BBS Stories Archive Looking For Submissions
September 1st, 2006 by Benj Edwards
I’ve long wanted to archive personal stories related to computers. Aside from being wonderful nostalgic reads, such a collection will likely be an important source of first-hand accounts for future historians. That’s why I’m creating the BBS Stories Archive. I’ll eventually have a site or section on VC&G dedicated to this (and other, non-BBS stories), but for now, I obviously need material for the archive first.
I’m looking for any personal, true written account about Bulletin Board Systems, whatsoever. The account can be about any topic (as long as it’s BBS-related and non-fiction) you’d like to recount for us, and can cover any age, any time (even up to the present), any software, or any experience. The longer and more detailed the story, the better. You might have only called a BBS once in your life, but if you’d like to write down the experience, that’s completely fine with me. The stories don’t have to be incredible or especially unique; any account of even the most seemingly boring activities will provide immense value to people of the future looking back on how BBS technology was used. On the other hand, unique stories are, of course, welcome as well. Did you meet your wife on a BBS? Lose your job over a BBS? Save the world through a BBS? I want to know about it.
So if you’d like to participate in this grand historical project, either email me your accounts here, or if you prefer, you can even post them as comments on this entry. If they’re relevant, they will be added to the archive. You will retain all rights and credit (unless you wish to remain anonymous) for your story and writing, by the way.
And yes, I know that no discussion of BBS historical efforts online can transpire without mentioning Jason Scott’s incredible work with both his BBS Documentary and Textfiles.com. I’m sure he has a wonderful collection of BBS stories himself, but there’s no harm in having two BBS historians out there.
September 1st, 2006 at 12:41 pm
http://www.textfiles.com/history/
September 1st, 2006 at 5:23 pm
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/
September 1st, 2006 at 5:24 pm
http://textfiles.com/bbs
http://textfiles.com/computers
September 1st, 2006 at 7:23 pm
I own a copy of the BBS Documentary (thanks Nancy!) and let me tell you, it is well worth getting a copy. It’s packed with information and interesting interviews and the film maker (see the first comment) deserves kudos. Kudos however don’t pay the bills so if you were into the BBS scene or you know someone who was, buy them a copy and you’ll make them happy and allow Jason to work on his next documentary. Win win.
September 1st, 2006 at 7:47 pm
Whoah, Jason is the owner of textfiles.com? DUDE! I
September 1st, 2006 at 7:47 pm
it cut off my messgae…
DUDE I LOVE YOUR SITE! 🙂
September 1st, 2006 at 9:23 pm
https://www.bbsmates.com
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:44 am
Ah.. the days… the sound of the modem… personally knowing everyone logging in… demo users… sniff. seufz.
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:23 pm
BBSmates isn’t https it’s http://www.bbsmates.com, see if you can find the old bbses you called there wooo hooo… Trip down memory lane anyways…
Sounds kewl, I’ll scribble some stuff on the wall…
-woot
September 19th, 2006 at 4:18 am
One piece of computer trivia that isn’t widely known is that during the fall of the Soviet union, the country was in chaos. The US Embasy was on lockdown by the KGB. They couldn’t leave, and CNN wasn’t the international instant messaging force that it is today, along with all of it’s foreign counterparts. The entire Soviet computer system was linked together. All of their computers that went to military instalations and university centers where both student radicals and military research was carried out were intertwined. They had no way to pull the plug without blinding their missle defense program.
During this time, after I had “Early Retired” from IBM, before it was popular, I was working for Peace Action, in Washington DC. That was the combined organization of Dr Spock’s “Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy,” and “Freeze” which stood for a grass roots movement to freeze nuclear weapons proliferation. This was the heart of the anti-war movement. Nelson Mandella had visited our offices. The whole bit.
The State Department was in touch with us to find out what was happening in Moscow and other major cities where we had contacts, who were interested in peace. I remember the details because Len Newman, SANE Data Systems, (my boss) and I had just upgraded some of the computers to the new 300 baud modems. They would come over about twice a day for updates from the guy who handled the liazon stuff.
