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New iCE Web Site

Slothy writes "The old ansi group (and modern art group of all media formats), iCE (Insane Creators Enterprise), has unveiled our new web site. The new site allows you to search through all the art we've released since 1992, and it's viewable online. And for the icing on the cake, we're giving away some free (libre) software to go with the free (beer) art. Our code to convert ANSIs to hi-resolution images is released under the GPL. Drop by and find some old ansis you may have loved or see some modern work that's truly eye-popping. " Rob and I were talking with one of these boys at LinuxExpo and thinking about the BBS days of yore. This is making me so nostalgic, I might cry.

86 comments

  1. Re:this is all good but... by Slothy · · Score: 1

    Actually, they split off in a number of directions. At least 2 of them (Gore, Henchman, and maybe one more?) make up the company Remedy (www.remedy.fi), which did the Final Reality "benchmark"/demo, and is currently doing the game Max Payne.

    Pixel is doing tv video editing in Finland, last I heard.

    PSI and someone else (Trug maybe?) have been working as the "Bitboys Oy" (www.bitboys.fi) designing a 3d chip called the "Glaze3D".

    I actually don't know what became of Purple Motion, but Skaven went back to doing graphics of some sort.

    That's the best I can do :)

    Jon/Slothy

  2. Re:Ahh... memories by Slothy · · Score: 1

    Wow, I was hoping I'd see old "scene" guys that had moved to the Open Source/Linux crowd. Old iCE members are always welcome to come get involved again! Drop me an email!

    Jon/Slothy

  3. Re:this is all good but... by fReNeTiK · · Score: 1
    Yeah, Future Crew... Where the hell did those guys end up? it was thanks to their "panic" and "reality" demos that I got into coding... I remember they were talking about doing a game after "2nd Reality", but then they just disappeared.


    If anyone has some info on them...

    --
    I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
  4. At least ascii loaded even faster than shockwave by JhAgA · · Score: 1

    I'm sure that Internet would be lots faster if that program came much before adobe photoshop :)

  5. Re:Is it just me, or... by Outlyer · · Score: 1

    Hardly :) That was the 'style' at the time. When iCE came out, everyone wrote i's that way... ACiD, GOTHiC, 4i6 etc. Imac is just a plain-old rip off :)

    --
    ----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
  6. Re:Is it just me, or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and sometimes 1's for i's...
    thats just what i picked up from looking at all those WaR3Z cracks of .gov's.

  7. Re:Huh? BBSs were (1) sex chat or (2) w4r3z s1t3z by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There were big-ass non-sex chat BBSes all over the place. The best one that comes to my mind was The INDEX System in Atlanta, GA. ~96 lines of people getting online to play games, chat, and hang out. Sorta like the Internet except everyone was close enough that they could visit on weekends.

    Long live the INDEX Q-Zar Bash!

    -Chris

  8. quartz.rutgers.edu by Armhold · · Score: 1

    Hmm I work in the same machine room where quartz used to live. I think we may still actually have the box somewhere. I wasn't involved at all in its BBS function, but I was a student operator during the days when it was still online. Actually, IIRC it was pretty outdated even back in the ~1990/91. We also used to have a fidonet node in the microlab.

  9. Re:Is it just me, or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    aeiou MuST Be SMaLL. S FOR Z AND 0 OR O'S .

  10. Huh? BBSs were (1) sex chat or (2) w4r3z s1t3z by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (3) GIF sites or (4) Porn GIF sites. Now we have the internet and absolutely nothing has changed. Oh sure we all connect differently and it's worldwide, but 90+% of all internet traffic falls into one of the above activities. Pathetic. Ahh for the days of the academic internet, back when you had to sign the NSF agreement to get on, and the net only got st00pid in September...

    1. Re:Huh? BBSs were (1) sex chat or (2) w4r3z s1t3z by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      huh?! :)

      well, maybe they're the only sorts of boards you 1. either knew about, or 2. used to ring up.

      but i have a slightly different souvenir of bbs's, that of a medium for the demoscene, i.e., distribution of our art (music/graphics/demos), and a contact point between other people with a similar interest.

      now with the advent of the internet, this scene of ours has exploded in size, however with the added disadvantage of the weakening of the "underground" (for want of a better word) element of our own little treasured community..

      but that's an argument best left elsewhere.. one already well fought over :)

  11. Is it just me, or... by webslacker · · Score: 2

    Does the name 'iCE" kinda look like a nod to "iMac?" Or did someone accidentally have their caps lock on wrong? =)

    1. Re:Is it just me, or... by Pseudo_Intellectual · · Score: 1

      * vOwEls hAvE rIghts tOO!
      * by drongo

      Why is it that "elite" groups of modemmers, and "elite" pirate/ art groups always make the vowels in their names small, while the
      rest of the alphabet is in capital letter? I have often asked myself this.. example..

      MiST, ACiD, iCE

      Some groups make all the vowels small, while some only make a few.. example..

