
41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet - laphony
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/02/18/41_years_of_the_bbs/
======
Endy
Like so many of us, I miss the days of the BBS. But I think I know precisely
why I do. BBS systems and Usenet were plain-text communications which were
fast and open. There wasn't much space for user tracking, analytics, etc.
There just wasn't much corporate space. Yes, there were corporate BBSes and
public FTPs; but by and large they couldn't pull your call log and see what
you'd been up to. There was a sense of privacy - even if there was less
anonymity. There was also a sense of control. This massive TCP/IP,
ECMAScript/PHP, CSS+HTML Web leaves a user with no feeling of control over how
they browse, what they browse, etc.

It's even worse when you know even a little about Web marketing and SEO. The
manipulations employed which influence not just computers, but also users,
have gotten wildly out of control. Back then, you the user had to make a
deliberate choice to call into one BBS or another. You chose to interact with
that specific group. Now it's all algorithmic.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
It seems everyone back then on BBS's were enthusiasts. We all had at least
that in common. I remember groups of us would all gather on some random night
of the week for drinks just to kind of put a face to the handle. It was great.
And after we'd hurry and dial back in to see who else just dialed in.

Social networks today just leave you feeling gross.

~~~
bluedino
I can remember that. A group of us who go to whoever's house had just gotten a
new game, piece of hardware, etc

When we left we'd always say "see you on the roadhouse!", which was a multi-
line board that we'd all dial into when we got home

~~~
geoelectric
Those multi-line chat boards were a total vice of mine late 80s, early 90s.
That grew into a GEnie flat-fee chat account, which grew into AOL/IM (while
maintaining a proper shell account on the side, mind you). Then there was IRC,
forumnet/icb, etc., anything I could hit with a modem. I wasn't digital-
native, but I was digital-to-analog-to-digital-native.

Nowadays, 47 and crustier, I can hardly be arsed to answer a Facebook message,
and all the avenues for social connection have become kind of overwhelming. I
can't imagine how it is for people my age or older who picked this all up
late.

------
pmoriarty
The movie _War Games_ inspired me to get a 300 baud modem, and one of my first
memories of using one was to play Adventure (one of the first text adventure
games) on a BBS. I war dialed like there was no tomorrow, and racked up huge
phone bills downloading wares from across the country.

300 baud modems were super slow. You could literally watch a line of text be
typed across the screen in front of you, one letter at a time. I upgraded to
2400 baud after that, and 9600 after that. Even at 9600 baud, I seem to recall
that downloading one single mp3 (once those fancy high tech music files were
invented) would take something like half an hour. 56k modems came after that,
and finally ISDN and cable modems.

In the late 80's I discovered the Internet and UNIX at the local university's
computer lab, and there was no going back to BBS's after that. I remember
trying to convince a Fidonet sysop to try the Internet, and he adamantly
refused, saying that Fidonet is all he'd ever need. I wonder if he's still on
Fidonet now, keeping to his vow never to set foot on the Internet.

~~~
User23
I played MUDs on a 1200 baud modem, and I was at a distinct disadvantage.
Going to 9600 was incredible.

~~~
pmoriarty
MUDs are actually still around, and the more popular ones are still going
strong.

I went on a MUD binge recently, and got a good dose of nostalgia. Check out
The MUD Connector, if you're interested.

[https://www.mudconnect.com/](https://www.mudconnect.com/)

~~~
jacobush
I think basically all art forms will for now on live on forever. Someone will
always be programming an Atari 2600, play a MUD, or paint in oil on a canvas.

------
bemmu
I used to be a sysop and made some of my deepest friendships that way. One-to-
one chatting via fullscreen realtime updated text with no other distraction
has some magical quality to it that makes you talk about all manner of things
in depth with another person.

~~~
bonniemuffin
I used to play a ton of MajorMud, half to chat with other people while we
played, and half to script it so our characters could keep playing while we
were all at school. I met my husband on a BBS, and here we are all these years
later. Plain text chat with local strangers in your area code is truly
magical.

