A look at my BBS Software from '93

Interesting - wonder what they did to piss off Bluecoat (Content Blocked (content_filter_denied), Content Category: "Malicious Sources/Malnets")

Right. Something about hardware and OS staying stable long enough so that people could focus on creating new interesting software -- instead of just trying to keep up with ever changing APIs and constantly searching StackOverflow for ready made solutions.

Sometimes severe constraints drive the really beautiful solutions.

I miss the ANSI art scene. I remember 800# access that would live and die on the daily. That and phone bills.

It is, but there was also a certain amount of vanity to it. If you had the cash, you were the dude. You could watch as an entire region's (or even entire countries') mail flowed through your system. You probably walked down into your office and watched your busy Fido server (or servers) and a sweet stack of USR Courier external modems blinking away (you never wasted time on cheap gear) and when you participated in group mailing lists, you probably signed your e-mails with a sig that said something like "Bob Smith, Southern Star, 1:10/2", your address being a coveted and sweet, low-digit number. You were respected for your technical mastery of the system and in the very political world of Fido, few would challenge you.

I dreamed of running a big Fido hub. Sadly, Fido vanished before I reached the income level where I could have a bank of phone lines making long-distance calls all day and not worry about it. Just running a single phone line was an expensive challenge for me as a young kid. It took a lot of bussing tables at a hamburger joint.

Oh the Nostalgia! My soul hurts.

I was just a kid (teenager) so I didn't have the funds to run a BBS myself. But I remember the 60 minute limits, the long lists of local BBSes, the ANSI graphics, Maximus, RemoteAccess and others (I had played with a few in the hopes of starting a BBS, but that era was starting to end when I graduated in the early 2000s), Door games, RIP graphics (the very early days of vector art on VGA screens).

There were door games like Baron Realms Elite where BBS sysops would get together and play BBS against BBS (of course many people had player accounts of multiple BBSes but it was all part of the fun and the years of protection added a decent balance to the game).

Games from that era were so much better than this Free-To-Play with micro-transactions crap. I understand it earns mobile game companies a ton of money (from a tiny % of the population that spends $200 to $5000 on a single game), but the shareware model of first 10 levels free, next 30 levels for $x made for much better games. Plus it gave people something to exchange from board to board; the whole upload/download ratios (which kids from the torrent era should really learn about--because it existed then and for legal shareware on the majority of BBSs).

I remember once getting an amazing side scrolling shooter from Japan. It may have not been shareware, but it was impossible to tell. It had no readme and I couldn't read anything on the screen. :-P It was super fun though, and I remember thinking of all the hops it must have taken (those people who make long distance BBS calls, or maybe just someone who brought disks over on a holiday) to get to a BBS in my small town.

I also remember Doom coming out, and all the Sysops talking about how amazing a game it was. I think it was 3 disks though; took either three days (60 minutes time limits) or hopping to three different BBSes to get all the disks. Then it said I needed a 386 or higher (I had a 286). I took it to a friends house who had a 486. His mom was a super Christian. She watched us play a few levels and that didn't really end well.