      STRiKE, RAiD, SUiCiDE

      I find this phenomenon quite interesting..
      Are these pirates and "artists" typing on broken keyboards? Is it some ploy to boost egos? "Ha ha I have small i's and you don't!"? What? What drives these people to neglect the rights of vowels?

      I am going to start a group...

      The International Vowel Liberation Front..

      not [TiVLF]

      but

      [tIvlf]

      Vowels have equal rights in this world just like everyone else..
      So why push them down and make them small? What is the point?
      Please, if you see this happening, inform the person.. that vowels too can be capitalized.
      drongo

      ...from Kithe E-Mag Issue Three, December 1994

      --
      culture is only composed of those things that people arbitrarily agreed to assign significance to.
    2. Re:Is it just me, or... by Leapfrog · · Score: 1
      iCE was around long before the iMac was even a glint in Apple's jolly eyes. Mind you, I was never much into the BBS scene, but from what I recall, there was iCE before there was Netscape.

      So, in that case iMac is a nod to iCE.

    3. Re:Is it just me, or... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jeez... iCE was around long before iMAC. Get a clue.

    4. Re:Is it just me, or... by ODiV · · Score: 1

      hmmm... Now I feel like my handle is a little out of date. :)

      I guess I'm entitled to keep it... I've done some ascii art (not good enough to move on to ansi).

      Long LiVE the lowercase i!

  12. Re:Good Gravy! mmm... gravy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Tribeview was always the best for quick and dirty ansi/ascii viewing - fast load/seek time and real textmode (no smoothscrolling / bouncing garbage) but because of its being rooted in such a particular era it missed out on the age of great high-resolution support in group viewers (particularly .JPG format) and the random colouration it assigned to .LIT files was always just plain nasty.

    Regardless, I still use it to this day 8)

  13. ANSI Graphics by Accipiter · · Score: 1
    I remember (way back when), I used to do Graphics for a Commodore BBS. I used a terminal program to make .SEQ files. God, that brings back some serious memories. The good thing about that terminal program, is it kept a buffer of all your keystrokes, so you could stuff a cute little ASCII animation into a SEQ file. Great Stuff. I miss my Commodore 64, and the days where 2400 Baud kicked ass. *sob*

    Then came the time when my brother and I started our OWN Commodore BBS. Ah, the nostalgia. DMBBS Baybee!

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

    --

    -- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
    (If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't. :P)

  14. Linux console *is* ANSI you troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Linux console is more of a ANSI/VT100/linux terminal.

  15. http://www.oldskool.org/ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.oldskool.org/


    Bring back memories!!!!!

  16. Re:ANSI art by MrMister · · Score: 1

    iDraw is due out soon, check www.ice.org for details

  17. reviving the scene by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean a HTML/XML/whatever system? I think there would be demand for it. Quite a few sysops have been experimenting with HTML front-ends to BBS' to try harness some of the luserbase on the 'net.

    Not me though, no point running a BBS that doesn't do DOS doors (since all the good ones are still DOS based) and, IMNSHO, BBS' belong in the text mode world.

    The BBS scene definatly needs something though, Fidonet reached another milestone last week: fewer than 20,000 nodes.

    1. Re:reviving the scene by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      If only FidoNET could make a _real_ interface to the internet, instead of just a few scattered odd methods of receiving the packets... Perhaps a "FidoNET" server hooked up to the 'net, running the "FidoNet Internet Protocol". I can dream.

      (I can also dream about actually having a server on which to make such software... and being rich, and having a harem, and killing the Spice Girls..)

    2. Re:reviving the scene by munson · · Score: 1

      Fidonet has diffrent methods of sending packets on the internet. Internet Rex http://www.plaza.v-wave.net/InternetRex will have daemon features for bbs ops who run 24/7 bbs's via the internet.
      And he made a Linux version.

      And there are telnet bbs's and much much more. And othernets, (non-fido on ftn networking) are getting popular.

  18. This is ascii, right? by Zapman · · Score: 1

    And not graphics, right? Then why on earth does it have a slow, fully graphical (ok. there is one word in text there at the bottom. "Credits") front page?

    just curious

    --
    Zapman
    1. Re:This is ascii, right? by Slothy · · Score: 1

      naah. We became most well known back in the BBS days when our ansis were plastered all over a lot of great boards, but even in the early packs we released "VGAs". Technically, iCE is a group that focuses on digital arts. We have released a Music Disk with Renaissance (that means something to the old demo scene guys), called Epidemic, and we've got an amazing team of hi-resolution artists. In the future, watch out for a new foray into music, and I'm going to be releasing an open-source, open-content multiplayer 2d java game soon. We're mostly just a group of good friends who all help the group in our own little way, and coincidentally we release artwork for free on a monthly basis. It's a great bunch of people, and we have a lot of fun together.

      Jon/Slothy

    2. Re:This is ascii, right? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Easy... Because knowing how to design ANSI art doesn't imply knowing how to design a web site.

    3. Re:This is ascii, right? by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 1

      Heh, Renaissance, the only half way decent demo group ever to come out of the US... Their demos always kinda annoyed me I cuz you had to reboot for their special protected mode loaders and shit... Still, not bad stuff. 'Course, FC rocked them (rocked everyone).

