburbs of Munich we did a lot together, like having brunch every Sunday or meeting at different restaurant every Tuesday, going to the cinema together, having parties, etc.

    I met a lot of people that heavily influenced me because they really impressed me (like a guy who was a real old-school gentleman... it really did me good to have known such a guy, helped later on with flirting to have learned from him ;-)

  11. MUD BBS by tananda · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Well, I could write a novel on my BBS memories, but I'll condense it.

    Most of my boarding occured in Texas, most notably on After Hours BBS, Adrenalyze (later just called Adren), and Adam's Garden.

    Through these boards, I made the best friends of my teens, some of which I still talk to now (and others, I've lost contact with for eons, and then seemed to re-meet 8 years later on some random MUD). I also recall having two short-lived boards of my own, one running Renegade, the other running MajorBBS (which later came to be called WorldGroup -- about the same time they put a windows GUI to it).

    The most special, however, after getting over the "Oooh I'm special cuz I'm a SYSOP like everybody else", was playing MajorMUD, and then Adren started hosting something similar to MajorMUD, a place called Realms of Thoth, that later became a telnet MUD.

    I've been addicted to text-based RPG's ever since then. (amaranth.wehostmuds.com port 4080.. we're not hack-n-slash, we require brains!)

    --
    I used to think Peter Shipley was cool. Then I aged past 16.
  12. The Day I Got my Dual Standard... by annielaurie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Had to be the day I signed for the package containing my USRobotics HST Dual Standard modem.

    The 9600/14.4 modem retailed for almost $1500 in the late Eighties, and there was a sysop's discount of 50%. It took me months to save up that $795 plus shipping. I had them ship it to my office so I wouldn't miss being there to receive it. Fortunately my immediate boss (who also operated a BBS) had an appreciation of the finer things in life, and we spent half the afternoon looking at it, reading its large and content-filled manuals, and going over what I would need to do to to get it to function with my Fido/Opus BBS setup.

    I well remember stopping by Baynesville Electronics to pick up my 16550/AFN UART, and as well the new driver chips. These were quickly installed, and I set to work after supper configuring the system and the modem. It had a wonderfully rich and complex set of registers and commands; you could get it do do just about anything you wanted. Friends passed around prized init strings the way church ladies pass around prized recipes, and I received several "Heard you got your modem. How's it going?" phone calls that evening. I had it up and running by midnight. Most fun was to watch the mail transfers running along at warp speed. The final touch: Adding that prized "HST" to the BBS's tag line. Noblesse oblige, and I became a mail point with the next Nodelist update.

    I mostly remember two things:

    First, I enjoyed and greatly miss the sense of community among most of the BBS sysops of that net--Net-261. Knowledge was shared freely, help was forthcoming, and the group was an extended family. I formed friendships that are still valued almost twenty years later. We often got together personally, and our families got to know one another as well.

    Second, there's never been a piece of hardware as much fun to work on as a modem that's intended to drive a BBS.

    Anne
    The Keeping Room: Opus 1:261/1055 HST
    Gone these many years, but never forgotten

    --
    DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon