I'm too young to have used it myself but from what I know it was huge in Russia in the 90s.
Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
21–30 of 72 posts
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#22yes! don't remember my number, Zone 4 for sure (Argentina).
Exchanging messages with people on the other side of the world felt like magic at the time (even though it took many hours/days for a msg to round-trip)
I also run "Sudaka's BBS" based on Maximus/2, with many interactive "apps" I'd developed using Maximus' proprietary C-like language. Great high-school times.
I can still hear my parents complaining about my monopolizing the phone line every night :-)
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#23Of course! There was a time we were encouraged to be friendly with Russia, and many Russian devs were on Fidonet. This was actually how some I knew were recruited to work for western companies.
Greetings from a Russian, still friendly despite all the political shitshow :)
We spent so many nights with my friend (15 yo in 1996, the peak FidoNet) connecting to BBSes over phone modem, soaking up all the Fido lore, humour and lingo, dreaming of obtaining us a .point for ourselves somehow. To that end, we visited a number of local "sysopkas" and "pointovkas" (sysop/point parties), making friends with actual point owners who gathered in a local park to booze some and have fun.
What a blessed time it was! The future seemed spotless and bright...
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#24PunterNet, the C64 BBS by Steve Punter, was far more popular for a time. The C64 was the most sold computer of all time, and may still be.
It wasn't until later that clones existed and became popular, and then FidoNet dwarfed PunterNet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64
It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling desktop computer model of all time.
I used to run a board. Was beyond fun.
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#25I also remember using the BlueWave offline mail reader:
* https://en.everybodywiki.com/Blue_Wave_(mail_reader)
As well as the QWK and SOUP file formats (the latter when I started on Usenet as well):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWK_(file_format)
* https://web.archive.org/web/20080509070947/http://combee.tec...
And Tradewars 2002 'door game':
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Wars
* https://breakintochat.com/wiki/TradeWars_2002
* https://breakintochat.com/wiki/BBS_door_game
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_(bulletin_board_system)
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#26[flagged]
One thing I miss about HN type forums is the "here is what you haven't read yet". When an article has 100 comments and I've already read 75 it is rarely worth my time wading through to see the new ones. Even though I know from experience that writing a good insightful comment takes a lot of time. Most of what I'm missing will not be very insightful, but I'm sure I'm missing some of the most insightful comments. It also discourages me (and I assume others) from writing a long insightful response at times because I most of the people who would be interested will see it.
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#27FidoNet was a simply wonderful innovation, and it was a reflection of the creativity of its author - Tom Jennings - and his views of community and identity.
https://grokipedia.com/page/tom_jennings
Tom was working on FidoNet in 1984, the same time my Iris co-founders and I had begun work on what became Lotus Notes. Architecturally, those of us who were working on collaborative systems in that era were shaped by the decentralized architecture of USEnet - inspired and motivated by the observation that a community could be brought together by something technologically as simple as uucp.
Both dial-up focused, Tom took this in the direction of a decentralized BBS, while I took it in the direction of masterless replicated nosql databases we called 'notefiles'. Identity being at the core, Tom was focused more on public community while we focused on private collaboration.
It was such an exciting time for emergent decentralization, shaped by a strong dose of 60's idealism.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21670035
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hackers_Conference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Compute...
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#28FidoNet was a simply wonderful innovation, and it was a reflection of the creativity of its author - Tom Jennings - and his views of community and identity. https://grokipedia.com/page/tom_jennings Tom was working on FidoNet in 1984, the same time my Iris co-founders and I had begun work on what became Lotus Notes. Architecturally, those of us who were working on collaborative systems in that era were shaped by the d…
> Tom Jennings - and his views of community and identity. https://grokipedia.com/page/tom_jennings
Human version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Jennings
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#29FidoNet was a simply wonderful innovation, and it was a reflection of the creativity of its author - Tom Jennings - and his views of community and identity. https://grokipedia.com/page/tom_jennings Tom was working on FidoNet in 1984, the same time my Iris co-founders and I had begun work on what became Lotus Notes. Architecturally, those of us who were working on collaborative systems in that era were shaped by the d…
> Tom Jennings - and his views of community and identity. https://grokipedia.com/page/tom_jennings Human version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Jennings
[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#30For those who want to learn more, there is a BBS documentary: https://archive.org/details/bbs_documentary