61–70 of 99 posts
Tilde Club (http://tilde.club/) was(is?) an attempt to revisit 1990s-era UNIX community tools from a 2010-era perspective.
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…
It... pretty much did. 1994 through 1995 I recall as being the big turning point from where usage went primary on BBS' to primarily on the Internet by around 1996. 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've gotten behind but what I've seen strikes me as reasonably accurate although I wonder to what degree later episodes are sort of overlaying a stereotype of today's silicon valley onto that era. I admittedly worked for a large east coast computer maker at the time but I think the overall busines culture even at smaller companies was a lot more buttoned down at the time.
The first season captured Comdex well enough to give me unwelcome flashbacks :-)
I set up my first BBS in the late 80's. Prediction: You will start seeing more and more locally oriented internet sites as the need hasn't disappeared. It was only bulldozed out of the way to make way for the global village. (God, did I just say global village, what's next, "Information Highway?"
I think Red Dragon and Usurper were the big ones that we played. It's funny that I was actually thinking about Usurper the other day because the best thing to be in that game was an Alchemist which struck me as funny because now that I'm into Elixir that's what the devs like to call themselves. :-)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
acoustic coupled modems anyone?
I'd love to show my kids how mine worked - there's a few dial up BBSes out there still - but I don't have a landline and I've only heard bad things about attempting to use a modem over a VOIP service... and there's the little problem of plugging an old telephone into a PC to access that VOIP service in the first place.
Back then, turbo pascal was a popular language. I knew nothing about programming and found it beyond me to learn it on my own. I tried to find help but failed. I wonder how my life would have changed had I taken up programming at age 12.
Has anyone seen the BBS Documentary? http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/
Oh man, I still remember having friends over to my house when I was a kid and waiting til midnight so we could dial up to the local list of BBSs to take our turns on the text games they had. I think Red Dragon and Usurper were the big ones that we played. It's funny that I was actually thinking about Usurper the other day because the best thing to be in that game was an Alchemist which struck me as funny because now…
Back in the day there were BBSs running on just about any type of microcomputer, CP/M, Apple II/Mac, Atari 8bit/ST, Commodore VIC/64/128/Amiga, TRS-80, etc. Most overviews focus just on the IBM-PC stuff (or what the author used back in the day - like Jason Scott an Apple II user). The smaller micro BBS were their own vibrant little universes. The Commodore 64 boards had a quite a few BBS systems from pretty spartan 6…
hah.