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Enormous 80s Textfile Archive
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Feb 22, 1999 05:26 AM
from the remember-the-good-old-days dept.
from the remember-the-good-old-days dept.
Jason Scott writes "I have opened a new WWW site dedicated to the textfiles (also known as "g-philes" or "etexts") that populated the BBS World of the 1980's. Of course, in doing so, I have also gathered together many, many files from the 60's, 70's, and 90's. The purpose of this is to provide a central repository for this important part of online culture to bring back memories or show where we came from. The site is called
www.textfiles.com and is well past 9,000 textfiles online. "
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Purity test (Score:1)
Purity test (Score:1)
And we hope to someday use DHTML and/or Javascript to develop the first web-based messaging interface that doesn't suck.
yay (Score:1)
Also, his site was the only site to email me and thank me for linking to him on my page, which I thought was pretty nice. You don't find many webmasters like that around.
Microsoft (Score:1)
COOL -
1. Concurrent Object-Oriented Language.A parallel version of C++.
"COOL: A Language for Parallel Programming", R. Chandra
<rohit@seagull.stanford.edu> et al in Languages and Compilers for Parallel
Computing, D. Gelernter et al eds, MIT Press 1990, pp.126-148.
Bahahaha.. You lose again, M$!
No nostalgia here... (Score:1)
Words from the Textfiles Web Guy (Score:1)
BBS's are alive and well. (Score:1)
"How to Have Fun at K-Mart" (Score:1)
That was around the time when 9600 was very common (I had a 2400)
BBS's are alive and well. (Score:1)
Um, Telnet is as fast as your connection, man...
Hell, people here want to slow down Telnet for nostalgia's sake...
Great Stuff indeed (Score:1)
I was very active during the mid-late 80's in New Orleans area BBS. I've actually used this alias since those days because revealing your "real-world" identity was verboten. Hell, the classic Assassin's Guild went down in January '98 after a 15 year uninterrupted run. I emailed the former sysop in the hopes that she'd still have some goodies laying about.
I have to admit, I miss being able to read as fast as the modem could put characters to the screen (300 baud). It's still weird to me that my parents actually understand the terms "modem", "online" etc. after all these years. I met some of my current best friends through BBS way back then when we were kids.
Thanks for the cool nostalgia.
So send it in, duh... (Score:1)
It's amazing how trivial stuff like this can trigger a flood of memories. Every time I see stuff like this (and recognize names, to boot) it seems like the world gets a little smaller.
Then again, maybe it's just Slashdot.
Still very useful (Score:1)
for intermediate users", "Bash shell programming"
and "How to use DEBUG.COM" are still just as
useful today as ever. Excellent archive!
Walk Down Memory Lane (Score:1)
Model 12 (Score:1)
Tongue in Cheek (Score:1)
Fantastic!! (Score:1)
Jón
Best link in a long while (Score:1)
It used to be so much fun, someone bringing up an obscure topic, and me saying, "i got a textfile on that."
This isn't good, at all... (Score:1)
(For those who have only a vague memory of UK BBS' in the 80's, the words "MUD" and "Essex", along with the address "A2206411411" may help.)
Heh. (Score:1)
Problems with Lynx? (Score:1)
Telnet access? (Score:1)
L.O.R.D. Java? WHERE? (Score:1)
Wow... (Score:1)
/.-Effect struck again 8-( (Score:1)
looks like the site is inaccessible either
due to the
down due to too much traffic... here's why:
> www.textfiles.com
Server: pickup.highway.bertelsmann.de
Address: 145.228.114.10
*** pickup.highway.bertelsmann.de can't find www.textfiles.com: Non-existent host/domain
bohoo! I remember calling San Diego based
BBS'es on my friend's C64 whose father did NOT
have to pay for his phone bills... those were
the days!
Uwe
"How to Have Fun at K-Mart" (Score:1)
I really miss those days.. 1200 bps makes me all misty-eyed..
(haaz, ex "The Peeler")
BBS's are alive and well. (Score:1)
Story of Mel? (Score:1)
It is in the Jargon file:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/j argon/jargon_49.html#SEC56 [tuxedo.org]Don't forget to "donate" if you can... (Score:1)
If my old floppies still work there are probably a few things I can send over. I remember when 90K text files tool FOREVER on my Atari 830 modem (300 baud)... and 90k filled 1 side of a single-density disk. And disk notching.. wow. I feel old.
