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Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

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Re: Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

#91

Post by optionalparens »

evanelias wrote: post #79
optionalparens wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My notes are pretty scattered. 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…

Nice summary, but I'd recommend giving Synchronet a more thorough look. I'd easily wager that a majority of current telnet boards run it. When it relaunched it was miles ahead of the other open source efforts, due to the number of built-in internet enabled servers (telnet, www, ftp, rlogin), support for multiple platforms (windows, linux), and use of JavaScript with a custom object model for scripting. Some people ac…

Oh wow, Major BBS. That brings back memories. I thought both Major BBS and Wildcat were garbage.

I am sure Synchronet is solid in many ways in the new version. The problem I have with a lot of software is there are big drop-offs across many of the categories I'd evaluate at least classic BBS software on.

These qualities includes but are not limited to:

* Messages - Message formats, compression, support for sync/distribution optionally, message interface

* Files - Warez boards often correlated highly with this. Things like tools for organizing files, scaling out to large numbers of files, and so on.

* Protocol Support - Does it support or can support be easily added? Ymodem, Xmodem, Zmodem, Kermit, BiModem. all are examples. Moreover, how good is the support and is it stable? Does it prevent things like Leech Zmodem? This is all less of a concern these days though obviously.

* Core Stability - Can it handle a lot of nodes, connections, users, without falling on its face? Most of the "boring" software is pretty good here, while things like the software used by the art scene or warez scene often is awful here. Even in newer stuff, a lot of software leaks resources over time or gets weird bugs when left running, which is the point of a BBS.

* Chat - Does it support multi-node chat? Can you change chat and such?

* Sysop Tools - Monitoring, paging, alerts, stats, etc.

* Add-Ons/Plug-ins - Lots of software popular in underground also was good here. Does it have an object model, programming language, scripting interface? If so, are there actually things in the wild for it? PCBoard was huge in this area, so much so it made up for many faults because of this.

* Games or other app add-ons - In the old days, supporting door games and at least a core of some games was a must. One or more of LoRD, Trade Wars, BRE, SRE were generally musts.

* Security - Does it allow adding virus scanners and such? Does it check input thoroughly? Is it or was it ever backdoored?

* OS Support - This is more something I'd judge new boards on, but in the old days choice was often determined just by what you had so it's worth mentioning. There wasn't much that was cross-platform and also good.

* UI - Can you customize the UI? Can you inject things dynamically using the API or even just simple things like MCI/Software specific codes? Can you do things like adjust key mappings? Does it support various terminal modes properly (lot of new ones fail here)?

I'll stop there, but the point is that very few if any pieces of software do well across all those. For as much as I value things like stability, so many other things used to make or break your board. Somehow we were a lot more OK with downtime then, but less forgiving if things lacked functionality. This is just my opinion of course.

Re: Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

#92

Post by optionalparens »

beamatronic wrote: post #32

I got into BBSes when I was in maybe 8th grade. Because we didn't have call waiting, and thus it would tie up the phone line, I could only do BBSing at night. Until I got a long extension cable from Radio Shack, I had to move the computer ( Commodore 64 ) to the dining room table every night when everyone had gone to sleep and I could finally BBS! I wish there was some way to convey the excitement of getting online b…

Funny enough, many BBSs were only open at night. Usually it was because someone only had one line, but also sometimes it was because a kid was hijacking the second line (presumably).

You would think such BBSs would have failed, but many were super popular in spite or even because of it. As a whole though, the bigger and better ones were multi-node and always up though.

Re: Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

#93

Post by ghaff »

evanelias wrote: post #82
bhaumik wrote: post #20

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…

re: Halt and Catch Fire -- it's an enjoyable show, but the accuracy seems to get worse with each season. The latest season in particular had a lot of things that made me cringe. I wish AMC had put the same effort into it as Mad Men, in terms of attempting to be an extremely accurate period piece. I suppose the viewership for HaCF didn't get large enough to warrant it, and/or the showrunners just aren't up to it?

As I wrote elsewhere, the first season felt pretty accurate to me. Perhaps arguably too accurate because they effectively painted themselves into the corner of making yet another IBM PC clone. (I initially thought they were going to go down the route of being a fictionalized Apple rather than a, somewhat, Compaq.)

But, yeah, what I've seen of more recent seasons feels more like aspects of Silicon Valley of 2015 startup culture meets 1980s tech.

Re: Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

#94

Post by Dowwie »

VLM wrote: post #81
Dowwie wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what about Global Wars? :)

http://www.tradewars.com/default.html In the late 80s I used to have whiteboards all over my bedroom with various graphical trade routes in my local tradewars game. From memory the solar systems were all numbers so you'd go 3-6-99-8 or whatever. Around the same time a local set up a machine with UUCP email and usenet. The same people are on rec.pyrotechnics today as were on in 1989, probably because they're FBI honey…

you were so l33t with your hpacv.. what happened to you?

Re: Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

#95

Post by rasz_pl »

nsxwolf wrote: post #84
rasz_pl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there you go http://www.whence.com/minimodem/

Looks good, but I want to physically connect the landline phone as an audio device too... that solution seems elusive. I could probably assemble a circuit to do it, though I'm not sure I could design one. I have this Linksys VOIP router that I used to use on my old landline to interface with an Asterisk server, but I don't think the firmware supports this use case.

two laptops next to each other will work fine for a presentation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpaD0BX9yZM&t=16m53s

Re: Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

#96

Post by johnfjacobi »

beamatronic wrote: post #32

I got into BBSes when I was in maybe 8th grade. Because we didn't have call waiting, and thus it would tie up the phone line, I could only do BBSing at night. Until I got a long extension cable from Radio Shack, I had to move the computer ( Commodore 64 ) to the dining room table every night when everyone had gone to sleep and I could finally BBS! I wish there was some way to convey the excitement of getting online b…

BBSses, call waiting, Radio Shack, Commodore 64... Damn man, you hit all the points.

Re: Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

#97

Post by anexprogrammer »

ghaff wrote: post #75
anexprogrammer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sense of community was very real with BBS's. Real friendships developed with people you would likely never meet. SYSOPs cared about the people who dialled in to their little hobby project. Many organised meet-ups and BBQs. Memories for some of the phone bills are less warm though! It all disappeared incredibly fast in the mid 90s as ISPs and the net grew. Social is, ironically, far less personal with none of that…

>Social is, ironically, far less personal with none of that sense of community. I think that's overstating things. I can certainly think of a fair number of exceptions in my case. One thing that could be different in the BBS world, however, was that there often were organized meetups and BBQs because the BBS users tended to be clustered locally because of phone costs.

Where I've encountered community since it's been for the activity (eg regional scuba forum - natural to organise meets, etc). I've never encountered any arising from the medium since.

OK I'm from a smaller country (UK), many BBS's were national, but still organised BBQs. The differentiation was usually for the platform rather than geography.

Re: Social Media’s Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board System

#99

Post by bhaumik »

optionalparens wrote: post #37
bhaumik wrote: post #20

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…

Thank you - I've bookmarked this comment :)
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