  19. Re:BBS'S ARE ALIVE AND WELL!! by Pug · · Score: 1

    I can vouch for what a great BBS Uncensored is. It's a nice Citadel with lots of good discussion and cool people. Of course, I'm biased since I discovered Slashdot from a post there. :)

  20. Re:Does anyone remember... by Grimoire · · Score: 1

    WWIV is still alive and kicking. Version 4.30 is currently in beta testing and should be released soon. FOSSIL support has been added so you can now run a telnet system using virtual com drivers. There is even a Linux version in the works (WWIV/X). The new web page is wss.wwiv.com (Wayne Bell sold the rights to Trader Jack)

    --
    To misquote Churchill, never has an operating system (FreeBSD) used by so many been administered by so few. - NetCraft
  21. Krad-speak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anybody know where I can find a good conversion table with all those conventions?

  22. Re:Brings a tear to my eye. by AJWM · · Score: 2

    Java BBS

    How about a conferencing system? (I always viewed a BBS as a conferencing system wannabe :-)

    Way back in the Dark Ages (mid 80s) I wrote the Unix-based CoSy system that (among other things) serves as the basis for BIX (Byte Information Exchange), (also NIX in Japan and CIX in the UK).
    A while back I started in on a Java version of CoSy (with some added features I've been wanting to do), and its largely complete but has been on the back burner for a while now.

    However, some Bixen recently have expressed some interest in it, and there seems to be some interest here, so I'll put the stuff up on my web page as soon as I get a chance (I need to check the files and add appropriate copyright/GPL notices, etc. Maybe (maybe) over the weekend.

    (I'd love to be able to release the C source for the original CoSy but I don't have the rights. It was originally developed at U. of Guelph and the rights later sold to some Vancouver-based company who don't seem to have done anything with it in the last few years. The Web eclipsed it to a degree.)

    --
    -- Alastair
  23. And there are other ANSI/ASCII related sites by MrMister · · Score: 1


    http://acheron.org
    http://hirez.org
    http://acid.org - yes ACiD still lives =)

    AND, if you frequent EFNet on IRC, try joining
    #ice,#acid,#ans,#ansi,#ascii

    there are others, forgive me if I dont remember them all =)

  24. Re:Ahh... memories by Killean · · Score: 1

    I've always wondered what happened to a bunch of people - like Tempus Thales, the god of ANSI himself, or RadMan. Even Shihear Kalizad too (though most people couldn't stand his ego)...

    shrug... I even still use my old handle to this day.

    I'll have to get back on IRC someday I guess...


    Killean the Red - Free Beer BBS - TRiBE!!! (chuckle)





    Nostalgia certainly is the key word here.

    --
    My new catch phrase is: "I NEED A NEW CATCH PHRASE, BABY!"
  25. Re:ANSI art by Brian+G. · · Score: 1

    Actually, iDraw will have its own website at idraw.ice.org for reference. There isn't anything there yet, but keep an eye open.

    Why would you use iDraw instead of TheDraw?

    I don't even want to get into the list of feature differences that, if you were so inclined to draw a little ansi, makes iDraw superior, but I will post the partial feature list on idraw.ice.org right now.

    http://idraw.ice.org.

    -brian aka Mass Delusion, iCE Senior Staff
    (massd@ice.org)

  26. Re:Nostalgia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    RIPScrip's drawing programs all rather sucked, and most decent COMM programs never picked-up support of it. I have to admit, I did love the ASCII font in RIPTerm, though... heh..

    The days when being on-line didn't mean being on the internet, a BBS wasn't a rarely-used term for a web message board, RA wasn't an acronym for RealAudio, and Doom was a long download. LORD didn't refer to GOD. And Terminate probably really was the final terminal.

  27. On the rebirth of bulliten boards by CiXeL · · Score: 1

    Its strange, in the rush to drop what we were doing and discover something new, we lost something. Nostalgia being stirred up by things such as iCE ansi packs and a growing revival in the bbs scene are proving this. Its funny that we went to the net for a sense of community when we already had it in the form of bbses, all the web had to offer was a gazillion free downloads. The real power in bbses was the community and *INTELLIGENT* conversations which have since left usenet and become part of mailinglists or web threads. On the web you're a small fish in a big pond whereas in the bbs days it was the opposite, you were a big fish in a small pond. Remember QWK packets for reading messages offline? Remember wwiv 'subs' chock full of REAL usable information rather than useless spam? Thats exactly what it should be called USELESSNET only good for leeching xxx pics and other binaries. I felt this same nostalgia in me and I decided that perhaps the bbs scene isnt dead after all, it seems many others feel tha same as i do so i decided to run a few searches on it and i came up with some interesting info.

