31–40 of 99 posts
Here's the BBS documentary miniseries - worth a watch either for nostalgia or learning about how electronic communication worked pre-internet: https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary
I wish there was some way to convey the excitement of getting online back then, and to recapture that magical feeling. Try to imagine sitting at your dining room table in the dead of night, and it's completely silent, except for the (muted) sounds of your modem. And then holding your breath in the hopes that the BBS answers, and you don't get a busy signal. And then finally when those colorful characters started scrolling across the CRT screen... It was magical... I don't have any other word for it.
I remember it being pretty crazy that I could play BRE or LORD with people, even across BBSes in some cases.
And each BBS had a different setup for LORD. There were some that seemingly just tried to install every possible in game module, and it was the most broken thing ever...
Man those were the days. I was just barely old enough to be able to get into them before they died. Anyone remember the door games? I remember it being pretty crazy that I could play BRE or LORD with people, even across BBSes in some cases. And each BBS had a different setup for LORD. There were some that seemingly just tried to install every possible in game module, and it was the most broken thing ever...
Fidonet always sounded interesting but I never knew anyone who used it. Only a few of the local boards participated and none of my (local) friends used it. Downside of Metcalfe's law, I guess. If you could play Global War over Fidonet, though, I'd have loved that!
I was too young to use BBS when it started but the topic fascinates me, especially after having read Hackers and The Innovators. Not to hijack the topic, but has anyone watched the show Halt and Catch Fire (available on Netflix)? I'm curious how accurately that show captures the culture of that era. Would love any additional reading recommendations around BBS' emergence as well. Already bookmarked the documentary ser…
The thing is, the history of that era is huge and has many parts. The BBS Documentary covers some of it, but IMO it has a lot of flaws and underwhelming segments given the subject matter. I personally know a few people who were in that video and I can say there's nothing inaccurate or bad about what they said, but I don't feel like Jason really "got" it that well. It's better than nothing and I appreciate it was made, but it's a bit ambitious and thus needs to gloss over things.
I'd probably look into reading about some of the following which relates some to the different parts of the BBS era:
* BBS Software w/ interesting stories - Clark Development, Wildcat, Renegade, Telegard, WWIV, Oblivion/2, Forum...
* ANSI Scene - ACID, ICE mainly, then the smaller groups like Dark, Fire, etc.
* Demo Scene - Future Crew, TRSi, etc.
* Warez Scene - Razor1911, PWA, DoD, Pentagram, TRSi, THG, Fairlight, Paradox
* Music Scene - Trackers, MODs, S3M, XM, music groups, artists (Purple Motion, Doctor Awesome, etc.), Sound cards (AdLib, Roland, Sound Blaster), MIDI
* HAM Radio WRT to BBSs
* BBSs and the Internet - Mail gateways, usenet, IRC
* Phreaking - Captain Crunch, War Dialing, Boxes (blue, red, etc.), and more...
* Cracking - Mostly overlap with warez
* Emulation - Overlap with warez a lot, but there was a pretty interesting ROM dumping scene and early NES emulation scene starting
* Alternative Lit/Anarchy/Etc - Spreading this kind of stuff was really popular and most of it is now "illegal" per many laws in western countries. Most famous is Anarchist's Cookbook, the first version.
* Early Internet and versions thereof
* IRC, Usenet, Gopher, Archie, FTP, etc. is all interesting as some of those things rose and fell during these times
* Programming Languages - C, C++, Basic, Pascal, Smalltalk, Delphi, VB for a range of where some of the industry was going or didn't go. Obviously many more.
* Platforms/OS - IBM, Tandy, Amiga, C64, Atari ST, CP/M, Unix, HP/UX, Windows, Dos, DRDos, OS/2, OS/2 Warp, BeOs (later), Novell Netware, Apple II/Mac, Sparc, SGI (Irix), Desqview (used to run multi-node BBS sometimes) and many more.
* Law Enforcement Operations - Raids (ex: Steve Jackson Games), Busts, etc.
The above list is not meant to be comprehensive, just to guide you what articles, books, videos, and such that might turn up if you search for some of these things. It's a long road.
Regarding Halt and Catch Fire, I think there are things about it that ring true, but it's not so accurate. People get things done way too fast, act too much like we do today, and the office culture feels off to me. They really don't capture some of the more innovative cultures at various big companies of the time. Not even the more crazy ones like Atari's old office, though there are clear nods to companies if you pay attention. It'd be a long post to dissect it, but the short answer is no, but it's not like I experienced all there was to experience. It feels to me more like they took a lot of real things at the time, composited them together for story purposes, put on some 80s clothes, and otherwise threw things out the window. I do enjoy the show anyway though for even daring to touch that material.
Anyway, I hope that gets you started on a long, interesting path and I could add tons of more bullets to that list.
Here's my funny BBS story: I was a heavy user in the early 90s, but in 1994 I got recruited into the military and was sent to a remote corner of the world where we had one official-business-only phone line for about 250 people, so no BBS scene. I came back in 1997, met up with an old friend, and inquired about where to get a current BBS list for the town. And of course he laughed and said there was no such thing anym…
At least in terms of people who I wanted to talk to were doing. By mid 1995 I was pretty much Internet only other than to dial-in a few times a week to check a few local boards I participated in.