Thought that you might be interested in that.
September 19th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Hey John, thanks for the great story. A Soviet computer network is something I’ve never heard of before. Any idea of what kinds of computers were linked together on that network?
September 27th, 2006 at 12:34 am
I got my first modem when my uncle bought out a business. He found a cardboard box with an old terminal and a 1200 bps modem in it and gave them both to me, being technologically ignorant and knowing I was an upcoming geek.
My first modem experience was just connecting with a friend of my parents through very basic DOS terminal (no ANSI) software and typing to each other. I was so amazed I almost peed myself – it was like WarGames!
After that, I found a couple of shareware games that would let me play against my friends over the modem. That was fun, but the big breakthrough was when I saw an ad in the classifieds for the “Metropolis BBS,” which was popular in big college areas. I went there a lot, but it was a pay board so I only got about 4 logins per account. I played in their chatroom, looked at their files, and whatever until my account expired. After that, I made up an alias to use their trial period again and again until I found a BBSlist.txt in their files and realized I was on only one of the 40+ BBS’s in the area.
I was up all night signing into and registering on every BBS in the area. Soon after that, I started playing in door games (mainly LoRD and Trade Wars) and befriending SySop’s and even went to several monthly “thingies” (BBS get-togethers). I also started my own BBS in the process, starting on TriBBS (UGH!!!), then Telegard (not bad), and moving on to Renegade (the best!!!) I had Front Door set up and had a FidoNet node (1:388/8) and had a favorable amount of daily logins.
I was constantly having so much fun, watching users log on and often chatting with them by their request, that my older brothers got interested in the whole process. My oldest brother bought a 8088AT (yes, really, it was like a hybrid) with a CGA monitor for really cheap (go figure) and started up, with my technical help, what would be the most logged-into BBS in the area. While my BBS was popular because I had put so much effort into it and had many chatters and logins (I even had a door that opened to a hidden BBS [with password] for warez and hacks), he was able to surreptiously post controversial messages and start threads that kept his line busy for hours. Even though I helped him set it up, I was secretly jealous of the amount of traffic he received. He never even opened up to FidoNet, but if you ever heard his modem answer, you automatically ejaculated. It even became a simile for “busy.” I heard someone describe a waiter, at a BBS meeting in a local restaurant, “That guy’s as busy as ‘The Fifth Dimension!'” (the BBS).
When I was introduced to the internet for the first time, it came as a bittersweet reality. While I knew it would shortly become the most popular venue of gaming, chat, and messaging, I also knew that the local communication would be no more. While I can still log into MySpace and find people in my area, no one cares for chatting with people in their area. The biggest chatroom you could find used to be 4 phone lines into your local BBS, now it’s 6 billion people. I feel pained by the loss of immediate communication to those that share your region, but most are excited by finding more interesting people in London, Puerto Rico, Sydney, Paris, Mexico City . . .
While the InterNet has made the world global, it’s made my neighborhood just a bit bigger than I’d like it to be. I wish the BBS’s could come back.
October 1st, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Nice article, but TERRIBLY uninformed.
you cant JUST call the bbses of today via dialup!
**** we’re all telnet bbses now!! ****
http://www.dmine.com/telnet/
http://www.myspace.com/bbses
http://www.frappr.com/bbses
October 1st, 2006 at 12:51 pm
mroblivious1bmf, I assume you’re actually talking about my “The Dial-Up BBS Revisited Article,” in which I mention both telnet and dial-up BBSes, so I’m not exactly sure of your point. In fact, I mention telnet BBSes in the first sentence of the article.
Nonetheless, thanks for the links.
October 5th, 2006 at 11:48 am
BBS’s were cool and nothing made them cooler than the Commodore 64. I remember when I got my 300 baud modem in high school. It came with a 30 day trial to Compuserve (AOL of their time – are they still around?). I used the 30 days to find enough BBS’s in my area that I didn’t need the subscription anymore.