------
dccoolgai
There was a time you could (and would) go to a _picnic_ in real life with the
other people on the internet. Can you imagine that? Tradewars, chat, warez,
Club Caribe, music mods... it was pure magic. I would trade a year on this
internet to have that one back for a couple hours.

~~~
romwell
Hah, those times didn't quite pass.

I went to a subreddit meetup around.. 2009, I think; it was the same spirit.
(And we accidentally ran into David Blaine, but that's another story).

But, more commonly, meeting up with strangers you met online is pretty much
the default way of meeting people (ever heard of Tinder?).

So it seems like you are complaining about the Eternal September more than
anything else :)

------
hoodwink
Ah what I would do to play a good ol’ game of TradeWars 2002 the ol’ fashioned
way

~~~
teilo
Recently, as I was doing some deep cleaning in my study, I found a warpgate
map in my files that I made in the late 80s. I had forgotten all about
Tradewars, so that brought back some memories.

I lived in a small town, but there was a service available at the time, a sort
of modem gateway network with nodes in a lot of smaller towns. It was a
subscription service. Connect to it via a local call, and from there you could
dial out to most major cities without paying long distance, and the local node
proxied connections over some independent network. It was limited to 1200
baud. I can't remember what it was called.

When I went off to school, I ran a local fidonet point, which basically was a
sub-node that could connect to a full fidonet node and collect mail and group
messages, and hang up. I could then read and respond at my leisure.

Compuserve eventually replaced Fidonet for me, well before they offered
Internet access. I had one of the old numerical IDs.

~~~
bbhart
PC Pursuit from Telenet.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenet)
I woke up super early many days so I could explore far-flung BBS’s before
school.

And I was 1:377/7 on Fidonet. Good times.

~~~
teilo
Yep, that was it!

------
trollied
There was a brilliant set of local BBSes where I grew up in Nottingham. The
local cable company, Diamond Cable (since taken over by NTL/Virgin Media),
offered free local calls to other cable customers.

This obviously provided the perfect ecosystem for BBSes to pop up and thrive.

I fondly remember old door games such as LORD [0], and downloading the Quake 1
demo using a 14.4k modem - That took some time!

BBSes themselves used some technology that wasn't mainstream, DESQview being a
good example - a nice text UI for multitasking DOS.

[0]: [https://www.pcmag.com/feature/340587/the-forgotten-world-
of-...](https://www.pcmag.com/feature/340587/the-forgotten-world-of-bbs-door-
games/6) [1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview)

------
em-bee
a host is a host from coast to coast,

and no-one will talk to a host that's close,

unless the host that isn't close

is busy, hung or dead.

(sing to the melody of the talking horse mr. ed)

i don't know how old this is, and it still fits to the internet, but it's
definitely from a time when BBS were still around.

~~~
Stratoscope
Go right to the host and read the post,

You'll get the answer you love the most,

But all the way you'll never boast,

Talk to BBS!

People yakkity-yak a streak,

And waste your time of day,

But BBS will never speak,

Unless there's something to say!

[https://genius.com/Jay-livingston-mr-ed-theme-lyrics](https://genius.com/Jay-
livingston-mr-ed-theme-lyrics)

------
mymythisisthis
A great, and free, doc about that time.
[https://archive.org/details/bbs_documentary](https://archive.org/details/bbs_documentary)

~~~
lsh
That seems be to a collection of clips and things. The 'BBS: The Documentary'
was released as ~8 episdoes. You can find them collected here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO5vjmDFZaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO5vjmDFZaI)

------
voltagex_
[https://ssh.sdf.org/](https://ssh.sdf.org/) \- there's some still around,
they've just evolved.

------
insulanus
Even 25 years ago, BBSes were still important, though it was clear they were
in decline then.

Students in the U.S. were going from poorly connected schools, to well
connected Universities, and when they went back home for the break, they
needed their fix!

------
NuSkooler
It's been pointed out already, but a little more info: There is a fairly large
(and growing, actually) community of BBSers in the modern area. Telnet is even
slowing being pushed out in favor of SSH and/or secure WebSockets (BBS from
your browser!) in addition to other crypto and related tech where it can
apply. There are boards running on retro hardware, under emulators, and even
quite a few modern BBS software being written (disclaimer: I'm the author of
one in Node.js).

There is a lot of nostalgia, but also a lot of people enjoy time away from the
modern corporate controlled web. A text-mode interface, community, etc. is
quite nice at times.

------
RawInfoSec
It was a hard decision sometimes, (as most boards gave only an hour so other
people get a turn). Do I play Tradewars? LORD? What about downloading another
half of disk 2 of UFO:Enemy Unknown? Maybe I should just stuff it all and go
chat with the dude on line 2.