    For one, WWIV is ***BACK IN DEVELOPMENT***
    theyre working on a NATIVE LINUX VERSION. If you remember correctly to get the source you need only pay the registration fee, remember modding wwiv all to hell? well soon we'll be able to do it in linux! YES WAYNE BELL LIVES! http://www.wwiv.com/ . Allen Softwares come out with a proggie called NetModem which allows any bbs program that can use a fossil driver to allow people to telnet into it. So you can put your old bbs back on the net using this program. Unfortunetly the shareware only supports 1 node. Also the next version of wwiv due out this summer will have support for netmodem. http://www.mindspring.com/~daallen/ only one problem with netmodem is its kinda slow which is why native telnet supporting bbs programs are better. Numerous BBS softwares for download http://www.thedirectory.org/diamond/soft1.htm

    Also it seems Falcon BBS http://www.falkenbbs.com/ is a popular bbs program for linux unfortunetly its not open source and the free version only supports four nodes. We definately need an open source bbs proggie if we want the bbs scene and sense of community back. The nice thing about the new internet bbses is that you dont have to deal with ratios as much anymore because bandwidth is more plentiful because youre not limited to 1 phone line, also i have a few questions myself, i used to notice electrical interference would drop my cps rate on bbses, now with the net measured in k i dont actually see a rate decrease but i know its still happening but i dont think people really think about that unless its severe. Windows has made us lazy. Also remember the transfer protocol HS/Link?? We'll do we have bidirectional capability over the net as modems in the past have or what? Im guessing we do.

    Also ive put up a few nostalgic treats on my website:
    TheDraw http://home.earthlink.net/~cthind/thedraw.rar
    miniTelnet http://home.earthlink.net/~cthind/mt32.exe

    minitelnet has ansi and zmodem capability and a dialing dir, its for ansi bbses on the net. I was reading about a study done and in it they discovered that scientists working together in groups of 5-10 produced more work than larger groups. This could be the reason why alot of work creating incredible software got done on bbses. Another thing about the bbs scene is i LOVED the intense technical knowledge. Feeling more nostalgic? Check out http://soylent.textfiles.com/ for old text files from the bbs days. There have been many attempts to bring back the bbs days like wildcat's web based bbses that use html and SUCK or ripscript graphics which were killed by the web quite swiftly but i think its finally coming back correctly in the form of modifying and porting old bbses to linux or dos and accessible to telnet. I hope ive done my best to satisfy your nostalgic apetite. But this isnt nostalgia we're talking about here, the bbs scene can and will be alive again SOON.

  28. Re:Ahh... memories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was a member of a few BBSs in Jersey too. You ever call Cheers, Cybercomm or TIF?

    It's so nice to read from people who know what a BBS is, let alone know what it was like to be a part of one. :)

  29. Brings a tear to my eye. by atomly · · Score: 1
    I feel like an old fart every time I start trying to explain the beauty of the BBS scene to people, even though I'm only 19. Everything was so great back then, such a better sense of community, and such cooler people.

    There are still people out there releasing ANSIs, MODs and assorted computer demos. Just check out www.scene.org or www.assembly.org for some examples.

    Anyway, I think now I'll go write that Java BBS I always talked about coding but never bothered to. (Would there be a demand for this if I wrote it?)

    --
    -- atomly :: atomly(at)atomly(dot)com :: http://www.atomly.com/
    1. Re:Brings a tear to my eye. by edgy · · Score: 2

      If it had a really good teleconference (GCOM style), I'd be interested.

      Are there any really good Open Source BBS's with Renegade-style messaging and GCOM teleconference? A combination like that would kick some booty.

      I've tried some BBS's for Linux, but they just don't have the same flair those two BBS's had for those tasks.

      I used to run a Hacker/Phreaker bulletin board called The Digital Fallout. Had some really cool message bases since I turned away w@r3z d00dz that would post bullshit, and I looked for those people that could carry an intelligent conversation. We talked about all sorts of things, from drugs, to secrets about the telephone company, to spying, to technology, all those neat topics. We were all enthusiasts interested in the technology of the day. Ah well, those were the days.

      I remember iCE, ACiD (ANSI Creators in Demand), and some other smaller groups. The internet had to come and kill it all. If anything, we need more of those close-knit groups again somehow.

  30. Re:this is all good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    slothy's got the right idea.

    trug and wildfire both work as part of bitboys,
    or at lesat did at one time, i ahvent kept
    up to date.

    skaven is doing textures/graphics, he was at
    remedy but he may have left since then.

    purple motion is being rather a slacker as
    far as i know.. he is playing in various
    bands and such but i dont know what his
    job is.

    oh, and abyss is part of assembly organizing
    (www.assembly.org)

  31. Re:Good Gravy! mmm... gravy. by Leapfrog · · Score: 1
    In the days of yore, back when compuers were a thing of the future, and the Second World War was raging, fighter pilots would stamp pictures of enemy planes (and boats) on the side of their aircraft, with a line through them. Each one was worn with pride.

    I think slashdot needs the same sort of thing. A page dedicated to all those servers which have been crushed by the dreaded Slashdot Effect. And maybe an official "I've been slashdotted" gif to put on your page if you manage to recover afterwards.

    But seriously, every time I've visited ice.org it's been abysmally slow. Probably not the best bandwidth for a group serving out large, high quality images.