Some of the first BBS’s I found had lousy, unintuitave interfaces. Others had phone numbers that were disconnected or up intermittently. I remember having the autodialer hit the same phone numbers over land over for an hour before connecting. It took a few weeks to find the good sites by jumping from one to another. Then I found sites using the All American BBS’ software (AA BBS). It was highly intuitive and let you post polls, chat with the admin interactively, in addition to threads and uploading and downloading software.
I recall the software was made by some guy named Nikolai (Smith?). And he had a problem with admins using unlicensed copies. So he had a backdoor in the software where he could get admin priviledge to any board running AA by leaving feedback to the admin and putting in some nonsense string of chars. He could then re-format the hard drive
(or floppy back then) erasing everything.
Biggeswt catch was, if the admin shadowed him doing it, he could figure out the backdoor and do it himself to a legal copy. Some guys calling themselves the Bananas Against Anonymous Posting (BAAP) patched the software (v8 – can I really still know that?) so that it could no longer be done. In later versions this could not be done.
The thing I miss most is being able to interactively chat with the SysAdmin which cannot be done with a webmaster today. I recall AA had an indicator as to whether the SysAdmin was in or not.
Pretty funny to think of how speeds of DSL and cable modems are compared now. I remember upgrading to 1200 baud modem and be impressed with how unbelievablt fast it was.
October 5th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Just found a link with screenshots and an interview with author Nickolai Smith. Good stuff. Enjoy and BDF 4ever!!
http://www.zimmers.net/bbs/aabbs.html
December 21st, 2006 at 7:32 pm
I used to play rpgs on Metropolis in Kansas City, Major Mudd, Tele-Arena etc… When the game Swords of Chaos came out. We were one of the beta sites for the game and I believe the author monitored the play and gamer suggestions.
I was a little slow about joining up. The gang in Mudd that ruled there, started playing it and was taking up all the turf in the game. Turf meant your guild had the most kills in the room and anyone passing through cost them a fee and took it right out of their holdings. When you’re little in the game, each piece of gold counts and they were bankrupting all the little guys.
Some of my friends were playing and were telling me about it. Now, I wasn’t the greatest player in major mudd, but I thought I’d start up and help them get some turf. I called myself Staypuff Marshmellow. (I liked ghost busters, what can I say), a sorc.
In a short time we owned the town, but was sharing the wealth with the other little guys to make allies and so they weren’t going broke now because of us.
Some of the gang from Mudd went back to that game leaving a handful to handle SoC. There was a guy that went by Prism and he was pretty cool but was also the biggest guy in the game. He wasn’t as aggressive of a player as some of the guild and pretty soon the guild with me and my friends were getting to compete as the toughest guild.
Their was a solo player that I can’t think of his name, and he was awesome at one point compared to everyone else. That included the guild I was in, and the Skull Squadren guild.
I wasn’t the biggest in my guild, but I was addicted at this point in time and played it almost every waking hour I wasn’t working. (It was a tough game to script play)
But like all games and gamers, we figure out how to see things, and figure out monsters stats, how to build our characters and so forth.
In time we all but eliminated all the skull squadren by making them broke or attacking in force so they couldn’t rule the game and they left.
Now everyone was questing to kill the perms (those are monsters that are godly and drop hella stuff). When you killed on, it broadcast it to all the players in the game. (the same thing happened when you killed a player or when the “King” or something would come out, another mean one)
We all had a couple characters in the game and were using them to hold stuff when we got full and things like that.
This solo guy asked if we’d go with him and be fodder so he could try to kill the perm called Satan. I though why not, make good relations with a big guy, and get him to give me some cool items over times. So I grabbed my little guy to go and see Satan, log the path to him and get a look at him before dying.
Satan was the god of gods, he killed all five of us in nothing flat, wouldn’t let us run, couldn’t hit him, or spell on him. the big guy died and the perm wasn’t hardly hurt.
I looked at my log and saw his stuff, calculated about how tough he was for physical damage, general life points, that sort of stuff.
I decided I was going to kill Satan first. I began to level and built my stats to make me a Satan killer.
