According to the Associated Press, the smiley emoticon, i.e. :-), turns twenty-five years old tomorrow. Scott E. Fahlman created and introduced the symbol on a Carnegie Mellon BBS in a message dated 11:44 AM on September 19, 1982. The online world has been littered with the smiley and its prolific progeny ever since.

Although I have friends that swear off emoticons, I am definitely guilty of ample smiley usage over the last fourteen years. I typically use the concatenated, sans-nose version, :), which is quicker to type. The smiley is an important, albeit understated, tool for easing tensions during heated discussions, or for simply conveying a bit of happiness through a text-based digital medium. Interestingly enough, Fahlman first proposed the smiley as a way to denote jokes in a discussion about online humor. You can read Fahlman’s original message on Carnegie Mellon’s Smiley website.

The Smiley Family

In tribute to the birth of the smiley, I present to you now a thoroughly incomplete list of smileys plucked from the wilds of the Internet. Check out “The Canonical Smiley List” if you’d like to see more.

The Basic Smileys
 
    :-)     The standard smiley
    :-(     Sad smiley
    ;-)     Winking smiley
    :-P     Sticking tongue out
    8-)     Cool smiley wearing shades
    :-o     Shocked smiley
    :-D     Big grin
 
Some Caricatures
 
    =):-)    Uncle Sam
    :-)B     Dolly Parton
    :-.)     Madonna
    :/7)     Cyrano de Bergerac
       )     Cheshire Cat
     o-)     Cyclops
    =:o]     Bill Clinton
    B-|      Batman
    =*0      Felix the Cat
 
Specialized Smileys
 
    /:-)     With a beret
    d:-)     With a baseball hat
    {:-)     Hair parted down the middle
    }:-)     With toupee in an updraft
    (-)      Needs a haircut
    `:-)     One eyebrow raised
    %-\      Hungover
    %*@:-(   So hungover my head hurts...
    X-(      Just died

Feel free to share your own favorite smileys with us. Keep in mind, though, that this blog software intercepts certain smileys and turns them into little yellow graphical faces.

Sixteen years after its humble emergence in the golden age of the BBS, Wendell Hicken’s timeless 1991 artillery simulation remains a hallmark in shareware history. Scorched Earth stands as nothing less than a masterpiece in the field of computer games.

With its numerous gameplay settings, variable computer AI, and an impressive variety of entertaining power-ups, Scorched Earth possesses nearly infinite replay value. It’s also one of the greatest party games ever devised: up to ten players can take turns plotting the explosive demise of their closest friends at the hands of a Nuke, MIRV, or Death’s Head over as many as 1000 rounds. As a testament to the pure strategy of the game, veterans skilled in the ways of Scorch know the best ways to dispatch foes — or merely survive as others duke it out — under any circumstance, rain or shine, springy walls or rubber.

   

Many of today’s game designers seem envious of Scorch’s ability to consistently entertain for over a decade. Fans of Hicken’s classic have attempted modern remakes of or improvements upon Scorched Earth, but to this day, none has even begun to approach the solid feel, intricate balance, or professional production values of the original. That’s how good it is.

Hicken didn’t invent the artillery game; he perfected it. And as long as our computers run without smoking, we’ll still be playing the original Scorched Earth as good Wendell intended.

Andrew Wiskow emailed me today with news that his long-planned Commodore dial-up BBS’s return to glory is now complete. The Cottonwood BBS, perhaps the last dial-up only BBS running on authentic Commodore hardware (feel free to correct me on this!), is now up and accepting callers at 1-951-242-3593. Andrew also posted a comment about his BBS on another VC&G post, which I have reproduced below:

Well, after a bit of a delay, Cottonwood BBS is now back up and operational! As it turns out, the 1200 baud modem wasn’t the problem, but instead it was the VoIP line I was trying to run the BBS on. I had to switch back to a regular phone line in order to get good results. The 2400 baud modem I tried to used wasn’t working well, so I’m back to where I started on the 1200 baud modem.

Anyway… You can call Cottonwood BBS at (951) 242-3593. Open 24 hours a day, running at 300/1200 baud. For more information on the BBS, or to get some tips on connecting, check out the following website:

http://hometown.aol.com/cottonwoodbbs/

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Be sure to check out his website to pick up a copy of C64Term for the best Commodore BBS experience for PC users. I haven’t made a call yet, but I plan on it when I get the chance. If you give it a call, please let us know how you liked it.