    One more thing: if any of you old-skool ANSI guru's still has PyroView hanging around, let me know. I heard it's still one of the best viewers around.

  32. I am gonna cry... by aada · · Score: 1

    I kept all my ANSI drawings from iCE until Feb 5th of 1999 because my computer got stolen. I thought I would never get those nice ANSI back. I am surprised to see that iCE kept all my ANSI drawings from 1992-1993. It's a wonderful experience to know that someone else keeps my drawings. iCE was the best ANSI group, and still is the best!!

    ex-iCE member
    AADA

  33. and still another window manager by josepha48 · · Score: 0

    Currently I have 7 window managers on my system.

    • I have enlightenment with GNOME.
    • I now have windowmaker with GNOMEpanel-applet
    • I have AfterStep
    • I have XFCE
    • I have fvwm2
    • I have fvwm95
    • I have KDE

    I cannot understand why there are so many different projects in this area. WindowMaker and AfterStep are very similar, it woud be nice to see these two project merge at some point.

    E sounds as though it is going to drop GNOME, but WindowMaker has some GNOME compatability in it so maybe it will be the next GNOME window manager.

    and there is ICE and BlackBow, and Bowman, and UDE. I like a chooice, but this is rediculious. Linux has at least 10 different window manager. Gee if they start to all be included in distros I'll have to rewrite my windowchoose script that I execute at logon. I now have a window manager for each day of the week :-).

    Does anyone else out there feel that it wou dbe a good idea if some of these window manager projects and desktop projects were to merge into 1 ultra configurable window manager, and 1 ultra configurable desktop?

    --

    Only 'flamers' flame!

  34. Re:this is all good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you all rememer .669 and .mod? all the rage before mp3.. =)

    wow, were you abducted by aliens between 1992 and now? ;) how about .S3M, .ITs, .XMs, and the rest.. and high quality, professional (yet free) music is still being churned out all over the 'net..

    http://blackhole.interspeed.net for example, for a quick shameless plug =) (incl. mp3's)

  35. Cool to you! by Anne+Observer · · Score: 1

    Heh, good going Slothy.

    So, are we still the only Quake clan with a Slothy splash image on our page?

    Norton

    (And why aren't you at Kevin's, ya slacker?)

  36. Does anyone remember... by TheAmigo · · Score: 1

    Any of you remember WWIV based boards? Anyone in Mobile, Al.? Political Agenda? The Far Side? Sector Eight? WWIV was so much fun. Yep, those were good times. Several people, including myself, met their spouses due in part to the local board scene here in Mobile. And no, it wasn't mostly sex and porn. There were lots of good discussions, especially during the first few years of ASMS enrollment.

    Pretty cool.

    1. Re:Does anyone remember... by strredwolf · · Score: 1

      Oh yes, WWIV. I have the source printed out for the first version. www.wwiv.com

      ---
      Spammed? Click here for free slack on how to fight it!

      --

      --
      # Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
      $Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
    2. Re:Does anyone remember... by Rko · · Score: 1

      I remember WWIV, I used to run a WWIV board, gawd that was a great program. I had a kick ass system at the time, 8088 with EGA and a 40M HD, had a 4 colour dot matrix printer too, think it cost my parents several thousand dollars, of course all I can remember at the time was that I was upset that when I had asked for a computer it was not an Apple II, like the one I used at the local library. However I am really glad my parents made the right choice and I learned PC architecture because of it.

      Anyway I rant WWIV, and the entire BBS could be run off a 720k 5.25 floppy, thus freeing up precious harddrive space. I drew tons of ansi art, nothing that great though, had lots of really cool door games, my favourite being the one where you were placed at a shell prompt and had to try to hack into various government computers and such, and then there was that other one where you owned planets and produced grain and other things and could war with other users, but as the sysop you could of course cheat :) I also remember that I had like 15 different protocols for up/downloading, although people only really used x/y/zmodem, I wanted to make everything possibly availalbe.

      Those were the good days, and WWIV was such a great program, sigh..... Hey if anyone on here remembers a BBS in Iowa called Tri-Force, that was mine !

      --
      I'm pretty fly for a white guy
  37. Oops by webslacker · · Score: 2

    Humble apologies.

  38. Re:Ahh... memories by PugMajere · · Score: 1
    I remember iCE, back in the day. I was a member for a few months back in 1994. It was nice to be able to look up all my old artwork (only four pictures :) and it reminded me of how cool and simple those days were.

    Yeah, it is amazing remember what you used to be involved in. Around '94, or so, I remember Midnight Sorrow (who can still be found on IRC), getting real deep into iCE, and of course CCi.

    It has been a while, hasn't it?

    Former Sysop - Mythical Productions

  39. BBS'S ARE ALIVE AND WELL!! by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 1

    If you don't believe me, check out this one. There is still no place to meet a more "folksy" online crowd.

    The pay-for-use BBS's turned into ISP's, and the corporate sites simply went onto the web. Fine. The ones that remain are the true BBS's, the hobbyist ones!

