Comments on: BBS: The Documentary

By: al

al — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:39:43 +0000

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.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:39:17 +0000

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.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:32:00 +0000

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.

By: Seth

Seth — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:09:28 +0000

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!

By: lindsay

lindsay — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:05:16 +0000

I miss LORD and LORD2. Remember how much of a revolution LORD2’s interface was?

By: Harvest

Harvest — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:53:59 +0000

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.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:38:52 +0000

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…

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:30:37 +0000

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.

By: Doc

Doc — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:26:13 +0000

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

By: Witty Nickname

Witty Nickname — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:06:35 +0000

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.