Is it still somehow alive today? Is it archived anywhere?
Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
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Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#2Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#3Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#4FidoNet was great fun. Despite finding it difficult to remember any useful numbers in my life (credit card, NI etc) I can still remember my FidoNet addresses from when I was a youngster.
I'm not sure how I'd feel about an archive though, I'm sure I wrote a lot of childish nonsense on it! like a lot of things, perhaps best left as a happy memory...
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#52:320/104 represent!
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#6Yes, but only what was mirrored to usenet: https://usenetarchives.com/groups.php?c=fido
But usenetarchives has had some enshittification happen.
This one still has some of the more fun files: http://textfiles.com/bbs/FIDONET/
There is also a Giganews dump on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/giganews And this one: https://archive.org/details/usenet-fido
Google stopped being useful for usenet a while ago but still has some if you can find it.
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#7Get off my lawn!
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#8Of 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.
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#9I do remember. :) Posted the same question ten years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12216932 The archives are almost completely gone and only a small fraction is available on internet. Perhaps some still exist on old harddrives - but I wouldn't count on it. Disk space wasn't cheap back then.
Re: Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?
#10I remember, and ran a node for a while. I think it is alive today in spirit through forums like this. The original needs and limitations that drove the creation of Fidonet have been dead for decades though.