First I knew I had to be tough and take a hit, not normally an easy stat to push up for a sorc, I knew I had to have my spell casting super high in order to beat his resistance to spelling. So I quested and quested forever it seemed until I was a god in the game, but no one knew. A couple in the guild knew what I was doing and trying to build a Satan killer too.
In time I was ready. I had my defense stat maxed to all feasible expectationi, and my spell casting was god-like. I didn’t tell anyone except for my wife who didn’t play SoC (she played Mudd, and TA). I ran up to the room next to Satan’s room. I was nervous, hands sweaty. I knew if I died, everyone in the game would laugh at me. We laughed at everyone who Satan got. and the experienced ones who knew better especially.
I did what I could to boost myself up. I had ran over the plan of attack for what must have been the hundreth time. I had to get in and freeze him (I think it was a freeze spell) so he couldn’t hit me. It may have been a confuse spell, I can’t recall. Then I damage spell him, freeze him, damage spell and repeat until he’s dead. Simple plan
I ran in, and cast!…I missed! OH NO! He hit me, and it hurt. It took about half my life. I cast again! Direct hit, he was froze (or stubbling around like a toddler, which ever the spell was), I cast my biggest damage spell on him. It was weakened by his spell resistance, but I thought it was pretty fair. I cast my freeze again, damage spell again. I thought I was going to drop him like a bad transmission. He was starting to show signs of defeat. Then my freeze spell missed. I frantically started banging on my keyboard to cast it again as soon as the game would let me. Please cast before he hits me, I prayed. No such luck. He could move and he was pissed. He hit me hard, but I was still alive! I was low on life, and then my freeze spell went off and BAM! he was froze again. I went back to my freeze, damage routine, it would have been slightly boring, had it not been satan and I was about to die. I didn’t mind missing a damage spell, I just had to keep him froze. I missed my freeze spell again. The keyboard started getting banged on like it was a bug and I was girl who had just noticed it. My freeze spell went off before it could hit me, and he froze! I didn’t think I’d get that lucky again. He was hurting, I was almost dead, but I wan’t running. I had trained for this. I was ready. and if I failed, my guild buddy was amost ready to try him and I wouldn’t get the glory. I wanted this kill.
I continued my alternating attack, and then with one final damage spell. the broadcast riddled all the screens of all the players in the game, “Staypuff just killed Satan!”
I was out of breath, I was exhilairated. I was screaming for my wife. I was looking at the room and seeing all the stuff he dropped just for me.
I was lord of SoC. Everone in the game began broadcasting to me and to everyone. Some didn’t believe it. Some was simply awed and wondered how I had done it, Will I give them anything from the drop?
I picked up my treasure and reviewed my inventory. What could I use, what could I give away as though I was humble and generous? I went to town and stood in the trading shop for all to see me.
I had attained what every gamer wants in a multiplayer rpg. I was the god player, I had achieved the unachievable.
I continued to play, left the guild in order to take on my guild buddy who was questing as I had been. We both needed to know who was the best at that time. He was a duelest. This meant he could hit really hard with two weapons. I was sorc, I was not supposed to be able to take a hit. I had watched Kung Fu for years as a kid and trained like “grasshopper”. We danced around for a few days, maybe weeks. neither really sure who wold win, if he could hit me, his damage would kill me in one shot. If I could hit him with a spell, he’d be dead in one shot. We followed each other observing the damage the other could inflict on monsters. Evaluating how it would effect us.
I finally saw what we were both waiting for. the damage the other could take. I saw him take damage from a spell. It hurt and he ran. I knew I could take him if I could cast before he struck at me.
He bolted to town to heal. He knew this was it. We were going to find out who was better. He came back to me in the game, and I was a bit nervous. He was as sure as I was who the victor would be.