519 was an amazing and active BBS community. I still have friends that I see
regularly. Some boards we used to chat all night or on occasion we'd insta-
rush a bar, karaoke, or bownling alley at 3am just because we could. Some
great memories, people etc. So far on the Interwebs I've found only dragons
and monsters! lol

------
Jemm
BBSs are still alive; mostly accessed over amateur radio.

~~~
codazoda
I ran a Utah BBS in the late 80's on a phone line I "found" in my childhood
bedroom. I've thought, a bit, about setting up a "BBS" hosted on any computer
connected to any WiFi access point. Here are my initial ramblings about the
idea.

[https://blog.joeldare.com/wireless-bbs/](https://blog.joeldare.com/wireless-
bbs/)

~~~
ryukafalz
Thanks for posting this! I ran across this post a while back and couldn't for
the life of me find it again - I liked the idea the last time I saw it.

The first thing that came to mind was a wireless BBS running on a solar-
powered Pi Zero, left in some remote location.

~~~
codazoda
Well, that kinda surprised me. I write a lot of random stuff but I typically
think most of it goes into the void. I've never seen this page show up in any
of my top page reports and I don't think I've ever mentioned it before, but
maybe I did. Glad you liked my ramblings.

I've got a spare Mac Mini and an extra wifi router. I think I'll try to set
this up for my neighbors soon. Most people probably wouldn't guess the
password so I might have to go unencrypted.

------
malbs
Fidonet as the original electronic mail package, Door Games (BRE, cross-bbs
wars, wow), ANSI Art, damn, it was really fun. I loved my time dialing into
the local BBS's.

It was interesting watching some of the larger ones in my area turn into the
most successful ISPs at the time (and get consumed later by the much larger
national ones).

It inspired me to run my own, and while I only had the one line, and a very
simple set of RemoteAccess screens, the experience taught me a hell of a lot
about computers in general.

------
leemailll
Bbs is still a thing in Chinese circle. In Taiwan is Ptt, in mainland there
are still a few such as newsmth.

~~~
stargazer-3
Can confirm - as recently as 2014 a substantial fraction of my college friends
in Taiwan spent hours a day on BBS boards, gossiping about uni life and what
not.

------
LinuxBender
LOIS BBS stuck around for a while after the internet was created. For a while
you could telnet to it. It was really popular on the central coast of
California and as folks got jobs, moved around, that was a way for people to
keep in touch. I remember seeing multiple split-66 blocks in the sysops room
the BBS was running from, with a couple dozen phone lines. It's sysop (Pete
a.k.a. Communicator) passed away and the BBS was run by another member for a
while and then it eventually faded away.

There were a lot of great memories created from that group of people. Given
the localization aspect of BBS's in the day, it was common for a lot of people
to meet up on a regular basis.

~~~
wax66
TREX is still up.

------
coldtea
In 41 years we moved on from BBS to BS

~~~
fb03
Can agree. Now we need 10 megs of javascript to even show some simple content
on the web and whatnot.

In that regard, this website is keeping the hope real, being really
lightweight and snappy.

------
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
How we used to marvel at bidirectional transfers. x-modem, y-modem, x-modem,
q-modem. I can hear the handshaking as shrilly as they ever were. Good time.

~~~
fb03
And then came z-modem and we could squeeze an additional bytes/s out of the
connection, depending on the content.

I remember seeing a steady 4.0kB/s on a 33600 baud USRobotics modem and going
"wow we are at peak performance, let's just hope noise line or something
doesn't degrade it" heheh

good times indeed.

~~~
bluedino
At my first computer related job, they had a T1 line. My jaw hit the floor
when I downlaoded a driver at _150kB /s_

'that was faster than copying a floppy disk'

------
xukuwarrior
As a teenager I used to run the Middlesbrough Emerald City BBS. It was great
fun. It was on my parents telephone line, so was only online after 10pm. Still
got loads of calls. Most people just wanted to chat.

