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The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems

November 7th, 2016 by Benj Edwards

The Cave BBS Logoff ANSI by Nukemaster

Last Friday, The Atlantic published an article I wrote in which I explore modern-day dial-up BBSes.

Some of you may remember that I’ve visited this topic before — on this very blog — way back in 2006. In my recent virtual travels, I found it very interesting to see how things in the dial-up BBS space had changed over ten years, and I allude to that in my Atlantic article.

I’ve mentioned this many times before, but for those of you who are unfamiliar, I ran a dial-up BBS called “The Cave BBS” between 1992 and 1998. Since 2005, I have also run a telnet version of The Cave.

To read more about my BBS adventures, check out the “BBS History” category on VC&G.



This entry was posted on Monday, November 7th, 2016 at 1:31 pm and is filed under BBS History, Computer History, Internet History, Vintage Computing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

3 Responses to “The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems”

  1. Jarson Says:
    November 10th, 2016 at 3:39 pm

    Love your articles, so well researched, thought out, and written.
    Almost want to try and find a good RPG made of ANSI somewhere on Telnet

  2. Benj Edwards Says:
    November 10th, 2016 at 4:11 pm

    Thanks, Jarson. I appreciate it. The best BBS RPG in my opinion is Operation: Overkill II. You can play it on my BBS if you telnet to cavebbs.homeip.net port 23.

  3. V Says:
    November 21st, 2016 at 12:13 pm

    I came in at the very tail end of BBS’s, used my first one in 1995 (Navigator BBS in Weymouth, MA which was shut down in 97). I started with a 1.2 kbps modem and shortly after moved to a 2.4. I used it until I discovered dial-up remote internet offered for free through my town the same year (you could dial into a Unix shell and use things like Lynx and Pine, but you couldn’t use any internet software on your own PC), which I used until I got a newer Windows 95 PC and real, PPP dial-up access, sometime in 97.

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