

Ask YC: How many people here were regional BBS users back in the day? - thorax

Just struck me that maybe the BBS era aligned with a lot of news.YC's hacker beginnings with online computer usage.<p>I, for one, began initially with a national Commodore community called QLink. I ran up ridiculous bills before hopping into the regional BBS scene, where I met my eventual wife and almost all of my most enduring friends.<p>What about you? Or are all of you too young for that era?
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SwellJoe
Too young?!?! Hah.

I ran my own, of course. Customized version of Color 64 on my Commodore 64, in
Greenville, SC. A couple of my friends ran part-time boards (usually 8PM to
8AM), but I paid for a second phone line so I could run 24/7, and I had a
second system for my personal use. A stack of 1571 disk drives, 1200 baud
modem, and memory expansion. I lusted after a 10GB hard disk, but never had a
hard disk until the Amiga days a few years later. I dabbled with a PC board,
as well, running...I think it was Wildcat. But it wasn't as much fun to play
with. So it was only up for a few weeks.

By the time I moved from South Carolina to Houston, I was an Amiga user, and
so spent a lot of time writing and trading MODs with other Amiga nuts in the
area. A year later ('93) I started spending time on the Internet, and never
started another BBS--redirected the effort into my first website.

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gibsonf1
I wrote the code for moondog BBS (Santa Barbara, CA) - using all but about 10
bytes of memory on a Commodore 64 with a floppy drive. I invented a db system
that made us look like a big IBM system. It was really great fun (coded it
while in HS).

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brk
I was a BBS user, and also ran a multi-line TAG board (you probably wouldn't
know TAG unless you were from Michigan) for a while. Was a FIDOnet node, and
was active on the CyberCrime (I think that was the name of it) that some guy
out of FL (I think) administered, plus a few other 'nets that I've long since
forgotten.

During my short college stint in '91 I found one of the main patch panels for
our campus and patched an unused line to my dorm room to run a small BBS out
of the dorm for a while. The dorms were setup then so that 2 rooms shared 1
phone line (and 1 bathroom as well). My dorm room had the shared line, a
dedicated line, and "access" to the phone lines of the room above us, as the
inhabitants never seemed to be there on weekends and it was a waste to fight
over phone usage when there was a free line just sitting there...

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Prrometheus
There were regional BBSes?

That’s funny. One of my favorite software ideas is to create means for local
communication so that people can form actual human real-space relationships,
including marriage and enduring friendship. Wait long enough and old things
become new again.

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tjr
I used a local BBS set up for Amiga users. Didn't really use it for
communicating with others, mainly for file uploads/downloads... freeware games
and what-not.

I remember being so excited to have access to "literally thousands of files!"
Back then it was totally awesome. :-)

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fubar
Hahahaha, yes indeed. Cracked a number of games removing copy protection,
phreaked for some long-distance pickups & drops, ran wildcat, hotline, etc...

The good old days...

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tthurman
I started out with British Telecom's Prestel, moved on to a VAX-based BBS that
all the kids in my town had accounts on, moved on to local Wildcat! BBSs and
ended up on a telnet-based BBS (which has been around since before JANET
supported TCP/IP) and I'm still there. I did meet my wife online, but not on a
BBS (and not on news, and not on the web).

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dgabriel
I was totally into the BBS scene in high school. There were three run by
friends within our local calling area, and I remember dialing & redialing each
of the three, getting a busy signal, cursing my timing, and trying again.