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.

Most BBS enthusiasts know that the last outpost for BBSes has been, for some time now, through telnet on the Internet. There was a time, however, when when dial-up BBSes over analog phone lines were the rule, not the exception. And believe it or not, there are still a handful of BBSes out there that have not modernized and switched over to the ‘Net. The only way you can get to them, though, is through an old fashioned analog phone modem, regular ole Ma Bell lines, and a little patience.

Visiting such old BBSes is incredible — it’s like traveling back in time to the early-mid 1990s. Each BBS is a unique a time capsule, stocked with trinkets and ephemera from the period. On message boards, you’ll find posts from 1994 about the O.J. Simpson trial and which player-made Doom levels are best. In file transfer sections you’ll run across large archives of long-forgotten Windows 3.1 screen savers. In door sections (online games), you’ll find abandoned TradeWars 2002 games, still in progress, that haven’t been touched in eight years. And of course, the Ferrengi have completely taken over.

[ Continue reading The Dial-Up BBS Revisited » ]

Late last year I found this classic (for me, anyway) picture lurking in my files and scanned it. It’s a Polaroid photograph of one corner of my then “computer room” taken by myself somewhere around late 1994 or early 1995 (yes, my family was lucky enough to have the space for another room dedicated mainly to my BBS computer, but filled with my other junk as well). I was 13 or 14 at the time. As you can see on the picture, I’ve labeled certain items in the room with numbers. Each number is associated with an item that I talk about below. With that out of the way, click on the image to open up the bigger version and let’s start the tour!

1. DEC VT-125 Terminal – A true classic in the terminal world, pulled from a dumpster. The neighbor of my father’s company serviced minicomputers and was always throwing neat stuff out. I got about 3-4 of these, took a few apart, eventually throwing them away for space concerns. But I think I still have one or two left.

2. Micromint Z8 Board – Part of the Micromint Z8 Basic Computer/Controller set. Inherited from my father’s old workplace. The Micromint Z8 system was a BASIC language-programmable microcontroller, essentially for early “embedded computer” applications. I have a bunch of cool expansion boards too, including one that lets you save/load your program to cassette tape, and another that lets you burn EPROMs of your BASIC programs! Cool stuff — I should play with it again.

3. NES Games – Back in 1994, my NES game collection could actually fit in one cubic foot of space. Crazy. A NES Game Genie code book can be seen here, awkwardly sticking out of the top of the plastic basket. Eventually my collection would spill out of the pictured basket and beyond…

4. Commodore CBM 2001-32 – This was had at a hamfest for $10, including the separate companion disk unit. It’s tucked away in the far back corner of the room, so I guess I didn’t use it very much.

5. Zoom 2400 BPS Modem – My first modem, given to my family by a friend. The top cover is off because I was playing around with hooking the speaker audio output to headphones — both for kicks, and for late-night modem sessions without waking the parents (I did this before I figured out the Hayes AT command to turn off the internal speaker) . This very modem is responsible for introducing me to the world of BBSes sometime in 1991. Of course, this being 1994-95, my main workhorse at the time is an Intel external 14400 modem across the room (not pictured).

6. Apple II+ – My dad bought this for me around 1990-91 (from a hamfest, big surprise) so I could learn BASIC on it. And I did, having loads of fun with it over the years. At the time of this picture I had the luxury of a color composite video monitor (#11). Up until then, I was stuck with a monochrome green-screen. But somehow it almost didn’t feel like an Apple II any more once it was in color.

7. Odyssey2 Games – Yes, this black blob is actually fifteen Odyssey2 games in interlockable cartridge racks, purchased for $10 along with an Odyssey2 console at a hamfest in the early 90s.

8. Nintendo Entertainment System – Back then, I took everything I owned apart, and the former “family NES” was not spared this treatment. Thinking myself clever, I switched the one and two player ports around, along with the “power” and “reset” buttons. How delightfully obnoxious. This unit, 11 years later, went on to become the NES DVD Player hack I did recently.

