
The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems - guiambros
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-lost-civilization-of-dial-up-bulletin-board-systems/506465/?single_page=true
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jrnichols
I still remember the BBS days quite fondly. They're one of those things that
you talk about in that "Ahh, the good old days" way.

My first computer after returning to the United States was an Apple Performa
467, and a Global Village 2400 baud modem. I found the legendary Mac app Zterm
to dial into some local BBSs in the Sacramento area and then again when I
moved to Seattle. I spent more hours playing Galactic Empire (I liked the
Major BBS) than I can even remember. The thing I loved about the BBS community
(at least in my experience) was that it was usually local, and unless they
told you who they were, you didn't care (or know) who was behind the screen
name. They were just another user that you chatted with about whatever was
going on. People were using the Teleconference feature and it was a common
thing to find that all of the lines were used by people logged into Tele.
Sometimes there was that one user in MajorMud or Kyrandia or something but
most people were in tele. Then someone would say "Coffee in 10" and that was
the queue to disconnect, hop in the car, and drive over to Java City at 18th &
Capital.

Good times. Met some people in the BSB scene that I'm still friends with, 20
years later.

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lioeters
This article brings back some memories of pre-Internet days. 12 years old with
an NEC PC-9801, dialing up a local BBS of techies and motorcycle enthusiasts.
This led to getting deep into a BBS written in Pascal, called WWIV, printing
out the code (as thick as a book) and porting it to Japanese. My goodness, I
just found that the project still exists!
([http://www.wwivbbs.org/](http://www.wwivbbs.org/))

"Lost civilization" is a nice metaphor, there is certainly an archaeological
aspect to these surviving artifacts.