I spent waaaaay too much time playing TradeWars back then...

~~~
Bluem00
TradeWars is still alive and kicking if you're interested. Now you just need a
telnet client and a server. I assume you have the former, so here are some
links to the latter: <http://oregonsouth.com/ice9/> and
<http://www.thestardock.com/>

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mechanical_fish
I used BBSes in Columbus, OH and remember them... fairly vaguely. Not much of
a user until the multi-user systems came along, with 8 or even 16 modems at a
time, on multiple phone lines -- those were much more interesting.

I remember that in my freshman year of college one of the primary uses of my
awesome 10Mbit fiberoptic dorm-room Ethernet connection was to telnet to an
open machine at Ohio State that happened to have an outgoing modem that you
could use to make local BBS phone calls in Columbus. No password required.
Man, those were innocent times on the Internet.

I still find it painfully ironic that I had such great broadband connectivity
in college, from 1989 to 1993, when HTTP hadn't been invented yet and all
there was to do was FTP, Telnet, and eventually Gopher.

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phaedrus
I think all of the people who were too young have simply not commented, so
I'll just throw this in: I was too young (I'm 24 now) - or at least if there
were BBS's going on, no one I knew, knew about them. How late were they still
in vogue?

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brianmckenzie
Oh yeah - I was a SYSOP on two BBSes in the St. Louis area, one of which was
my own. This was in the early-mid 90's, just before internet became widely
available.

I met my high school sweetheart on my BBS. Man, those were the days.

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bct
I was pretty young at the time, but I got in at the very tail end. There was a
BBS for farmers called FBMInet that my parents were on. I don't remember much
about it (except that there were lots of pirated games). I still use the same
password that I chose there for sites I don't care about.

My first web access was via a BBS run by an organization called Edmonton
Freenet. For a (very) small yearly fee you could dial in and use (amongst
other things) lynx and pine. Very rustic, but considering that a decade or so
before we were on a party line...

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acrylicist
I remember the fun days of CMBBS, C-Base, and later everyone making some nice
BBS systems, it was cool to see what you could do with the Commodore Basic,
BLITZing it up and hosting it. Some of the older BBS systems rival the
features provided by communities today greatly. Then there was the continuous
dialing up other regional boards over and over again until you got an answer.

There were some really nice games in the limited way of BBSing, a premonition
of MMORPG's and other network strategy games that addict people today.

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notphilatall
Mobile, Alabama had a lively BBS scene in the early to mid nineties. I spent
my teenage years on various boards and even ran one for about a year.

User acquisition with BBSes is much harder than websites; it taught me a lot.

BBSes, specifically the "Mobile Area Freenet", were also my introduction to
the internet. Gopher was awesome at the time, and I flipped when I saw the
first graphical browser and figured out how to establish SLIP connections with
WinSock.

Kids these days have it too easy... ;)

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deathbyzen
Heh. I was. But I'm no hacker.

I live in the Chicago NW Burbs and I think the most frequently visted BBS for
me was Jake's File Exchange and second place was probably North By Northwest.

Jake's File Exchange was where I got my first taste of warez and where I spent
WAY too much time playing Legend of The Red Dragon.

Sigh... to be young again.

(This was with a Packard Bell 486DX2 and a 14.4k modem. LIGHTNING FAST!!! for
the time. I used RipTerm to connect. This was around '94 I believe)

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mixmax
I'm not too young for that era (37) but I have never used a BBS. Didn't even
know how to operate a computer before I got one in 1996...

I caught up pretty quickly though.

~~~
sarosh
I am 10 years your junior and I had the privilege of playing on BBS (512) in
1994-1995. I was enthralled with my old Packard Bell. True, it was mostly a
file dump board (what wasn't back then), but it was fun nonetheless.

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monkkbfr
I started something called the OneNet Member Network
(<http://www2.onenet.org:8080/index.htm>), a macintosh store and forward
system baesd out of my garage in Los Altos when I was working at Apple
Computer. Wired article here:
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/eword.html?pg=13>

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carpal
I was on the Index BBS in Atlanta, as well as gobs of smaller ones. I was a
L.O.R.D. addict, so I'd run out my turns on one BBS and then hop to the next.

~~~
johns
When I didn't know what exactly went into running a BBS I paid $15 for a
L.O.R.D. license in the early or mid-90s. A couple years back I thought I'd
try it out again and couldn't find my key. I emailed the company and they sent
it over almost immediately. I couldn't believe they were still around.

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eznet
Oh, the days of a good tribbs board and L.O.R.D.

I frequented the Vagabond's Oasis and Galaxy BBS here in the Alabama, US.
Also, I ran a small friend/family bbs, The Dismal Light, after 11:00pm on my
families second line.

I kinda miss the days of the BBS and door games. I also remember the
excitement associated with the prospect of the Internet coming to town - with
pictures and everything!!!

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johns
There was a local paper called ComputerNews (it may still be around) that had
multiple pages of BBS numbers listed. My brother and I would just keep trying
each one until we got through and found a Legend of the Red Dragon game we
could get in. Nothing was worse than being in the middle of the game when the
connection time limit expired.

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dehowell
Oh, man... I spent a happy fourth and fifth grade dialing into Richmond, VA
area BBSes to download shareware games. Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, and
many others... That lasted until my older brother got a dial up account with
his university and let me surf the net with lynx on the family 386.

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mattrepl
Oh yeah, downloading the latest shareware games (Wacky Wheels, Duke Nukem,
Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit, etc.) and playing Barren Realms Elite, Falcon Eye,
L.O.R.D., and TradeWars.

Was a member of several BBSes in the 703 area code. The BizZ BuzZ and R/C
Connection are where I spent most of my time.

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asmosoinio
Sure! I used to chat and to "hang around" local BBSes all night long in
'93-'95 (or so). I was using an IBM 486 DX 33, and a 14100 modem. This was in
Finland, I don't know how much before my active time the BBSes were alive but
I think they slowed down a lot afterwards.

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ruslan
I used to run my own BBS back in early 90th based on OS/2 and Maximus, it had
an 8-lines modem pool, it was a Fidonet node hence was loaded with tons of
usenet news and Fido echos and no-one knew what TCP/IP was and that was tough!
Oh, I love those old days... :~-[

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pibefision
Century 21 BBS. +54-9-11-4632-7070 I was sysop of on of the first Argentinean
BBS. Nice times!

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earle
BBS The Firm FTW! 2af / LOD

;)

