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Before this whole Internet/Web fad, before AOL, before CompuServe, before even Prodigy, we had the BBS — dialup Bulletin Board Systems serving communities of computer users. BBSed had their heyday in the Eighties, and they were generally small, homebrew systems — a Sysop (System Operator) would start up a BBS by installing special software on a spare computer, attaching a modem and a phone line, and waiting for the calls to roll in. The BBS was primarily a local thing, because generally people didn’t want to spend money to dial long-distance. So what you had in the Eighties (and still very much into the Nineties, and a bit still today) was a broad patchwork of regional online communities. This local aspect of the system was largely lost when everyone moved to the Internet, and it’s only present in niche sites like Craigslist and various City Guide sites.
As a teenager, I was hugely addicted to BBSes, and even had a special phone line put in (thanks, parents!) so I could dial up my local ‘boards’ to exchange messages, play online games, and chat (that last option was only available if the BBS’s Sysop was rich enough to have multiple phone lines running — or if you were chatting with the Sysop him or herself!). I often met new computer geek friends online, then found out they went to my middle school. And this was in the Eighties!
I keep running into former BBS users who remember the “good old days,” (when busy signals were a regular feature of “checking your email”) and thought I’d blog about the topic. The other day I was buying paper at the local paper warehouse and the cashier and I somehow got into a conversation about BBSes. I’m telling you, we’re everywhere, hiding in plain view. So I’m wondering — are any flossers former BBS users? Do you remember the days of downloading files in tiny segments, configuring your dialup client to work with the latest and greatest download protocol, and trying to figure out how to use Fidonet to send email (then “e-mail”) cross-country? (Bonus points: remember when your friends got 2400 baud modems before you did, and lorded it over you for months? And when it happened again with 9600 and 14.4k modems?)
Much more, including a 10-minute clip of The BBS Documentary, after the jump!
Whether you’re an old-school BBS user or just interested in computer history, there’s one film that’s required viewing: The BBS Documentary. Spanning three DVDs, this five-hour film chronicles various aspects of the BBS scene through interviews with those who wrote early BBS software, ran major BBSes, even those who created the ASCII/ANSI art that was a staple of the BBS scene. As Wired Magazine said, it’s “surprisingly engrossing.” I bought the DVD set when it first came out in 2005, and have recently started watching it again — and I’m reminded how much history is revealed by the film. This is history that’s been happening in garages, basements, and spare bedrooms across the world for the past thirty years — and you’d hardly know it if you didn’t see a film like this.
If you’re ready to experience the whole film, order The BBS Documentary now! If you’re not up for paying for it yet, you can watch several hours of it online at Google Video, or watch this clips compilation from YouTube:
Comments (17)
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Sure, we were BBS users. My husband starting accessing BBS’s and playing Tradewars online. Then his boss wanted to get into the “online” world, so they started buying up existing BBS’s and started the Metropolis BBS systems, with nodes in all the Big 12 and Big 10 college towns, and had users all over the country, not just locally. You could chat or play games (FarWest Trivia! TradeWars, MajorMud) with people from six states away. Download small files, photos, recipes. There are actually vestiges of it left at http://www.metrobbs.com
I was more of a Mod than a Sysop, but I had Sysop capabilities… kicking people offline, going into chatrooms “invisible.” It was fun.
posted by HBinKC on 10-9-2007 at 10:51 am
I didn’t realize BBSes were around for so long. I sort of forgot about them and never bothered to research either. Any how, me and a bunch of middle school friends would all play Ledgend Of The Red Dragon on a local BBS. Great game!
posted by Sam on 10-9-2007 at 11:29 am
Me and my friends ran a BBS in Huntsville, Ala. Those were good times. The technical challenge of just getting online back then meant that you had a pretty consistently bright audience. Of course, there were still a lot of 13-year-olds yelling “n00B!!111!” or whatever. Some things never change.
posted by Griner on 10-9-2007 at 11:40 am
I remember using BBS’s to download software, utilities and images. I still remember being awed when GIF files came out and could show the capability of VGA monitors.
posted by Stew on 10-9-2007 at 11:40 am
Two Ann Arbor BBSes are still going concerns. These are Unix-based systems owned by their user communities.
m-net.arbornet.org (since 1983)
grex.cyberspace.org (since 1991)
To fire up the wayback machine, as it were, and visit these living computer museums, ssh or telnet to either address, and then log in as “newuser” to create an account. “BBS” gets you to the discussion forums, “party” to the live chat.
Grex still has a couple of direct-dial phone lines if you want to be REALLY old fashioned.
posted by Ken on 10-9-2007 at 11:49 am
Yep, I called many of the local ones back in the mideighties-early nineties (NJ). It could be quite the unpleasant surprise, too, to find that the number you’d been dialing for weeks was in fact a toll call. Oops. Easy to ring up huge phone bills back in the day.
The only chatting I did on BBSs came with the Sysop himself; he’d break into your session to talk with you. That is, there were no rooms/channels to chat in.
