Any old-school BBSers around here?

[samalex]

For anyone who's read my posts, you've probably seen that I'm a softy for old-school technology (hence my avatar), especially BBSing. I'm just curious how many people were around when BBSes were the way to get 'online' and how many of you were actually SysOps. Also how did BBSing change your outlook on technology. And does anyone still actively participate in BBSing? It's still around and going strong even in today's WWW dominant Internet.

Sam

[pookiebear]

Sysop
Also had a mainframe access too at a whopping 300bps (as in less than 1k)

[XubuRoxMySox]

It looks cool from what I have read, and screenshots and stuff. When the Internet becomes too regulated and privacy becomes a big issue, it looks like BBSing would be a great alternative! Is there such a thing as a .QWK reader (like the Silly Little Mail Reader) that would work in Linux? I think it's only for dialup, so I would want to compress all my forum messages and mail for offline reading and writing.

Fascinated,
Robin

[standingwave]

Yep, the good ol' days. I still have an acoustic coupler somewhere in the basement. You can not imagine how slow 300 baud was. At that speed it takes an hour to download what even a slow DSL connection can handle in a single second. But FidoNet was fun. Aside from not being able to download music or video, everything else was actually much the same. It was just all text based. Email, message boards, etc.




__
/ \
/|oo \
(_| /_)
_`@/_ \ _
| | \ \\
| (*) | \ ))
______ |__U__| / \//
/ FIDO \ _//|| _\ /
(________) (_/(_|(____/

[McRat]

Back when I opened my business in 1993, the internet was not widely used, nor was the term email common.

But I wanted to offer my customers their reports immediately in native digital format, like IGES, XYZ tables, Spreadsheets, etc, instead of just faxing paper that would have to be retyped, or having them wait a day for a disc.

IIRC, I bought another phone line, took an old IBM PC XT, hooked up a USR 14.4 kbps RS232 external modem, and put BBS software up. I can't remember the name of the software though. XModem, Zmodem, it's all a blur today.

To the best my knowledge, less than 1% of the companies could send or receive digital data in 1994.

I remember thinking when the Internet WWW came to be, that the good domain names would be worth money. But I felt it was unethical to take up domains and sit on them.

And yes, I too had a TRS-80. Mine had expansion RAM (48k?) and 2 daisy chained 5.25" drives. But the drives were only about 150k IIRC?

[frrobert]

I remember when 2400 baud modems came out and everyone thought that was lightning fast. If you bought one of the fancy ones you could even fax!!!!!!!!!!!!

[VastOne]

1990 - 1996 Comfortably Numb BBS out of Madison WI

OS/2 Warp 4

Front Door 2.x BBS

Blue Wave QWK Mail hub

Fido Hub

Digiboard port server - 16 lines

We (BBS's) were the internet before the internet. We were all just trying to get a printer to print while the modem dialed. Dbl Dos was the first success we had...

My BBS was strictly for what you would use Google and Gmail as now. Blue Wave allowed me to have all messages stored with fast and easy (keyword search) retrieval for anyone logged in. My nightly pulls of mail was centered all around assisting anyone to get quick answers for any hardware, OS, and application problems or setup questions.

I was friends with Phil Katz, the creator of PKZip he was the perfect example of a coder who used our BBS's to distribute his product.

My first legitimate query to a bbs was "Does anyone know a graphical shell that would front end pkzip and pkunzip commands?" Answer was SHEZ, writen by Jim Derr....

Fast File Find - FFF was an incredible tool to search for files that morphed into file searching algorithms in early Windows

We all hated Microsoft then and saw them as evil, but we soldiered on and solved the problems that people had with DOS and Windows and believed that OS/2 was the king of the world...


I had several 16-19 year old users who went on to very successful careers in IT that started at my BBS, more than anything I am proud of them and the small part the BBS played in cultivating knowledge and sharing information.


Those were the days.... I still have images of everything from then, all on 3.5 hd (high density) disks...Problem now is finding and using a 3.5 drive...

[VastOne]

I remember when 2400 baud modems came out and everyone thought that was lightning fast. If you bought one of the fancy ones you could even fax!!!!!!!!!!!!

...and we all had a stroke when the 9600 came out with a $879.00 price tag...

[SoFl W]

I grew up on dial up BBSes, and miss some of the simplicity of the time. When memory and bandwidth was kept at a minimum because it had to be.


It looks cool from what I have read, and screenshots and stuff. When the Internet becomes too regulated and privacy becomes a big issue, it looks like BBSing would be a great alternative!
Fascinated,
Robin

The powers that be will find a way to control all information, this of course it will be "for your own good and safety."

[standingwave]

...and we all had a stroke when the 9600 came out with a $879.00 price tag...I remember the first 9600 baud prototype modem I ever saw. (Our company was contracting with a modem manufacturer to provide us with tiny 1200 baud modems for our portable computers). Anyways, the 9600 was about the size of a modern motherboard and thus not quite ready for prime time.