    Modern BBS software is quite capable of being accessed simultaneously by dialup callers, telnet users, WWW users, and folks with BBS client software. Naturally, the BBS's which continue to thrive are the ones which are connected to the Internet, allowing a global audience to connect.

    BBS's are not dead. The rules of the game have changed, but the World Wide Waste-o-time can never offer the level of interactivity that a BBS can.

    --
    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
  40. Nostalgia by Garpenlov · · Score: 1

    So whatever happened to RIP (RIP script?), that was supposed to kill ANSI?

    To think, I could have been part of an 'i' group (MiRAGE, who later merged with another big 'i' group) when DREAM merged with them... But I was in a little 'i' group, and I got kicked out. [mumbles about Shihear Kallizad]

    Ah, the days of WWIV, and Telegard, and Renegade, and all those Vision clones.. [they really were neat looking]. I actually registerd WWIV. I actually remember my registration number. [rambling on].



    --
    --- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
  41. Re:GIF/BMP => ANSI by nd · · Score: 1

    Yes, converting GIF to ANSIs is possible. I remember a lot of the really lame boards used to use a gif2ansi program for their art. It's frowned upon in the ansi/bbs community (yeah, it's still around).

    But anyways, search around.. there were 2-3 DOS utilities available to do it. One was called ansirez, and one was just gif2ansi.exe :)

  42. Re:Good Gravy! mmm... gravy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    TRiBEView is the best viewer, IMO. It doesn't have all the fancy shmancy features of some of the other viewers, but it's faster and less buggy.

  43. Re:ANSI / ASCII art by Matrix · · Score: 1

    The GIMP can do that with its AA plugin (I believe it's part of the default set of plugins). Just convert the image to greyscale then save as type AA; it'll list a number of ways to save (Text, HTML, etc). You may have to install the ASCII Art library, but it's worth it for how cool it turns out.

  44. Re:Good God! by farmy · · Score: 1

    Hiya, iCE senior admin here, we actually planned for the /. effect on the server as you can see:

    lemon:~$ uptime
    2:15pm up 7 day(s), 22:32, 2 users, load average: 0.37 0.29 0.28

    nice distributed model, database server is on its own box, web server is dedicated as well, yadda yadda...

    1 minor faux pas, we're on a bad hub. :) Its dropping about 20% of the traffic coming to the box. We're working on fixing that right now.

    Farmy [iCE]

  45. The good old days by Pyramid · · Score: 1

    Wow, seeing that ANSI art brings back a lot of fond memories; I still remember the nights in front of my trusty A500 like it was yesterday! Do any of you remember any of the old internet BBS's like the Citadel, Spies in the Wire, quartz.rutgers.edu and mars.ee.mstate.edu?

    Maybe this is off topic, but I wish I could thank all the unknown people out there who sparked my curiosity and took the time to answer my neophyte questions. It's a shame that the internet the way I remember it, a close knit community of the brightest minds out there, is but a thing of the past.

    Long live telnet, archie and gopher!

    --
    ~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
  46. Re:Ahh... memories by nebby · · Score: 1

    Oh my gawd! I remember you man, you made renegade add-ons! Wow. I made a few myself, my handle was Nebula and I was into the NJ BBS Scene.. I was in CiA as a coder.

    Pretty freakin awesome

    --
    --
  47. A Different Era by viren · · Score: 1

    Bulletin Board Systems of all types provided me with what I consider the most valuable computer training I've ever had. They provided the means and motivation to learn how to really use console based programs and DOS in general. When the "scene" moved to the Internet, it was initially based in primarily IRC and FTP. The use of those initial Unix programs provided me with critical exposure to the environment, which was leverage when I wanted to seriously learn Unix.
    The world of BBS's was essentially split into two factions: the legit, and the so called "warez" boards. Legit boards were characterized by massive shareware catalogs and intricate FidoNet message board link ups. Warez boards, on the other hand, were at their peak multiline behemoths with international couriers. In my opinion, though, the real life of any BBS, regardless of its legality, was rooted in the message boards & chat services. It was here that the power and raw fun of online communication was brilliantly self-evident. No Internet experience I've ever had has come close to the best and most engaging boards that I was once a part of. Slashdot comes close in terms of a sense of community, but it's not quite the same. With any luck, someone will come up with a way to bring the old passion and simplicity of bulletin board systems into the comparatively confused nature of Internet based messaging.

    1. Re:A Different Era by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't forget the coder boards; that was really my scene and was what provided such a direct evolution onto the internet. No good coding board was really "legit", but at the same time they weren't focused on warez. My bbs had a good balance of code (of all sorts of licenses, pd, a little gpl, all of which were ignored; and oh damn the libraries!), some good utils (including turboC, tasm and masm), our favorite selection of the latest ansi packs, and local and networked message boards. We had a total disregard for copyright, but we were focused on code/art/etc, not warez.

      I miss the chats, bases, and most of all the GTs. Oh for another ch0d3r.bbQ ! (sigh)

      - NoC

  48. Ahh... memories by Outlyer · · Score: 1

    I remember iCE, back in the day. I was a member for a few months back in 1994. It was nice to be able to look up all my old artwork (only four pictures :) and it reminded me of how cool and simple those days were.

