Remembering the BBS 491
Anonymous Coward writes "Nice reminiscence about BBS's, back in the day and all. Author describes them as "Where a teenage loser could lose himself", which for me would have been pretty accurate. I still miss being able to find cool ASCII graphics, text-based RPG's, and the Anarchist's Cookbook all in one place."
those were the days (Score:5, Insightful)
On-line games such as trade wars were great, where you'd plan group strategy through mail and then log in at stepped, agreed-upon times to carry it out.
Back then, on systems with 2+ lines, multi-person chats were the big thing.
QWK packets were fantastic for reading messages off-line and freeing up the bbs for someone else. I kinda miss them now.
Also, networks like FIDONet were an incredible mess to set up (have seen few things so complicated since then), but once they were up and running it was incredibly fun and satisfying to exchange messages with other local boards, as well as with the guys from other countries.
And then the internet came and killed it all!
heheh
Confessions of an addict (Score:5, Insightful)
I was a BRE champion, at the expense of my learning to program. Ahh well, c'est la vie. I debated the locals in the "politics" conference in the message section of the board. Once in a while, I'd download a few games.
Today, I'm viewed as a crumudgion who likes things archaic. Even my IRC friends think so, and IRC people tend to be old school. It saddens me, most of them only remember when 28.8 was fast.
What an incredible waste of time.
The business model from hell (Score:5, Insightful)
Why did people do them? For fun, but so many of them closed down because the owners ran out of cash (or their wives told them they'd run out of cash and a lot more besides unless they shut them down).
They were fun, sure, When I got my first modem (94 or so) I used to visit them as much as I'd use my IP connection, but as soon as they started to charge I was outta there.
All sound familiar?
I miss them too (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't forget (Score:3, Insightful)
One important I forgot! (Score:5, Insightful)
Nostalgia (Score:3, Insightful)
I miss things like PCBoard and ProBBS... those were the days. Now, with the Internet, not only can anyone hide behind a mask of anonymity but anyone with half a brain (or half a paycheque) can connect to the Internet.
You know what? BBSes were far less commercial (depending on what services they provided). I remember a friend of mine down the street ran a BBS when he was 13 (I did quite a bit of ANSI and ASCII art for him, sloooow over a 2400 though, better at 14400). Back then, advertisements were things you saw on TV, magazines, bathroom stalls (er, scratch that last one).
I remember briding the child internet and aged BBS gap with "virtual" connections: a telnet driver that would respond via the internet and send "RING" or "CONNECT" strings to the running BBS so you could have numerous nodes on one machine through multiple telnet connections.
Now we have popup removals, filter proxies, all to try and eliminate if not reduce the barrage of banners and animations on just about any even remotely-commercial web site out there.
For many people, the hardware technology itself is the same. It's become slightly faster, but you still get your roommate or family member off the phone so you can wait for dial-up, then log in and check your mail. Only now you're responding to the world (neglecting FIDONet, but I had a few problems with that in the past).
The best was to download 1000's of E-Mails from one system for reading off-line, repackaging the
PC Pursuit (Score:5, Insightful)
File downloads are clearly better on the internet, as are games.
Message boards, though, suck on the internet. There are islands of information our there, but nothing like it should be. For instance, for HTML help I go to one message board, for domain name advice another and to web hosting even another one.
Everyone remember Interlink, Fidonet, WWIVNet, RIME (PC Relay), etc? These were message networks that were all inclusive. Every topic under the sun was available and the messages were public. You could download your messages using a QWK compatible door and read them offline. Those were the days.
The closest thing we have now is USENET, where the noise to signal ratio is too high.
PC Pursuit is another vestiage of the BBS age. It was a service by Sprint that allowed you to X.25 into other POPs around the country for a low monthly fee. For instance, I could dial my local sprint number, connect to a pad in Boston and jump on Channel 1 with no long distance.
What's missing? (Score:2, Insightful)
You mean, like Google [google.com]?
-pmb, former 80's sysop.
Re:those were the days (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the Internet was not the only killer of the BBS scene. BBS's were also killed by their own popularity. In 1986, it was possible to have intelligent, literate conversations on BBS's, but this had become nearly impossible a few years later. Why? The invasion of punks. The trolls, the flamebaits, and the emergence of "doodz."
I was a SysOp for many years, and as soon as the nicks and handles started to become WizzyTheOrgasmicGod and CyberFucker, I knew the end was nigh. I'm sure that others can recount similar stories about IRC and Usenet.
Those were the days...
Re:Confessions of an addict (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to telnet, BBSing is a long way from dead. Check out http://www.dmine.com/bbscorner/ (formerly housed at thedirectory.org) for a slew of sysop resources.
Thanks to the gov't snoop issues increasingly encroaching on internet email, the BBS may well eventually make a comeback -- log in by dialup and use the QWK/REP system for email, and your messages never touch the net. With a highly secure system like Wildcat 4.x, no one can see them but the intended recipient and the sysop. (Know thy sysop.
Oh, our BBS isn't dead yet either, and we're still purely dialup. Earthquake City BBS (online since 1995), 818-368-3337, 2 nodes at 33.6, running Wildcat 4.2 on Netware 3.20, QWK-by-email available. [/shameless plug by co-sysop-at-large]
Tired of Slashdot "BBS==past" attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
BBS's still provide the greatest sense of a cohesive online community out there. Better than "blog" type nonsense, and certainly better than what the likes of MSN and AOL have to offer.
I've run UNCENSORED! BBS for 14 years and I'm not about to stop now. [citadel.org] And the 200+ users aren't going to stop logging in, either. Modern BBS's offer access via telnet/ssh or web, your choice. And the Internet-connectedness of it all has made it possible for BBS communities to attain geographic diversity, something which was not possible when you had to deal with long distance modem calls.
Please, people, let's get the perspective straight. The BBS is alive and well, so stop pushing this "bygone era" myth.