9. EPROM Eraser – It’s the gray rectangular box on top of the Apple II+ (#6). Never really used it very much. It was inherited along with the Micromint Z8 controller board stuff (#2) and was used to erase EPROMs programmed by the unit. It works by shining UV light through a tiny quartz window on the EPROM.

10. Apple II Disks – Stacked here are two boxes of Apple II disks. The lower one is mine, the upper one was given to me by a friend (with all his Apple II disks in it!). In fact, it was the same friend who gave my family the 2400 BPS modem (#5). It’s nice to have good friends.

11. Composite Video Monitor – What a grand day it was when I acquired my first color composite video monitor at a local hamfest! In this picture, the monitor is performing triple duty between the Apple II+ (#6), NES (#8), and Atari Jaguar (#14). I simply switched the AV connectors at the back depending on which one I wanted to use.

12. Atari Lynx – I bought this under-utilized portable wonder in used condition from a guy who regularly called my BBS (“Raven,” if you must know) in 1993 or 94. The transaction was done entirely by mail and we never met in person (imagine that!).

13. Mystery Sticker – I’m not sure what this is. It looks like a random peel-off trading card-sized sticker just stuck on the wall at an odd angle. Weird. This picture have been taken after my dad made me take down the 100-odd posters and other crap I had tacked and taped all over the walls, believing they were a fire hazard.

14. Atari Jaguar – I was a total Atari nut in the very early 90’s, believing strongly that Atari was the greatest company ever. “What’s this Nintendo business?” I said. “Atari was first!” I heard rumors of their Panther, then Jaguar, consoles and waited anxiously for their release. My birthday in 1994 was one of the happiest days of my life: I received an Atari Jaguar System and Super Metroid for the SNES. Here, Doom can be seen in the cartridge slot, a version of the seminal 3D FPS rivaled on consoles only by the PlayStation version.

15. Apple III – The prize of my collection at the time. When I first heard about the Apple III years before, it was like some magical, mythical beast. Would I ever catch sight of one, much less possess it? Naturally, I was extremely excited when my father and I came across this one later at a hamfest (again, big surprise). $10-20 later, I had my first Apple III, complete with dust cover (pictured on the unit). I only had the Apple II emulation disk for it, though, and to this day have never run any native Apple III software. Shortly after my Apple III was obtained (turned out they were not as rare as I thought), the Apple Lisa quickly became the next mythical beast to be had — a beast I’m still chasing in the wild to this day.

16. Plug ‘N’ Play Mosaic Book – This book is how I got my first copy of Mosaic, the first graphical web browser (it came on a floppy disk in the back). Shortly after, I began to develop my first home page, and boy did it suck. It’s funny reading lists of “cool” web sites from back then because, well…there were only about ten web sites back then. Ergo, all of them were cool (and listed in this book).

17. Handheld Video Games Magazine – I just found this particular issue (Spring 1991) again recently while working on my “Game Ads A-Go-Go” column for GameSetWatch. Good issue. I apparently didn’t value it very much at the time because it’s sitting on the floor right next to the spot where our cats would leave all the dead birds they’d caught that week. Yum.

Well that’s the tour, hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for accompanying me on a nice walk down memory lane.

Here are a few more entertaining and interesting validation messages from my archive. For an explanation of what a validation message is, check out the first entry in this series. By the way, check out my new Synchronet Cave BBS at cavebbs.homeip.net port 23.

Subject: log o0n
Name: Kerry Straughn #532 @2
Date: Tue Oct 07 17:03:36 1997
RE: Validation Feedback

Hi, heard about you from the Sanitarium. Pittsboro just got local service to the Apex,Raleigh and Cary areas. Know any other good bbses to try?

[about six blank spaces]

I had this same problem at the Sanitarium. A backslash in the direction of your help screen brings up my com program directory. I don’t know how to get out of this screen or if this message will save when I hang up. That’s the only way I can get out of here.

HELP ME PLEASE !!

I remember getting stuck in similar situations on other online services before. Especially when telnetting into Compuserve, where I had to manually hit Ctrl-J just to get a new line.

You know, not everybody who called my BBS was silly, bad at spelling/grammar or technologically inept. I’d post some nicely written messages, but they’d be pretty boring.