I was too young to use BBS when it started but the topic fascinates me, especially after having read Hackers and The Innovators. Not to hijack the topic, but has anyone watched the show Halt and Catch Fire (available on Netflix)? I'm curious how accurately that show captures the culture of that era. Would love any additional reading recommendations around BBS' emergence as well. Already bookmarked the documentary ser…
I'm not sure I could point you to anything specific since I lived through it and never bothered to look, but there seems to be some alright stuff scattered on wikipedia. You can also learn a lot just downloading old ansi packs from http://sixteencolors.net/ and reading the news and info files in each pack. The thing is, the history of that era is huge and has many parts. The BBS Documentary covers some of it, but IMO…
One thing I will add is that the energy and excitement was just so much more genuine and the passion was at a different level than today. I'm not saying there aren't extremely talented and energetic people these days - there are actually more simply due to the sheer size of the industry - but the density of them is far less. The self-selection filter was much stronger back then and while most folks were relatively well paid it wasn't mostly about chasing VC funds and hitting the next IPO. It was about "holy crap, I'm actually being paid to do things with computers!" - at least my tiny slice of the experience.
Things also were a lot more "simple" for lack of a better term. Today I'm not sure how I would have gotten my foot in the door and made myself minimally useful enough to start learning skills and gaining reputation (which then later led to a career) simply due to the sheer number of layers of abstraction on top of everything you have to punch through.
It was certainly a simpler and much wilder time though!
I often remark that people love reimplementing BBSs badly, and a fraction of the functionality. Of course it's not an entirely fair comparison because of the scope, different UI/nature of the web, audience size, and speed of communication to name a few issues. It's important to note that your average decent BBS had most if not all of the following: * Files - Often meticulously organized, with sometimes user voting or…
I care. I'd be interested to see your list and notes, even if only to offer some encouragement.
Here's some open source BBSs I had bookmarked:
* Oblivion 2 XRM => Obv 2 remake, C++, looks OK but no killer new features really and uses Boost - https://github.com/M-griffin/Oblivion2-XRM
* Enigma 1/2 => Looks interesting and possibly the best of the bunch, but also more of the same. Good ANSI support. node js-based, so major downvotes from me here - https://github.com/NuSkooler/enigma-bbs
* x84 => Python SSH/Telnet/BBS Core => Interesting, but I didn't like the code on code review, and I think both C++ and node js are better choices. Forked a few times too, so need to see what's up - https://github.com/jquast/x84
* Synchronet => I don't know much about the modern version of this, but I hated the old one. It looks quite dated, but is updated somewhat it seem - http://www.synchro.net/
* WWIV => I wonder why this cockroach keeps living, sorry. It's written in C++ and the new version may be good, I don't know since I didn't try it. What I do know is at one point I co-sysop'd someone's WWIV board and learned how bad it really is. Truly one of the worst of the popular BBS softwares ever IMO. Perhaps a base for a derivative work though - https://github.com/wwivbbs/wwiv
Some BBSs that I am relatively, but not 100% sure there is source floating around for:
* WWIV - There are 2 sources of the old, 1 Pascal and 1 C++ . The core is not so bad for the time, it's just the implementation further up is garbage.
* Oblivion/2 - I think 2.3 or something like that. Source is pretty awful, but it looked good out of the box and had lots of add-ons from art scene especially.
* Renegade - I believe this was leaked at some point, maybe official release later? It was backdoored as well for some versions. Based on Telegard.
* Forum - Used to build lots of other software. Lookup "Forum Hacks" for a ton of other source. This includes Vision, Vision/2, Vision/X. All are insanely hackable and/or backdoored. There's also Oblivion/2, Emulex, Emulex-2, and Celerity based on this I believe, and many more.
* Telegard - Based on WWIV but with monster spaghetti of Pascal, C++, and ASM. No real reason to study this unless you want to create your own hack on it, which I don't recommend. Bunch of hacks on this as well, like Renegade.
* PCBoard - Not good source (a mess), but was the creme-de-la-creme of non-underground boards and for warez boards (customized). Supported its own Pascal-like language (PPL). I think version 15 source was leaked, or at least I somehow had it/have it (somewhere). Also very extensible compared to others.
* AmiExpress - I believe source is floating around for this. Was great on Amiga and oft-copied in art scene/pcboard setups.
Other:
* BBS Archive - Bunch of source here - http://archives.thebbs.org/ra103c.htm
* Old BBS Software List - http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/
* Mystic BBS - I ran this for a bit to mess around for a few months long ago. It was never the best of the best, but always pretty good if you want something like Obv/2 but better. It seems like it's been updated a lot since and still going. Didn't find source and license is marked as some sort of proprietary freeware. Supports SSH, telnet, etc - http://www.mysticbbs.com/
In general, there's also a lot of source floating around for C64, Amiga, Atari ST, and CP/M and it's even more nostalgic than the rest. I've seen the source of tons of BBSs and they are notoriously a mess. The most common languages you'll encounter are Pascal/Turbo Pascal, C, C++, and assembler (per platform).
I'm falling asleep, but plenty more floating around. Hopefully that is a start. A few final tips
* If you want to run door games, be careful, lots of infected binaries.
* If you are running old stuff and get a hacked version of Doorway itself to run door games or a fossil driver because your BBS needs it, these also are commonly infected. Funny enough I once wasted several days trying to get a copy of Doorway to work on a friend's board, not realizing he pirated it and it was specifically infected with the Taipan virus. This copy seems to be everywhere, so clean it and it will work or find a different copy.
* Do not run any Forum or Telegard hacks to the outside world.
* If you want to build a nice BBS that's via the Internet, start with the socket side of things and don't build on a rotten core. You can do a lot with what's available on the JVM (Java, Clojure), Go, Rust, C++, Erlang, Lisp, and any language that supports concurrency to a decent amount. Don't use PHP, Python, Ruby, etc. because you're just handicapping your BBS from the start.
* If you really want to emulate the experience, you need to get ANSI support correct, and support the full spectrum of codes, fonts, and so on. Get a handle on code pages and differences between platforms like DOS vs Amiga. Some of the links above cover this pretty well.