[forrestcupp]

I used to mess around with them a bit on my C64. I was lucky enough to have a 1200 baud modem. I was also lucky enough to have a subscription to Quantum Link, which was like a forerunner to AOL for Commodore.

[Detonate]

Dialing up those BBS's in the old days sure played havoc with my phone bill. Every BBS I used was long distance. I worked for Radio Shack when the TRS-80 first came out. 1979 I think.

Let's see, to use this BBS I have to use full duplex and VT100 emulation. Memory is coming back. BTW, my first modem was also an acoustic coupler. In 1988 I bought a 286 with a 2400 bps modem. That's when I joined Compuserve, and that pretty much ended my BBS participation. Compuserve was a local call.

[cgb]

Met a good friend basically through his BBS... Also loved Sierra Online I believe it was called, which was a BBS service by Sierra that had a pretty cool online RPG at the time. Quite a different world back then...

[SoFl W]

Are there any Citdel BBS software fans out there?

[matthew]

o/
I was a BBS user in the Phoenix (Arizona) area in the late 1980s and early 1990s until I got my first dial-up internet shell access and moved to Usenet.

[lisati]

I thought about starting one about 10 years ago, but since the internet was gaining ground I couldn't be bothered.

[XubuRoxMySox]

We have one locally. I'm going to explore it a bit.

[Bungo Pony]

Former sysop here :)

I loved running a BBS, but the internet really killed the 'community feel' of them. My porn filebase was very popular :D

[andrew.46]

I was around for the dying years of the BBS's in the early to mid 90s which was a sad time indeed. I spent a lot of time with a 14.4 modem and my favourite piece of software was the Blue Wave offline mail reader. BBS's I spent time with were Blue Marlin BBS and the Australian BBS, in Australia believe it or not :).

Andrew

[samalex]

I was around for the dying years of the BBS's in the early to mid 90s which was a sad time indeed. I spent a lot of time with a 14.4 modem and my favourite piece of software was the Blue Wave offline mail reader. BBS's I spent time with were Blue Marlin BBS and the Australian BBS, in Australia believe it or not :).

Andrew

Yeah, it was a sad day when our local BBS List dropped to single digits. At one time we had probably 50+ BBSes, but by around 2001 it was down to just about 3 or 4, and those were mainly mail only systems for friends of the Sysop.

I think the biggest thing I miss from those days is the personal experience. I met lots of great people when calling to validate users on my board or being called by other sysops to be validated on theirs. I'm definitely one for online security, but one of the biggest things I liked about the local boards was everyone knew everyone else, there wasn't much need or want for anonymity. Plus we all met monthly at a local BBQ restaurant and talked online via a "Citywide Echo" that was a local echo shared amongst all the Net 388 boards.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Internet, but it seems most people take it for granted, especially younger people who don't know what it was like before the Internet.

But BBSing is still very much alive, though a global BBS list, though there's not a good accurate one anymore, probably would have around 100-200 BBSes if that. I installed Synchronet 3.15 again last week, and I may try to get it going again. Problem though is running a board is always funner when it's done by a group, but there's just no one around here I know who's still into nostalgic computing.

So I guess I'll put the word out, if anyone is game to setting-up a Linux-based BBS, let me know. Whether you're into gaming, creating ANSI graphics, whatever, I'd love to get something rolling again. Plus with Synchronet (which is the one I'd prefer to run) working great on Linux, it's pretty simple to create BBS Doors using PHP and other commonly used command line applications.

Take care --

Sam

[oldsoundguy]

600 baud modem on a Shack sx1000.. The Well and the Pacific Coast Software Exchange caught a lot of it.

[desnaike]

I have fond memories of long nights with the friends on the 20+ BBS's that were in my area all local calls, even now I sometimes telnet into the services still active on the net.

Great times

[djsroknrol]

I was a member in good standing on Multi-comm and Corvette BBS's in Las Vegas....boy do I miss those days of using the Pimp War door on Corvette :popcorn:

[ticopelp]

I used to frequent ISCABBS back in the day. I don't miss it even a little.

[Shakz]

Destiny/Destination Imagination BBS Houston Texas
Same handle I am using now Shakz spelled it Shakes back then though.

I had an 8088 that I got dumpster diving at the Exxon plant. A buddy of mine hooked me up with his 1200 baud modem after he got a 9600.

[ioseric]

I did and still do. Memories of local BBS's, tying up the phone lines and having a blast!
Still do it everyday but with telnet. Linux doesn't handle ANSI graphics well without some tinkering.

If you use telnet to hit the BBS's and graphics look poor, check out this website for
an easy fix. Take less than 5 minutes and worth it for the die hard BBS'r

meet me on Trade Wars "Unlimited" turns memphistx.org !!

--Eric N. Horne
Salisbury, NC

[ioseric]

Stupid me, sorry... would help to add the website I was talking about:
http://techtinkering.com/articles/?id=33

--Eric

[HermanAB]

Hmmfff, the www is just an upgraded BBS...