------
martin1b
BBSes had soul. Everyone was excited to be there. Most everyone was an
enthusiast. We had chat, forums, filez, online games before everyone else.
Nobody outside of that world had any idea what we all were doing.

~~~
O1111OOO
> Nobody outside of that world had any idea what we all were doing.

Ha! So true. There was a technical debt that had to be paid for entry. Really
kept things from de-evolving. The best we have today seems to be invite-only
sites but with limited features in comparison.

------
hendry
Had to share my story how it was like in South Africa:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Dl-
HJx7kY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Dl-HJx7kY)

------
01100011
Nostalgia time... I remember when my grandparents tried to help their
misbehaving grandson by buying him a C=128-D at Toys "R" Us along with a 1200
baud modem. I quickly grew bored with Q-Link and found about the network of
BBSes which existed in the late 80's. It wasn't long before I had ran up an
$800 phone bill, and for the next 20 years my grandpa wouldn't talk to me. I
found friendship and mischief, a world of wonder for a 12 year old in the late
80s. "Free" games, porn(4-bit color, but still), and instructions for how to
make bombs and hacking devices. After a couple years, I graduated to an Amiga
500 and a 2400 baud modem. Wardialing. Voice mail box hacking. 2600 magazine.
Phrack. cDc. Credit-card and calling-card fraud. Tymnet and Telenet. Getting
on the internet via a hacked login at UC Davis. Hacking the local phone
companies billing system. Playing around with an open flood monitoring system
running QNX. Every night was an adventure. I still remember having my mind
blown after accessing a German chat server over one of the PSNs(Lutz?). My
late friend Patrick started up a scam where we'd call people and tell them we
were with the phone company. Someone had run up thousands on their calling
card, but we could remove the charges if they'd verify the last 4 digits.
Well, the first ten were the phone number we just dialed. One day a stranger
called me(I still don't remember how he got my number or who he was) and we
exchanged some notes... interesting finds from wardialing mostly. He called me
back in a couple days and let me know one of the numbers was now giving a
dialtone. That meant it was probably a PBX and we could use it to divert
calls. I gave the number to Pat and after a few minutes he calls me back
screaming "The password is 1-2-3-4!" over and over. Sure as shit, the fools
didn't bother changing the password to something difficult. My innate paranoia
kicked in and I suggested we should use the calling cards through the PBX so
the owner didn't notice a surge in billing. That turned out to be a colossal
mistake. A few months later, a confused and surprised GMAC, the PBX's owner,
received a call from AT&T security. Someone was using stolen calling cards at
their organization. We first got wind of it when we saw a highlighted section
on the front page of the local newspaper warning people to be wary of giving
out calling card information over the phone. I got paranoid and loaded my
modem and a can of black powder I kept under my bed in my backpack and started
biking to my friend's house. I don't know why, but I changed my mind and
turned around half way. As I crested the small hill near my house, I saw the
cop car and white evidence van parked out front. My parents had just been
served a warrant and the police were seizing my computers(my old Amiga 500 was
packed up to be sold, as I just bought a 386SX off my dad. They took both and
everything around it... a printer... even a calculator). I don't remember much
after that. The cops tried to befriend me with some bullshit stories of how
they worked on the first networked computer. In the end I pled guilty and had
to give up computers for 3 years, go to some scared straight program, and do a
bunch of community service. I was charged with 2 felonies and a misdemeanor,
but one of the felonies was dropped. I was a 15 year old felon, which I guess
I'm strangely proud of. I managed to go about 18 months before I scrounged up
an old green-screen TTY and a 300 baud modem. I was back online, but somewhat
scared straight. I stuck to the mainstream BBSes, especially the multiline
monsters that began popping up in the early 90s. It wasn't long before I found
new friends though. I met the Mike's online and was in awe when I heard how
they'd used stolen credit cards to fly to Portland and buy a couple of HAM
radios. They figured out how to mod them and showed me how to take over the
drive-thrus at local fast food restaurants. Another friend got involved and
decided to go big with the credit card fraud. It wasn't long before we were
driving through neighborhoods late at night, the backseat covered in a
mountain of stolen mail. We'd sort through the pile looking for credit cards
or gas cards, tossing the rest off a cliff or into the trash. We'd hit the
malls and radio shack, buying radios, cassette tapes, laptops, computer
equipment. Before long my friend started taking it to the extreme. He bought a
new muffler and a set of tires for his car, leaving a clear paper trail right
back to him. The group got concerned and somehow decided the best approach
would be to cut ties and turn him in. I got picked to make the call. The next
thing I know I'm talking to a postal inspector and the secret service. We
thought we could contain the damage but the next thing we knew most of the
group was getting charged. The whole thing blew up in our faces and ended our
fun. We were adults now, in a world that suddenly took our games seriously.
There's not much to say beyond that. The group recovered individually and all
got day jobs. It sucked at the time but the story might just have made it all
worth it. Sorry if you ever got a strange call in the middle of the night, or
had your mail go missing. After all that I managed to get an old 8088 with a
20GB(edit: oops MB) HDD from Boeing surplus and started my first BBS. I don't
even remember the name now. I ran Gremcit and had a small collection of users.
It was tough to compete with the multiline systems at that point. I ended up
taking my 56k modem back to Newegg and used the money to buy my first car.
After that I found myself at college with a real connection to the internet.
I've searched around since but I've never found anything that compares to the
world I knew over a modem. I know the internet has an underbelly and a similar
world still exists, so I guess I'm the one that changed. Maybe one day I'll
fire up a port scanner and see what's out there, but after having been through
the legal system I'm too scared to do anything that seems remotely illegal
online. Here's to all the kids who are too young to fear, poking at the soft
side of the world wide web.