Subject: hmm…
Name: Tom Violins #380
Date: Sun Nov 17 19:07:04 1996
RE: Validation Feedback

changes changes… it’s been a LOOONG while since i’ve called here. let’s see you might not remember me… i was uhm Mr Self Destruct, Bad Acid, uhm Liquid Jesus… anyway, it’s been a while.. access would be appreciated (and appropriate) just kidding. well, no, it would be appreciated..

anyway, uhm hope things are going cool… just stay away from dat crack, man!

tom violins

Reading other people’s colorful and interesting BBS aliases was a large part of the fun of BBSing. Ah. The good ‘ole days.

Ah, the entertainment never stops. For an explanation of what a validation message is, check out the first entry in this series.

No, I didn’t make any of these up.

Subject: Hey
Name: Unicorn #205 @1
Date: Wed Feb 07 14:09:56 1996
RE: Validation Feedback

Dear Red Wolf,
Hey, ummm…… I don’t know what to write. I am a little shy as you might see. Ummm….. I am 12 and in the 7th grade. I have long brown hair that turns reddish in the sun. I have bright green eyes and a normal face I guess. Ummmm………… My friend Glen told me about this thing and it nearly took me forever to get on. The line was always busy and I wasn’t about to try again, but FINALLY I got on!! Ummmm…… I am bored. That’s why I decided to try this. I did use DNA but it got deleted or something. So, I am glad this BBs came. K-bye.

–Unicorn

Unicorn, I’m glad the BBS came too.

Here’s another one for the road:

Subject: MY NAME IS BILLY…I AM HERE TO TALK TO THE SYSOP…SOMEONE
Name: Crash Override #278 @1
Tue May 14 16:20:40 1996
RE: Validation Feedback

MY NAME IS BILLY…I AM HERE TO TALK TO THE SYSOP…SOMEONE NAMED BEN RAMBLE SAID YOU MAY BE INTO KARDING….THAT BEING USING OTHERS CREDIT ARDS TO GET STUFF FOR YOURSELF…IF U ARE I NEED TO KNOW….I NEED A LAPTOP BAD AND I NEED IT BEFORE THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR…I WANNA HOOK IT UP TO THE FONE BOOTH AT SCHOOL AND GET THE SCHOOL INTROUBLE FOR HACKING INTOT EH FBI….IF U CAN GET THIS FOR ME PLEASE TELL E…I NEED IT TO COME LOADED….I NEED IT TO THAVE THE FASTEST MODEM YOU CAN FIND…I DONT HAVE ANY MONEY BUT IF I CAN GET THIS I WILL DO ALL THE HACKING YOU TELL ME TO DO AND I WILL DO ABSOLUTELY ANYRTHING FOR U
.

No, I wasn’t into KARDING. An interesting note: the Ben Ramble mentioned in his message was a guy I went to school with at the time. He didn’t know I was actually Red Wolf, for reasons that this entry explains.

Stay tuned for another exciting episode next week — same Vintage Computing time, same Vintage Computing channel!

Here we go again! For an explanation of what a validation message is, check out last week’s episode.

No, I didn’t make any of these up.

Subject: hello.
Name: Milamber #141 @1
Date: Mon Nov 06 20:58:55 1995
RE: Validation Feedback

Hello I am MILAMBER brother of SATURNIA. I bear the tourch of the lines now. I have inherited the golden crappy computer and I plan to use it for EVIL!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

A subtle approach. I like it.

And here’s the stunning continuation of the MAD MAX saga from last week:

Subject: RED WOLF READ THIS!
Name: Mad Max #115
Date: Wed Apr 05 15:53:11 1995
RE: Tried Chatting.

Red Wolf,MAD MAX here.Are you ready to talk buisness?If you are this is how it works.When I am in “COMMAND”,I will still use “your” BBS number,except I take over!If you want,you can be my second in command if you like.That is all for now.One more thing,give me some E-mail.

Sinerely,
(your future leader)
MAD MAX
/
s

“/s” was the command used on a new line to end the message. Many people often messed it up on their first typing attempt but were too lazy to fix it, as in the example above.

Stay tuned for another exciting episode next week — same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!