~~~
apathy
Niiiice. THG ate your lunch though ;-)

Emulex FTW!

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rationalbeaver
It was a BBS that first introduced me to the beauty of multiplayer FPS
goodness as well as the infamous MUD, Legend of the Red Dragon. My friend and
I used to play Doom on a local BBS using a program called MILK. Those were
good days.

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yrashk
Was running BBS and FidoNet node (mostly on OS/2 and Linux) back in 90th in
Ukraine.

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timcederman
I ran a BBS in Brisbane, Australia which was fairly successful. Still shows up
on some current Fidonet listings :) <http://bbs.ricta.net/zone3ip/n640.html>

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aykall
That is funny!! I was sure very young back than but I love to log on the BBS
back in Brazil. There wasn't a lot of them but it was great fun to spend hours
doing nothing just making the phone bill go bigger and bigger

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comatose_kid
Yeah, I was on local Amiga BBS's in the 613 area code. Fun times.

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davidw
When I got started, there were BBS'es, but there was also a local internet
"onramp", which was, I decided, way cooler than screwing around dialing into a
bunch of BBS'es.

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rplevy
There were a bunch of bulletin boards that I used as a teenager in
upstate/central NY. My favorite in terms of bulletin board software were the
the ones using Citadel.

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mightybyte
I never ran a BBS (although I thought about it), but I played SRE, BRE,
TradeWars, L.O.R.D, and Falcon's Eye. I played SRE the most. Would love to
play it again.

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Flemlord
Guilty, regional and national. Quite the little phreak.

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christefano
Once when I was a teenager, my mother went on a business trip for a week and
came back to an enormous phone bill. That's all I'm willing to say.

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wheels
I ran one using Osiris XLT up until 1994 or so. I remember mowing lawns to
save up for a ($200) 14.4 modem and to pay for my private line. :-)

~~~
thorax
Now that I think about it, "having your own BBS" back in the day is a lot like
"having your own domain/site" nowadays. Pretty much everyone wanted to do it,
but there were a lot of lonely boards out there.

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savrajsingh
Yeah I was there in BBS world. I would just hate getting that busy signal and
re-dailing again and again... Thank god for the internets.

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ten-seven
Not too young for that. I actually used BBS software, sort of, to run a UUCP
node at home and receive low-volume mailing list digests.

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dstillz
Too young. My early scene was meeting up with the local kids to swap BASIC
programs, pirated games, and 8-bit video game cartridges.

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doubleplus
I was on BBS's whenever I wasn't in high school in the early 90's. Met my
first 2 girlfriends on there. 619 a/c - San Diego.

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borga
I used for a couple of years in Brazil.

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snowbird122
I used a BBS in the 806 area code on my commodore 64. Anyone ever play Empire?
Fun game.

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thenotself
Hah.. I ran a Renegade board for a short period of time called NexxusOne in
Toronto

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colortone
I was there on the 2400 baud, wishing for that 9600 baud and a 486

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jawngee
Ran a six line BBS off Renegade in Minneapolis back in 89-92.

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webframp
hell, they're still around! hehe,
<http://members.aol.com/sfritz2994/pdxbbs.htm>

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webwright
I was a SYSOP. Ran several BBS's on Macs.

~~~
dhimes
I used DC-area Mac BBS and something called the General Electric Network
Information Exchange (GENIE). Way, way back '85-86.

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tk12
Was couriering for quite some time :)

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drm237
local Edinboro BBS - Bases Loaded in 814 area code.

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epi0Bauqu
Sysop in ATL.