    There were a few groups back then, ACiD, iCE, DARK, and GOTHIC (which merged with ACiD). I had the privledge of being part of all four.

    The weirdest thing is, I still have friends that I made back then, friends I made over international conference calls, that a member managed to 'acquire.'.

    I also remember the hostility I saw for refusing to use the pixel-by-pixel Deluxe Paint II... I was using Photoshop and Fractal Design Painter. Simpler days, for sure. :)

    Anyway, I guess I could mention some of those great people I met back then, Elminster, Epitaph, Oxygene, Radman, Prison Breaker, Carnifex, 4th Disciple, the list goes on.

    I ended up getting into Sheridan College's Animation Program on the strength of art I did with those groups.
    (I left after a few months, but that's a different story :)

    BBS'ing, was terrific. It was a tighter, sharing community; sure, we had private BBS's, phreaking, and silly Telegard/Renegade/PCBoard hackers, ansi rippers, and pizza delivery boys running Art Groups, but it was a fun time. Without the people I met there, I probably would never had seen a UNIX system, never seen the Internet when it was mostly FTP and IRC.... oh, and Netscape 1.0 was around the corner, but it's not like we had ISP providing PPP... for that matter, we didn't exactly have a lot of ISPs. :)

    Thanks to iCE-guys for reminding me of all this great stuff,

    The Artist Formerly Known as Crow

    --
    ----------------- "I have a bone to pick, and a few to break." - Refused -------------------
    1. Re:Ahh... memories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, RadMan is still on IRC all the time... selling ACiD shirts and stuff :)

      Shihear vanished 4-5 years ago and I haven't seen him since (on #ansi, at least)

      And Tempus, no clue...

    2. Re:Ahh... memories by Brian+G. · · Score: 1

      Oddly enough, Midnight Sorrow is still around and CCI is actually back and booming again (yes, a BBS message network, can you believe that??)

      Look him up on IRC. :)


      -Brian AKA Mass Delusion, iCE Senior Staff

  49. Re:This may get moderated, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    You do have to realize that in the golden age of the scene ('92-'94) the scene was populated by, essentially,
    a bunch of rich (or at least able to afford computer/modem/phoneline/ISP time if they were really lucky)
    13-year-old nerds

    Hmm, I'd say it was populated by a bunch of young nerds. I was 16 in '93 and lived in the ghetto (East Oakland). I managed to scrape together $90 for a computer system that ran a part-time (9pm-6am) bbs just fine. If anything it was less economically descriminating then. How good does the web look on today's $100 pcs?

  50. Uh-oh. Better download new termcaps, everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can see ANSI re-gaining power as a Linux terminal type just like the days it was a modem term type. Watch vt100 die! Forget xf86 v4... let's all use ncurses and ANSI!

    Just imagine "make ansimenuconfig" (with animations!)

    -Chris

  51. Display ANSI directly by choo · · Score: 1

    Rather than convert the ANSI art to gifs etc., they should write a plugin that displays ANSI art embedded in web pages directly. Great way to do low bandwidth graphics.

  52. ANSI art by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What's the latest version of TheDraw? I wonder someone still maintains that cool ansi drawing program...

  53. Feeling Nostalgic? by Kevbo · · Score: 1

    I just finished reading (or re-reading, can't really remember) The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling. Since it was written in the early 90s and deals almost exclusively with BBSs, it's a good Nostalgia time.

    --
    In Vino Veritas
  54. Good God! by Mike+Hicks · · Score: 1

    Good God Almighty! That server sure seems to have Slashdotted quick! ;-) (okay, I guess it's just a tad slow, the server hasn't died...yet)

  55. Re:This may get moderated, but... by Pseudo_Intellectual · · Score: 1

    Perhaps the computer-owning demographic varied from area code to area code. In my neck of the woods (Vancouver, BC) computers were brought home by clueless fathers with a zest for overpriced toys and once the joys of Word 1 and Windows 2.0 were exhausted, the discards were turned over to bored, disenfranchised proto-geeks just about tiring of AD&D 2nd Edition and ready for a new obsession.

    Don't forget also that while anybody's dog can wander into a cafe now, click a mouse and send a piece of e-mail, this was back in the time of strictly command-line software where using a computer entailed actually needing a clue about what you were doing (time investment) for minimal rewards (naked lady ansimations, if you were lucky! woo doggie...) In my experience the only idlers with the time available to pick it up (not needing to enter into an early form of wage slavery) were those well-off kids who for whatever reason didn't take a shining to the athletic or band cliques and didn't need to work.

    I will admit that my experience is not necessarily universal, relevant or even interesting. $.02 and all that.

    --
    culture is only composed of those things that people arbitrarily agreed to assign significance to.
  56. Re:this is all good but... by zztzed · · Score: 1

    Future Crew split up when their members had to serve in the Finnish military.