We ran from room to room, trying to cast and hit each other. Finally we met up and had to fight. He got the first strike, but it bounced off me! My defense was to high for him to hit me! I was shocked, I ran, I chased. I caught up with him and got a freeze spell off. He was mine. He was standing there like 10 year old about to get a spanking and couldn’t do anything about it. I froze him again and laughed. Torture! But I had to kill him or he’d “drop carrier” a cheap shot to survive, but we all did it from time to time and claimed it was our phone like. The next cast was my best damage spell I had. Krylon fell. the broadcast went out.
I was the undefeated champion. against the perms, and the players.
When I stopped playing, I had been told by a friend later that the author put a new perm in the game. What was his name? Staypuff the Marshmellow. (This last part I’m not entirely sure of, because if a perm was created in the game, the game op might have created it, by way of a game editor)
December 21st, 2006 at 7:34 pm
The solo player’s name was Reaper! Now I remember…go figure
December 21st, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Thanks for sharing the cool story, Dan. In what year and what area of the country did that take place?
July 16th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
I was part of the St. Louis BBS scene in the early to late 1990s. In an effort to bring together other folks who called St. Louis BBSes, I created some groups on MySpace and Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2364408183
http://groups.myspace.com/bbs314
Also, one of the best-known St. Louis BBSes is Fire Escape’s BBS, which is still running via telnet. You can access it at telnet://bbs.fehq.org
A sad recent story from 314 is that the sysop of a very long-running BBS (The Junk Drawer) was arrested 2 months ago for exposing himself to a minor during an online chat. The cops say they found child porn on his computer. I loved calling this BBS and enjoyed chatting with the sysop back in the early 1990s, so hearing this news was really disappointing to me.
November 15th, 2007 at 10:33 am
I ran a popular RENEGADE BBS in the 90’s called the Studio Underground in WNY, today – November 2007, I unzipped the preserved package and was able to run it under a Windows 2003 server accessable via TELNET. Keep in mind it’s the Original RENEGADE BBS from Cott Lang that wasn’t designed to work over Telnet. If your interested in Logging in and you were a big RENEGADE BBS fan, click the link below for more info. You can login and experience a time capsule of this bbs that contains all the original users, messages and callers from that point in time in 1995.
http://www.cidstudios.com/renegade
November 15th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
That’s cool, Frank. Your renegade link doesn’t seem to work though.
December 24th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
I used to run a very successful, mainly Macintosh BBS in the UK many years ago. The board was called Portland BBS, and was based on FirstClass.
I was big into the Mac scene, big into BBS in 1992. So big that my phone bill one month outweighed the costs of building a BBS myself and getting people to dial into my system.
So, I grabbed an old MacIIcx, stuffed a 400MB Seagate drive with knackered bearings in it, and imported the FirstClass software to the UK. I was up an running within 8 days of getting the software. To be honest, it wasn’t 8 days. More like 7 hours such was my enthusiasm. I just announce it until 8 days later to the wider public.
The rules of the Portland were simple. Be nice, don’t annoy others and no warez. They were a winning set of rules, especially when compared against the competition.
Within 2 months we had become one of the largest Mac BBSes in the UK. We were nearly the same size as some of the players, partly due to our laid back get along with anyone attitude. We were easy.
Back in the early 90s, getting shareware was interesting. I did have an early subscription to an isp, the only isp in the UK, but it was a slow and expensive way of getting files. Remember gopher? So, I had a friend in London who had a permanent connection to the Internet. It was a big international corporate accountancy firm who had a monster 64k line (in the days when 64kbps was BIG) to the internet. And my friend used it all day long to download shareware for Portland.
Every two weeks, i’d load up my old SCSI Rodime(?) hard drive and drive for an hour to his house. I’d download all the new shareware and head north and load it all onto the bbs. I still remember arriving at his house one evening with a Police car pulling in behind me. Apparently, I had been speeding on my way, and speeding so fast they had difficulty keeping up. But, being a nerdy 4eyes they took pity on me and let me off with a warning, and a request that i drive slower.
Within 5 months we had 5 lines into the house, The 400MB was still creaking away, and I got a job at an ISP.