Back when I started BBSing in 1992, I was only eleven years old. I was very young, innocent, trusting. I told the truth, giving out my real name, address, and age to every BBS I called. But certain devious teenage SysOps took advantage of my youthful tendency towards trust and shattered my confidence, betraying me and making me look like a fool in the BBS community. My innocence as I knew it had been lost. No longer would I be Red Wolf the Boy Wonder SysOp, the celebrated youngest SysOp in the Triangle area — no, that boy went to school every day, played in the woods, and rode his bike with his friends. Online, I would be Red Wolf the confident 34 year old computer professional — the kind of guy no power-tripping teenage BBSers would dare mess with. I went so far as to engineer a fake “real” name, birth date, and background for this alter-ego to give it realistic consistency throughout the years. His name was John Scagon (a silly name, I know), and he often traveled to Chicago for business meetings (a convenient excuse to not answer chat requests, reply to emails, or for the BBS being down a few days). His birthday was 11/12/1960 — an obviously fake-sounding date that was chosen by me because it was easy to remember. I had an address and phone number made up for him too, but I don’t remember what they were. John Scagon even had a friend in his neighborhood that would come over sometimes and look after the BBS while John was “on vacation.” I did this especially when I felt like having some fun with my callers. Make no mistake; this was not some manifestation of multiple-personality disorder. The line between fantasy and reality in my mind was always firmly drawn, and I am very sane. Rather, John Scagon was a simply role I took on when I was online, like an actor playing a part in a TV show. Although sometimes it was a bit deeper — more like an actor living a part in a TV show.

After a few years of masquerading as John Scagon online, nobody remembered that I was only 13 years old anymore. I tried my hardest to act older, and surprisingly enough, people actually thought that I was 30-something instead of pre-puberty. I established my Scagon act so firmly that when I once tried to tell some people (as Red Wolf online) that I was actually only 14 (at the time), they didn’t believe me. And to this day there are probably dozens of people out there who still think I am a lot older than I really am (sorry to break it to you so late, if you found this entry on a Google search). So much more credibility and esteem is yours for the taking as an older guy if you’re making your rounds in an online community composed of mostly teenagers and college students. Strangely enough, over time I became a kind of father figure that many BBSers, ironically my own age or older, looked up to.

My BBS life was a secret life I never mentioned to anyone my own age. Only one friend in school knew of it, and he was sworn to secrecy. A few of my parents’ friends knew about it, but not many. Not many relatives knew either. It was my own private world that I figured no one else could understand. Besides, if I ever even tried to explain a BBS to someone, it would usually be greeted with a “huh?” and a look of profound confusion from the person I was trying to educate. A completely different layer of reality, the online community, existed on top of the one in which mere “normal” people lived, and it was quite shocking for such people to learn of its existence, and very hard for them to grasp for some reason. That’s why I kept it quiet. Only when your very average Joe started using the Internet around 1999 did I even mention to my classmates that I played with computers as a hobby.

The dichotomy of being that arose from my BBS usage created some interesting situations when my offline life would cross over with the BBS one. That is, when some people I knew in person discovered BBSes and would talk to me about them, not knowing that I ran one myself and had been calling them for many years. Of course, I didn’t tell them that I was Red Wolf and ran The Cave BBS — that was part of the fun. But I’ll save those stories for a future entry.

My alter-ego and I separated long ago. I thought about killing him off in a car wreck in Chicago when I shut down my BBS for good. It would have been a cool story to tell, but it didn’t happen; I couldn’t bear to kill an innocent man. So instead, the two of us just went our separate ways. Today I am very much a different person — I am definitely not John Scagon at all. Years ago, a completely new Red Wolf (in fact, RedWolf — the lack of a space in the name came from the Internet world) grew up to fill the hole left by my alter-ego, then no-longer needed after I had attained sufficient age to be confident in my true identity online. But I feel like John Scagon is still out there somewhere now, although I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. I find myself wondering what his life is like at 45. Does he have a wife, or even kids? Does he still work with computers? I almost want to email him and ask him how he’s doing, to wax nostalgic over our BBS days together as if he’s a long lost friend. But of course, that would be impossible. Still, I’d like to drink a toast to the man who never was: the mentor inside of me, and my personal guide through a tougher world, long past. Happy birthday, Red Wolf.