Now get off my lawn!!!

[Barriehie]

Former sysop, ran Maximus BBS for a county org. to provide online info. I recall trading Las Vegas memorabilia with the author for the software. Was running it on a 386 @ 40 Mhz with a 14.4 modem. I think it was all on a 40 meg drive.

[Schrute Farms]

I had a real cool technology teacher back in high school who got a hold of a bunch of Commodore 64 stuff. He also got me a list of local BBSes. He let me use a Commie with a modem at home (eventually gave me a drive & a modem when I got my own C64). He encouraged me to check things out a little, and even let me set up a little BBS on one of the computers at school. I learned a little about administering them and everything. It was only up for 2 weeks or so, so we obviously didn't get much traffic outside of myself and one other kid.
My small BBS kick ended when I discovered Quantum Link. Someone mentioned earlier that it was just like AOL, well that is because it actually became AOL. I remember the coolest thing were the chat rooms, and that is what you had to pay extra for. When I ran up a $150 bill in a month, the 'rents put a stop to all that.

[MisterGaribaldi]

Ah FidoNet... I remember it well. Doors were awesome, and I loved the different echos as well.

*sigh*

[hekastos]

I started using a Maus (Münster Apple User Service) BBS with a 1200 BAUD accoustic coupler, because it was so awesome that you could send 16kb Mails even into the Internet (but you wouldn't with 1200 BAUD :))

[Sand & Mercury]

For some reason I always find the idea of BBSing appealing and actually had PuTTY installed to check out a few boards, but I suppose I got over the novelty quickly and didn't find any communities that seemed particularly interesting.

[Virtual Dumpster Diver]

This is Princess PMS and I have conquered your planets! Space Empire Elite on Rebel BBS Las Vegas, NV .
I am actually blogging about the old skool days and came across this forum post! I have been crawling the internet trying to find screen shots of modem screens to give an idea of what we had to use instead of browsers. No luck yet. Did find a sort of sim to bbs'ing. http://www.spectre13.com/main.html
I owned an Atari 520 ST upgraded to 1mb and had a puny 20MB hard drive! I ran a bbs of my own for a short spell called Dragon's Bane and used new tech lol instant graphics and sound. Where you could draw the title screen using this program then incorporate it into your bbs pages. It also allowed you to add beeps! My modem was too slow to really give it justice. I stopped bbs'ing in 92.
I had a falling out in my life and went to some remote mountain shack living like an earth mother, then came back in 94 and everything changed so quickly!

[Virtual Dumpster Diver]

omg you are a fossil of interest! You knew the father of zip tech wow.

[Virtual Dumpster Diver]

Yep, the good ol' days. I still have an acoustic coupler somewhere in the basement. You can not imagine how slow 300 baud was. At that speed it takes an hour to download what even a slow DSL connection can handle in a single second. But FidoNet was fun. Aside from not being able to download music or video, everything else was actually much the same. It was just all text based. Email, message boards, etc.

I never got any higher than 2400 baud. I went Japanese and got the Atari because of the games and also the success of Nissan and Toyota made me think it would be around for a while. I guess we Atari users and also the Commodore users had our 15 minutes of fame back in the day.
I loved how you could have a question in your head and then hit the forums and get so many answers. Now the answers in a google search are About 6,650,000 results (0.35 seconds)
Back in the day, I would tell my friends that very soon you will be able to see people talk on the other end and watch graphics as fast as you watch a movie. And all things can get archived and accessed for user exchange.
And memory sticks instead of tape or cd...oh yea put me in the carnival!

[Virtual Dumpster Diver]

Back when I opened my business in 1993, the internet was not widely used, nor was the term email common...
I remember thinking when the Internet WWW came to be, that the good domain names would be worth money. But I felt it was unethical to take up domains and sit on them.

And yes, I too had a TRS-80. Mine had expansion RAM (48k?) and 2 daisy chained 5.25" drives. But the drives were only about 150k IIRC?

I remember being excited when a business also had a BBS.

OMG TRS-80 that just popped open a memory cell in my brain.

Domain names...hmm I had recently found a place that sold them for $250 on a search. Is this the going rate do you know?

One thing is that forum tech came out because of the bbs's and our familiar little friend:

:P mr.smiley

And it was the beginning of text speech: OMG LMFAO LOL
Is there anyone user who takes credit for these creations?

[weasel fierce]

In the amiga retro community, a few people still operate them as a throwback. I tried logging on to a few, and its an interesting view, even though its a bit before my time :)

[Virtual Dumpster Diver]

In the amiga retro community, a few people still operate them as a throwback. I tried logging on to a few, and its an interesting view, even though its a bit before my time :)

That was cool. I went there and then logged into
http://flashterm.com/
There was more color to the commodore sites. I thank you. I can now ad this link to my blog.