"Resonant Gravity Coil" (Score:1)
"Resonant Gravity Coil" (Score:1)
Here's the file: http://www.textfiles.com/anarchy/mism4.h ac [textfiles.com]
FAXing Bomb Instructions to Daddy (Score:1)
There used to be a BBS for those 18 and over in Portland called Enigma. They decided to close-up shop though after some punk-ass kid got onto the board, downloaded instructions on how to compose a bomb, and then FAXed the instructions to his father-- at work!
Needless to say, they called the FBI, and the site was apparently in hot-water for distributing such information.
And that brings me back to the days of Banished CPU... All those wonderful memories. It used to be nice when only computer-geeks were online. Now every moron with 500 bucks has a computer and treats it like a damned Nintendo.
So *that's* what that rod is for! (Adventure game) (Score:1)
-Steve
L.O.R.D. (Score:1)
L.O.R.D. Java? HERE (Score:1)
That file's still being passed around. (Score:1)
BTW, I used to have a 2400bps connection in 1996. That's when I decided that the Web has too many graphics for its own good.
wow... (Score:1)
Jarod
Tradewars 2000 (Score:1)
It sahould be brought back as a graphical game with a central server for the internet.
makes me want to fire up my atari 400 (Score:1)
Story of Mel? (Score:1)
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html
--jwriney
John Riney III
jwriney@awod.com
www.dto.net (Score:1)
Walk Down Memory Lane (Score:1)
this happened anymore, especially when you "grow-up" and have some way of getting on the Internet. Back then, it was some great entertainment. I still feel that BBSs were more personal, on a level that the web has yet or may never achieve. I've only taken a quick glance of
the sight and have already found tons of files
I read so many years ago, many I have on the disks
of some old crappy C64 or IBM PC. I love the layut of the sight, since I viewed the whole BBS world
from my lovely green-on-black monochrome monitor and ran my own BBS from the same view, collecting all that stuff...Then again, now looking at my Xterm now up right now on my laptop...I notice the same green/black
scheme. Maybe something never do change. Hmm, Where was that stack of floppies again? I'm sure I've got a 5 1/4 drive here somewhere...and a C64 emulator.
Words from the Textfiles Web Guy (Score:1)
I also wanted to answer a few of the subjects that came up on this Slashdot topic, just so everyone sees my answers.
First of all, not all of the textfiles are up yet. In fact, while there are 9,000 textfiles up, I have something in the range of 20,000-40,000 waiting to be sorted through! I just wanted to choose a good "break" in my work to invite the world to come see, so that I wasn't toiling in silence and darkness without sharing what I've found so far. So, expect that the site will grow even more in the months to come. A few people expressed unhappiness that I didn't have X file or Y file; in fact, I might very well have it, just not put up on the site yet. At worst, if people feel my site needs a certain file, they should send it to me at the above address.
A VERY large group of people have expressed that I should have some sort of search engine on textfiles.com, and while I agree with them, I don't know any way to do that and still have the system move with any sort of speed. If there's a really good indexing program out there, I'd like to see it, but the site is already into the hundreds of megabytes and I'm concerned that there's no easy way to do it. I have a sort of backup plan, however, and I may have the hotbot [hotbot.com] site do the work for me because you can search by domain. If this is the case, I will utilize it. Otherwise, I don't know if I can help with that.
There were some minor aesthetic differences that people have with some of my choices on the site. Where I can non-intrusively implement the suggestions, I will, but otherwise, I kind of like things as they are. It makes me feel very cozy and nostalgic, and a lot of users have agreed with me.
At some point I might sell CDs for people who want the ease of getting a piece of plastic instead of spending hours downloading files, and I will possibly look into T-shirts if there's an interest. This is mostly because I like T-shirts.
It might interest some people to know I am speaking at DEFCON [defcon.org], the annual technologist/hacker convention held in Las Vegas. I hope some of you decide to make the trip. I'd love to meet you and talk about the old days and the wonder of the new days.
Finally, textfiles.com is running on a Dell 486/33 box running Red Hat and apache, and it handled over 15,000 users today without any major problems. What a wonderful operating system, and what a great web server.
Yours,
Jason Scott
TEXTFILES.COM
gifscii... (Score:1)
- jay