Slashdot Mirror
Die-Hard Sysops Are Resurrecting BBS's From The 1980s (arstechnica.com)
Ars Technica reports on vintage computing hobbyists "resurrecting digital communities that were once thought lost to time...some still running on original 8-bit hardware." Sometimes using modern technology like Raspberry Pi and TCPser (which emulates a Hayes modem for Telnet connections), they're reviving decades-old dial-up bulletin board systems (or BBSes) as portals "to places that have been long forgotten." An anonymous reader writes:
One runs the original software on a decades-old Commodore 128DCR. Another routes telnet connections across a real telephone circuit that connects to a Hayes modem. And after 23 years, the Dura-Europos BBS is back in business, using an Apple IIe running its original GBBS Pro software -- augmented with a modern CFFA3000 compact flash drive, and a Raspberry Pi running TCPser. [It's at dura-bbs.net, using port 6359.] Ars Technica blames "the meteoric rise of the World Wide Web and the demise of protocols that came before it" for the death of BBSes. "Owners of older 8-bit machines had little reason to maintain their hardware as their userbase migrated to the open pastures of the Web, and the number of bulletin board systems plummeted accordingly...
"Despite the threat of extinction, however, it turns out that some sysops never quite gave up on the BBS," and for many modern-day users, "it's simply a matter of 'dialing' the BBS using a domain name and port number instead of a phone number in their preferred terminal software." There they'll find primitive BBS games like STARTREK, Chess, and Blackjack, but also "old conversation threads dating back decades were available verbatim... It's like a buried digital time capsule."
One user says visiting a web site today "has a very public feel to it, whereas a BBS feels very much like being invited into someone's living room." The article also remembers "the dulcet tones of a 1200 baud connection (or 2400, if you were very lucky)," adding that "to see what was accomplished with so little was simply humbling."
"Despite the threat of extinction, however, it turns out that some sysops never quite gave up on the BBS," and for many modern-day users, "it's simply a matter of 'dialing' the BBS using a domain name and port number instead of a phone number in their preferred terminal software." There they'll find primitive BBS games like STARTREK, Chess, and Blackjack, but also "old conversation threads dating back decades were available verbatim... It's like a buried digital time capsule."
One user says visiting a web site today "has a very public feel to it, whereas a BBS feels very much like being invited into someone's living room." The article also remembers "the dulcet tones of a 1200 baud connection (or 2400, if you were very lucky)," adding that "to see what was accomplished with so little was simply humbling."
...We remember them with fond memories.
I remember when I spent so much of my savings as a kid to purchase that expensive 1200/2400/4800/9600 multimodem. Not to mention when I got two phonelines into my bedroom. My parents thought I was completely nuts, they complained about the "iiiiiii...ryryryryryryr....shhhhh" sounds at night, and I remember waking up to that music thinking, oh boy - someone is logging onto my computer.
Sometimes they just called the BBS system just to chat with Sysop. ...Paging sysop....
Sysop Coming Online...
Ah, the memories.
Just for the same reason I have my Commodore 64 next to me, I don't actually use it, and when I do - it's frightfully slow, but fun to do raster-interrupts and simple code challenges on anyway.
We only do this because we are still remember the good times, they have very little to any good use today, but it's really just for the nostalgia.
GOOD TIMES!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
I remember when 1200 baud was unobtainium expensive and many dial up services didn't even have 1200 modems at all. 300 was decent, but you had to put up with 110 once in a blue moon if the modem pool got full.
For the longest time I had an AppleCat that would only do some weird half-duplex 1200 baud that was unusable with normal 1200 baud. Somebody figured out a simple handshake system and made it possible to send whole floppies at 1200 baud.
I was poor as a kid and I couldn't afford the phone bill. Growing up poor in a small family and with no friends, I never developed any social skills. So I never learned to suck cock to get a good job, and I'm still poor.
If I tried to use a BBS, I'm sure I'd get banned because I'm not welcome anywhere, ever. No social skills, you see.
a BBS feels very much like being invited into someone's living room
Yeah, that's all I need to know to stay away.
Fuck all of you motherfuckers who were the rich kids.
running Fidonet. The good old days where the rules were simple:
Don't be excessively annoying.
Don't be easily annoyed.
Fuck AOL, for how "far" we've come.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Which were the ham radio equivalent of a BBS. Rather than dial in, you used a radio and a modem to link up via radio. It was pretty cool, sending messages back and forth across the country to people. It usually took a day or two, depending upon how many hops it took -- a lot like FidoNet.