
Borderline BBS: A Commodore 64 dial-up BBS (2014) [video] - federicoponzi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCicz04EwwQ
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jasondigitized
When I discovered BBS'es at 15 ( 1988 ) my life changed considerably. It was,
as mentioned below, like a secret Goonies tunnel to the upside down......

I ended up running my own BBS on my C64 and had to get a job to pay for the
extra phone line and the array of 1581 3.5 drives I had to buy to support it.
I was up all hours of the night talking to people who logged in. Trying out
new BBS software, getting into ASCII art, warez, demos, etc. was a lot of fun.

It got so bad my mom had to sit me down and tell me that I had to go outside
and ride my bike, play football, etc.

Nearly 30 years later I am still working with software everyday and enjoying
ever minute of it. I do have to remind myself to go outside.......

~~~
lunchables
>1581

I assume this is a model number? You couldn't possibly mean 1,581 3.5" drives
... right?

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Yep. The 1541 was Commodore's original single-sided 5.25" floppy drive (you
had to physically remove and flip the disk to read the other side). The 1571
was a double-sided 5.25" drive, and the 1581 was a double-sided double-density
3.5" drive.

(Yes I know all those numbers from memory)

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tclancy
We wound up with a whole second set of Commodore equipment in the late '80s
when my dad's business partner gave up on trying to organize his side of the
business like my dad. It was a free upgrade from C64 to 128, one disk drive to
two and we got a modem out of the deal. I suppose it was discovering random
strangers on a phone line could be friendly and interesting that makes me sad
about what the Internet has not become so far.

~~~
icedchai
I feel that the Internet used to be that way, back in the 90's. Many early
ISP's grew out of the BBS scene.

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sitepodmatt
I think USA was pretty unique with free local calls and hence why the scene
took off big there. In the UK* we used to have to wait till 6pm for the price
to drop from 5p a minute to 1p so internet usage and BBS prior was pretty
constrained - the fear of 0345 usage on the bill was a constant fear that
shareware mail order lasted into late 1990s. Broadband was also way behind, I
think it was 2002 before we got 512kbit. (* there were pockets like Hull that
was an exception I believe).

~~~
nsxwolf
I don't recall _free_ calls exactly. In my area we had band plans - there was
an A, B and C band that had different rates. The A band would have a
connection fee (1 cent? 5 cents? can't remember) and no per minute charge. The
other bands charged various rates per minute.

Most people spent most of their BBS time in the A band obviously. That had the
effect of having most of your users being very, very local to your BBS.

~~~
bluGill
It was different in every state. When my parents moved "to the country" they
made sure they were in the Minneapolis calling area, but it didn't occur to
them that the local town where I went to high school wouldn't be in that area.
As a result I could call some people who lived 70 miles away from our house at
no additional charge, but neighbors just 5 miles down the road who I went to
school with were not a free call.

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damianmontero
This is SILLY to be on top. but if YOU want to connect to BBS's that are STILL
online. they're NOT on phone lines. They're on Telnet. No joke. and they're
WONDERFUL for reliving your old ways:

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

~~~
reaperducer
There are still dialup BBSes. I called into one in Wisconsin just a couple of
weeks ago from my TRS-80 Model 100 via acoustic coupler.

Yes, the phone I dialed in with was rotary.

~~~
themodelplumber
Have you documented this with video? I'd love to see it.

~~~
reaperducer
It never occurred to me that it's something so rare that it needs to be
documented. It's just something people do.

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apo
This documentary on BBSs is well worth the time:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnSz-
Hb9LQY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnSz-Hb9LQY)

~~~
damianmontero
now THIS comment and link made MORE sense as a topic that's on TOP of hacker
news than a cute video of a guy calling an old BBS.

That documentary is AMAZING in shedding light into ALL the BBS world we all
knew

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cmrdporcupine
It was my neighbour and his C64 that got me into BBSs back in the 80s, and
even when I finally got a modem for my Atari ST I was somewhat jealous of the
unique characteristics of the C64 BBS community. The PETSCII graphics + colour
aspects of those BBSs were really nice. I don't see any of that in this video,
but there was some really fantastic artwork in the C64 BBS community.

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taborj
Particles BBS is another good Commodore board. I connect using my VIC-20 and a
USR-TCP232-T2.

[http://www.particles.org/particlesbbs/](http://www.particles.org/particlesbbs/)

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jason_slack
When I was 8 or 9 my dad bought both a Vic-20 and a Commodore 64. The fun I
had writing in basic. It used to consume my weekends. I would actually get up
early (5am) to start my projects.

When I was older I ran a BBS (not on a C64) with 2400 baud modems, then 14.4
baud modems when MacMall was having a sale on them for only $89 each. I
learned so much about programming as I extended my BBS's functionality. I
think I still have my notes from my work still.

Had I realized it back then I probably had invented Reddit :-)

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cromwellian
The major BBS software I remember was DMBBS and it’s derivatives, and C-Net,
both of which were very advanced, DMBBS supported PETSCII and was very
colorful and allowed animated posts, and C-NET was modular and supported
loadable modules(games) multiple dialin lines, and later federation.

There were a collection of simpler boards used by pirate sites in the 80s, but
community wise, I felt C-Net 128 was the most advanced BBS.

I spent about a year myself writing a modular BBS in assembly code to try and
beat it, including a ram disk, multitasking with windowing system for sysops,
federation and fast search indexing, but quit to move to Amiga in 1989.

BBS software was really the the Web 0.1 of its day and a very dynamic and
fascinating field to watch develop.

I still have a fondness and warm feeling when I see an acoustic coupler or Vic
Modem and the old Bell phones where you dialed manually and then disconnected
the handset and quickly plugged it into the modem. Love watching Wargames
because of this.

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hoodoof
I wish I knew how to program then like I do now. So much time wasted playing
games instead of making things and being creative.

Don't get me wrong, _some_ games time was an absolute must, but maybe not 100%
computer time as games time.

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linkmotif
I recently watched this incredible documentary about BBSs:
[http://www.bbsdocumentary.com](http://www.bbsdocumentary.com). It’s free to
watch on YouTube or download on torrents.

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VonGuard
If you like this, check out neohabitat.org a relaunch of the first virtual
world. You can play via emulator, or if your C64 is online, you can play with
an original C64.