2 years later I was a director of an up and coming London based ISP. The days of the BBS were long since over. As has been said, they went dead. The BBS was finally closed down in late 96. The internet had caught up and well and truly taken over. People just moved on.
Over time, the IIcx and the software got scattered to the wind. Something that I’ve felt was a big mistake for sometime now. I had bigger fish to fry, and I wish i had rescued the machine and software and stored it properly.
In the last few months my ISP has been sold, and I’m running a successful events company. But there is a little bit of me that would love to recreate a FirstClass BBS again.
Strangely enough, there are a few old friends who would love to have an old style BBS to visit again.
Maybe one day.
If anyone has any old FC licence disks hanging around, feel free to contact me. The flame isn’t dead quite yet 😉
January 17th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
I used to be the SysOp of a TriBBS system in Minnesota. Those were the days…
February 29th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
I am a former St. Louis BBSER from the late 80’s early 90’s. My handle was The Rebelous Wisecracker. I am just trying to get back in touch with some people!!
August 13th, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I remember there was only BBS server in our town and it only had one line. At 3:20 everyday (when school got out) it was a race to get home and see who would connect first. There was nothing more gutting then dialing and hearing the unpleasant disconnect sound.
October 11th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Wow – I know the “Dial-up BBS Revisited” is an older article, but after stumbling on it today, the words really brought back some great memories. Thanks for reminding me of all the long distance charges I racked up on Mom’s phone bill! (They were worth every penny!)
November 13th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
yeah, my post was regarding another article.
no clue how the hell it got here, but i found this site again while googling my name 😀
December 4th, 2008 at 8:59 am
I dug up the history of my bbs and wrote it down. Complete (Dutch) version at http://idefix.net/~koos/kooszndoos.html .. English translation at http://bbs.wikia.com/wiki/Koos_z'n_Doos
I cleaned up in the ‘office’ yesterday evening and found a box marked ‘BBS’. Most of it was old junk like wild ideas for a fax gateway service. But I did find a few gems, such as a christmas card we sent to the BBS users in December 1993 and a receipt for a new harddisk (245 Megabyte) from February1993.
January 31st, 2010 at 10:22 pm
I ran The Realms of Blue BBs in Charleston SC back in the early 90’s. I just started back up again as a telnet only bbs in Westminster MD. You can even do a flashterm login at http://blues.zapto.org or telnet to blues.zapto.org.
March 21st, 2010 at 9:15 am
When you are only 15, and you type “new” at the login screen to make a new account for a bbs, typically when you get to the “age” part, you would always be 18 or older. What would the harm be right? If anything you score access to the “elite” section, which was usually just full of porn and door games with sex themes.
Well, when I was 14/15 I of course did this. Sometimes I would stay home from school sick, or just out of not wanting to attend that day, and I would dial into my favorite BBS’s (The internet was not yet available to everyone) One of my favorite local bullitian board systems had a lonely housewife sysop who would chat with users all day. She was very sweet, and quite flirty. Eventually we discovered we both lived in the same town!
Fastforeward a few years, I am now 16 and driving around town having a blast. I make a friend in school (His name and the BBS will remain anonymous for the sake of emberassment.) And we get to talking about PC’s and such, which was a rare conversation in the mid/early 90s unless you were a “nerd” if you will pardon the useage of the term. I go to his house, and we are goofin around on IRC and stuff, and while he is on the internet, I hear his modem handshake.
“What the? did you get disconnected?”
“No” he says, “My parents run a BBS and we are not allowed to mess with the program. People call in all the time.”
Intrigued, I eventually meet his parents, and start asking about the BBS, and telling them I dial in all the time to local boards.