The systems I called were generally either Citadels (and their many permutations) or DTJs, with some written especially for the – get this – Atari 800XL.
My first modem was 300 baud. WOO!
posted by Dan on 10-9-2007 at 11:50 am
Back in the mid-80s I ran a BBS with my brother called “King’s Throne”. I remember it was sort of an elitist thing, and we wouldn’t let users log on with a 300 baud modem or slower.
The ‘door’ games Trade Wars and Legend of the Red Dragon were probably the biggest reasons I would log on each and every day.
Also, anyone remember a program called “theDraw”? That was how we made all the ASCII graphics for the board. If I could find that, I would probably still play with it today! (Actually, probably not…)
posted by Miles on 10-9-2007 at 11:58 am
I remember a BBS in Dover, Delaware I used to play on. I loved “Extilus”, I killed the right guy, got millions of Dollars, invested in Drug labs, bought EVERYTHING, started my own country and generally kicked butt. We went on a one week vacation with my parents, only to come back to find everyone realized I hadn’t logged on for a couple days and 6 countries declared war on me at the same time. Lost everything. Bummer.
posted by Witty Nickname on 10-9-2007 at 12:06 pm
Dan,
I sysoped a BBS called “The Software-Wetware Interface” in the mid/late-80s running on an Atari ST. Custom software written by a shadowy figure named “Sho Kosugi” after the samurai movies of the period.
Those were the days – took forever to get online, even at 300 baud. I do remember when some of my users got 1200 baud modems and outran the buffers on their own systems and mine. I also remember the ASCII graphics. Crude today, but remarkably sophisticated at the time – took forever to create using x and o and 1. It was a time when elegant and creative use of limited memory counted for something, unlike today when if someone writes some code that is bull***t they don’t go back and fix it, they insert some later instruction like “if 2+2=5, print ‘4′”.
I learned on an IBM 1401 – you make a mistake on the Hollerith cards, the machine spits your whole deck out and you go back to the beginning.
The joys of (nearly) unlimited memory… although I remember a statement (probably apocryphal) attributed to Bill Gates that nobody would ever need more the 640K of RAM.
When Win95 came out it had about 1K of known bugs. When Win98 was released it had about 35K bugs. WinMe had over 100K. Have no idea how many known bugs Vista has, but I bet it’s a lot. And the hackers love it.
FWIW: I’m still running Win98 Build 2 on a 350 Pentium 2. Works for me. Kinda wish I had that old Atari, tho…
The Doctor
posted by Doc on 10-9-2007 at 12:26 pm
Oh, man, I loved my BBSs. Unfortunately, they cost my parents a fortune in long distance even when I was dialing within our local area. They had to upgrade our phone to a “wide-area” plan so that they weren’t paying insane amounts for me to call the next town over.
Got my first copy of the almighty anarchist’s cookbook by BBS, too!
ASCII art has really gone downhill since the heady days of 9600 BPS modems.
posted by Jeremy on 10-9-2007 at 12:30 pm
I remember fondly the BBS days in my local area… Playing LORD and Usurper all the time… The constant battle (at least between the local SysOps) over which was better, Wildcat! or RemoteAccess (yeah, nobody got too fancy around here…)
Good times…
posted by Jason on 10-9-2007 at 1:38 pm
I used to run a BBS long time ago called The Path. I used RA (Remote Access) Those were the good old days. I remember setting up all kinds of games and creating ansi art. Later I bought a cdrom player and would go to computer shows and buy BBS cds so people had a variety of things to download.
I would also call out of state BBS’s so I could download all kinds of files and make them available on my BBS. I also subscribed to different message forums such as PODS.
I learned so much about computers from setting up and running a BBS.
Another great thing was you really got to know the people who called your board. My husband and I used to have BBS parties “Come meet your sysop” Yeah I really miss so days. The internet has become so unpersonal.
posted by Harvest on 10-9-2007 at 1:53 pm
I miss LORD and LORD2. Remember how much of a revolution LORD2’s interface was?
posted by lindsay on 10-9-2007 at 2:05 pm
Ah the old days of zmodem and qmodem.
typing in ATDT &70, and then the number just to wait an hour as one pixel lines streamed across your screen until you thought you might maybe after a half hour see a nipple, maybe. then someone picks up the phone line!!!!
or ascii pr0n!
posted by Seth on 10-9-2007 at 7:09 pm
Lets see….
Google Legend of the Green Dragon. Happy flashback… (free play) yay!
also http://www.textfiles.com
green screen monochrome goodness
my work here is done.
posted by Shawn on 10-10-2007 at 1:32 am
Oops… never noticed the link on textfiles.com to order a documentary, just went straight to the files. this is the guys site that made the documentary and will send you way back.
posted by Shawn on 10-10-2007 at 1:39 am
I remember when I was faster than all my friends with a 9600 baud modem. Then there was the mother of all BBSes ISCA – Ran from Iowa State. I had to dial into the local university’s library and make 4 or 5 jumps to get connected since I wasn’t a college student.
posted by al on 10-16-2007 at 4:39 pm