~~~
jacobush
Thanks for sharing! nit-pick: 20MB harddrive on that 8088. :)

~~~
01100011
haha oops yeah.

------
jefurii
Are any BBS nostalgiaists interested in the Tilde Club idea? You can set up an
community insurance de a VPS box for peanuts these days.

------
fred_is_fred
Ah my first ops job. Running a BBS with a friend. I see Tradewars mentioned
below, but I really liked Lands of Devastation.

------
bluedino
If you added ANSI graphics and some door games, surfing HN with Lynx almost
feels like a BBS

------
lbj
Was really hoping for some nostalgic screenshots in this piece

------
sfopdxnonstop
Barren Realms Elite on Hermes what it was 1991.

~~~
efdee
Two words. Gooey Kablooie.

------
rboyd
when the sysop breaks in when you’re desperately trying to brute force a NUP

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
textfiles.com

------
porpoisely
The internet predates BBS. And I'd credit HTTP, Netscape or AOL for killing
off BBS rather than TCP/IP.

~~~
icedchai
The everyday consumer did not have access to the Internet until the 90's when
it was commercialized. True, it "existed" before that, it was primarily
education / academia and defense-related orgs that had access.

BBSes were primarily text based... early Internet providers opened up access
to Usenet newsgroups, email, IRC, etc. which made traditional BBSes look like
a toy in comparison. The web put the nail in the coffin, but they were already
on their way out before then.

~~~
simonblack
> The everyday consumer did not have access to the Internet until the 90's

I remember a day in the very early 90s when another node in our UUCP email
system told the rest of us that he'd heard that there were now a million
computers on the Net. We were gobsmacked. A whole million!

Now an extra million or two computers is mere noise-levels.

~~~
pmoriarty
My biggest surprise was how quickly everything happened.

One day you were considered a massive nerd for having your own computer,
spending a lot of time on it, playing games on it, and socializing with others
on it.

Seemingly the next day everyone was online and had their own email addresses.
I remember being amazed the first time I saw website advertised on the side of
a bus. It seemed like the world had massively changed overnight.

Now so many people have lived their entire lives with the net all around them
and only hearsay about what it was like before.

~~~
krapp
>Now so many people have lived their entire lives with the net all around them
and only hearsay about what it was like before.

It's become so ubiquitous that the nerds have started complaining about how
the tourists have ruined it.

Which is understandable on the one hand, and regrettable on the other, because
unlike physical real estate, the internet can be a potentially boundless space
and there's room in it for everyone.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" unlike physical real estate, the internet can be a potentially boundless
space and there's room in it for everyone"_

There is room for everyone, but what kind of place is it? The observation is
that it's no longer what it was, and that something special was lost.

I wouldn't place the blame on the "tourists". First, there are no toursits.
Everyone is here to stay. Second, the nerds played a huge role, using their
skills and knowledge to make the internet what it is today. Corporations and
governments also rushed in to claim their stake, try to take ownership and
control -- often quite successfully.

The Gold Rush transformed California, and so did the Internet Rush, if it
could be called that, transform the Internet itself. I'm not sure how it could
have remained as it was, like in a museum. The use of new technologies alone
would have changed it.

~~~
icedchai
Yep. The internet of today feels so much different than the internet of the
early 90's, it may as well not even be the same medium...

