BBS: The Documentary

[MikeTheC]

I started talking about this in the Revolution OS thread, but now I'm curious about BBSs and all of you folk.

Here's a couple links for you:

BBS: The Documentary (http://bbsdocumentary.com/)

Wikipedia.org: Bulletin Board System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_Board_System)

So, how many people here have used a BBS? Any (secretly) famous people here on UbuntuForums?

For my part, as a kid from about 1988 or 1989 through about 1995 or 1996 (memory is a bit fuzzy) I used to use a number of local BBSs here. I was on through what was known as "Net 371" and participated in a number of FidoNet echos, especially the Dr. Who and Star Trek ones, but a few others from time to time as well.

And here's another question, specifically directed at anyone here who was either a SysOp or an actual "power BBS user": Have any of you folks heard about or remember the user "BlueJean"? I believe the user was female, and her signature was "BlueJean, beware of frog".

[Murrquan]

I was on BBSes for years back in the early 90's. I was only like 10-12, and all I did was play Tradewars 2002 and the like and download shareware games. ^.^;

[MaxIBoy]

Assuming that modern forums don't count, I have never used a BBS (in that era, I was busy learning how to read and the like.)

[XubuRoxMySox]

BBSes were cool when all we had was dialup. I used to visit a Wildcat and MajorBBS boards (all gone now) and used SLMR (Silly Little Mail Reader) so I could log on, send/upload all the outgoing stuff and download all the incoming stuff in a few minutes and get off the phone line to read and write offline to the History forum, Chitchat forums, Star Trek forums, and Christian forums.

I wish there was something like QWK/SLMR for web forums! That'd be awesome. There's something kinda-sorta like it for Windows (Forum Pilot) but not for Linux yet.

-Robin

[MikeTheC]

Towards the end there were some good mail readers for Mac OS, and I remember using them a bit. After all, the BBSs usually limited users' time on system to 1 hour per day, maybe 2 hours tops.

Doing all the reading and responding off-line made things so much more efficient.

[JordyD]

Apparently my dad was heavily into BBSes when he was ~15-16. He says he ran a WWIV BBS and contributed some code to it.

[gdanko]

I was heavily involved in the BBS scene, started some time in the early to mid 80s with single line C-Net boards on a C64. Also wrote some mods (external programs) for C-Net systems. Ended up running a board for awhile. A much greater sense of community in the BBS scene as opposed to what we have now with perverts and spammers all over.

[khelben1979]

I used BBS in the past when I connected with Ncomm software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NComm) on my Amiga. This was a long time ago.

I'm not connecting to BBS:es anymore.

[bbikebbs]

I ran a Wildcat BBS for a couple of years in the 90's. As many have stated, the Internet forced most of us down. However, there is a committed group of BBS's that you can telnet to. Quite a few have the old door games up and running. Here's a link to get you started:

http://vert.synchro.net/

[toupeiro]

I ran two BBS's myself, and was a member of many more, including one which received national levels called "Missing Links BBS" Wildcat BBS softwares parent company, Mustang Software was started in my hometown. I got a copy of the Interactive Net server 20 node edition for my 14th birthday and ran a pretty big board for a while. Man, sometimes I really miss BBS's. They really were cool.

http://www.mlinks.com/

[Bungo Pony]

I ran a BBS shortly before they went the way of the dodo. It was one of the most fun things I ever did. I hooked a $3 phone up to my modem solely to hear the ringer and know that someone was dialling into my system. Everytime that phone rang, I got giddy :D

Watching users play around (and even try to hack the system) was more fun than watching TV.

[t0p]

As some of you may know, there are still quite a few BBses out there. But nowadays, users tend to connect via telnet. There's a list of telnet BBSes here (http://www.telnetbbsguide.com/brieflist.asp).

Jason Scott's documentary, and his huge collection of BBS textfiles (http://textfiles.com), inspired me to join a few of the still-extant telnet BBSes. Unfortunately, the sysops are generally just on a nostalgia kick, and the BBSes have such basic functionality that they're no fun to use at all. Plus there's the fact that the boards tend to have very few members. A BBS without members is a pretty useless thing.

The Age of the BBS is over. The BBS is dead - even if some of them have turned zombie and now lurch around the internet looking for brains to eat.