..Well.. his mom.. tells me the name of the bbs… and her Sysop name… and when I tell her mine she looks at me with this shit eating grin. When no one was around she whispered to me, “I thought you said you were much older..” >;D
Never had the heart to tell my friend that me and his mom would flirt on the BBS for at least the past 2 years.. Figured nothing good would ever come of it. Whats worse is after the cat was out of the bag, she never stopped! Not a bad looking woman either ^^;;
March 28th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
bbs sites:
http://www.facebook.com/bbses
http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#/group.php?gid=128403775211
http://telnetbbsguide.com
http://bbslist.darktech.org
http://bbs-scene.org
http://bbsnews.org
August 7th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Hi, I never useualy comment on these things online lol but you lot jus tuk me back half ma life time with this! when i was about 13 i think (realy cant remember exact dates) i got an amiga 600, remember tha one with free game pack with that topplin dominoes 1?? any way i remember sendin off for a “ultra fast” 2400 modem lool with the big ole 25 pin serial conection 😀 To be honist with you i didnt even fully know what they did but id seen it in war games n wanted a piece of that action lol. I found a number for some random bbs based in london in the back of a computer mag n tryed it out and was amazed by the whole thing….. when the phone bill came no one else seemed as amazed tho lol. So ye any way id downloaded sum dms util or summit n found a number for what turnd out to be my new bbs school, Digital Dreams bbs in ma home town of birmingham. After useing it for a month or so to mainly read (its mad now to think yuh used to rush home from school to read lool) txt files like the phrack collection and other hacking phrecking related files (remember i wanted to play war games after all lol) and also nag the sysop for utils like war dialers n that, i got granted leet useage rights and still to this day i remember the 12 or so hours it took to download micro macheens from tha cracked section lol. after about another month of askin n askin how different things worked the sysop finaly must of got pissed off and posted me a copy of maxsbbs (it wood of took like a week to download lol) and instructions of how to run it. I had my own runnin (at night only when every 1 else was sleepin so they wouldnt pick up the dam fone n cut it off lol) on n off for about 2 years. It first started off on floppys and then i got a 128mb hd fitted in the amiga 600 n it realy took off! it had doors (lil game things) and everythink lol. Altho the internet killed the sceen dead, iv allways looked back n am glad i had the chance to live thru that major shift in technolagey. I also think yes the internet is soooo much better on paper but its all to easy lol, it was the fact that bbs’s used to take hours to work and you realy had to put in an effort to get things how you wanted em, that made it fun. I havent realy thort much about bbs’s for years untill the other week when for the first time i felt old lool. I work with young people an 1 of them was rabbitin on about the internet and asked me did i used to use google at school? when i told em it wasnt around then they lookt at me as if i had jus walked out of a cave hahha. I told em i left school in 96 and the internet was just comeing around them times but…. we had bbs’s. They looked on blankly and I the only way i cud describe it was to say, it was like teletext on a computer loool. needles to say they lost intrest in 5 seconds flat lol. But wen i got home i started to remember all the fun times and i went and dug out the amiga and power pack and then spent 3 hours searchin for a dam 9 pin mouse loool and fired it up not expecting much (i thort i rembered it dieing lol), but no! to my suprize everything was still in tact!!! my old bbs system loaded rite up :D. obviously everythink on it was years old n now manly no use what so ever apart from holdin memorys but it was still there!! all the old ansi graphics an everythink lool, so i took a look around it and put it back to rest, but it got me thinking wether there was anythink about bbs’s online n thats how i found this lol. Thanks to every 1 that shaird there storys, it realy brourght back memorys lol. since the demize of bbs’s i havent realy messed about with anthink like that again but this telnet thing sounds intresin n im gonna have a look see what thats all about 😀 but ye i hope all that kinda made sence??? just thort id share it all with ya n hopefully not boor u with it 😀 dose any 1 no if there is like a new version of maxsbbd for this telnet thing??? i would be intrested to try it out if fuh nothing else jus to experyment and see if i can find a way to copy off tha old maxsbbs stuff on to it so i can show others how we used to live pre-internet days loool. Thanks fuh readin if yuh made it this far lol
February 24th, 2024 at 3:38 am
I Remember the days.. I was the NEC for Charleston SC and everyone wanted a Copy of My Runbbs.bat file as at the time I ran the latest system 2 gig of files at 14400 Speeds. Feed 60 nodes mail
Those where the days..