  57. Agreed that BBSes are alive and well! by AdamC · · Score: 1

    Another example of the way BBSes can now integrate
    into the WWW is at:

    http://bccs.net

  58. GIF/BMP => ANSI by Periwinkle · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know if there is a way to convert GIF or bitmaps to ANSI Art. I wouldn't think it would be that hard... similar to the creation of mosaic images.

    Looking at that site has made me thinks that ANSI would make a great theme for my homepage.

  59. WOW!! by Grifter · · Score: 1

    iCE was one of the first out there to be a big ANSi ART group and they are almost the only ones left. ACiD (which was better) is still around and doing great VGA art and still some ANSi stuff... I really want the BBSes back, those were the days!!

    www.acid.org (still have monthly packs)

  60. NOSTALGIA by alarosa · · Score: 1

    .mod was my life for at LEAST a year. I couldn't make them worth a damn, but god I loved collecting them :). I still listen to .mod's (and their ilk .xm and .s3m) to this day, mostly from the Unreal soundtrack (the ONLY good part of the game if you ask me).

    And as for BBS's go, Renegade was the best software and you all know it!

  61. ah, yes, the BBSing days... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    I remember spending years working on my BBS software... never did get it to the point where I was really satisfied with it, although it's still available for download at

    my web site
    . I got most of the way through a win32 port, but never really finished it.

  62. this is all good but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    where is Future Crew?
    i remembe futurecrew.com was just opened, but not everything is there..

    you all rememer .669 and .mod? all the rage before mp3.. =)

    if you can remember that, then you can all remember all of the wwiv hacks out there and the well pirated source (but boy did it kick ass). if it wasn't for the source fo wwiv, i wouldn't have ran a bbs, let alone learned how to code.

    it was all good when you could mod wwiv to look like all the vision clones.

    1. Re:this is all good but... by nebby · · Score: 1

      Though the other reply relating to PM is probably more accurate, I had heard that he was working on music for Apogee back in the days of shareware games galore :) (This was like a few years ago.)

      BTW - I have two CDs in my car which contain primarily Purple Motion/Skaven tracks :) pretty good stuff.. SCREAM TRACKER WILL NEVER DIE!

      --
      --
  63. BBS's by KrAphtd1nN3r · · Score: 1

    BBS still rule. Why talk about the good old days
    when you can still make one. I know I did. It's completely different from the Internet, therefore I think BBS's will always have a warm place in our hearts.

    Console rules!!!!

    BTW, this site is so slow Eta Carinae will have time to explode by the time it's finished downloading!!

    --
    "Code free or die!"
  64. Re:This may get moderated, but... by Pseudo_Intellectual · · Score: 1

    You do have to realize that in the golden age of the scene ('92-'94) the scene was populated by, essentially, a bunch of rich (or at least able to afford computer/modem/phoneline/ISP time if they were really lucky) 13-year-old nerds. Having suffered discrimination in the real world due to their morbid fascinations with the C64s in the computer labs this new technology allowed them to enact power fantasies and turn the tables on 'lamers' in this warped reality where computer knowledge allowed them to wield power over others.

    Back when there were legitimate connections to illegal scenes (warez, phreaking) the eliteness was also, at least superficially, a security precaution.

    If the inhabitants of the scene then seemed immature, that is probably because they were. It seems unfair to necessarily expect rational conduct of 13-year-olds 8) Just think of Lord of the Flies and the whole eliteness thing doesn't sound quite so bad after all...

    oh jeez, I really should get rid of this sig.

    --
    culture is only composed of those things that people arbitrarily agreed to assign significance to.
  65. But Microsoft didn't invent the internet 'til 93 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You know, when they finally invented the first working TCP/IP stack for the PC. before that the 'net was just a bunch of old dinosaur mainframes doing boring stuff at schools.

  66. hehe, full slashdot in effect by Slothy · · Score: 1

    Actually, the server is doing okay - it's a dual-CPU machine with a load of like 0.93. It's actually the T1 that's getting saturated... sorry we don't have more bandwidth, folks, just be patient :)

    Slothy

  67. ANSI / ASCII art by Casshan · · Score: 1

    Speaking of ASCII/ANSI art, does anyone know of a program that will convert .gif or whatever to plain ASCII? I found a couple for windows that only did 640x480 gifs. I would like something that would be able to print out something huge that I can print on our dot matrix printers for a poster in my office.. :) A big giant TUX and linux logo that are 6 feet wide would be awesome ..

  68. Ye old days of BBS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    telnet://darkplanet.org

  69. This may get moderated, but... by Stiletto · · Score: 1

    I always remembered iCE, ACiD, and members of other "KraD elite" ANSI art groups to be more interested in things like touting their own eliteness, getting unaffiliated artists banned from their elite boards just because they weren't part of the clubhouse, and in general just being totally immature and full of themselves. Perhaps I just met a few bad eggs, but the one thing I always remembered about the ol bbs days was the immaturaty of these guys.

    Watching one of these guys join a more subdued bbs was kind of like having an insightful thread on USENET, then some AOL guy coming in saying "THiS PLaCe SuXx!! eYe aM MoRe eLeeT THaN YooU@!@!!11!"