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A look at my BBS Software from '93

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Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#101

Post by spektom »

chrissnell wrote: post #40

The late 80s/early 90s BBS scene was an amazing time for me. I was in high school and I've never been as interested in computers and communications as I was then. I never ventured into the "dark" side like OP--I was too scared of my parents--so I ran a legit FidoNET BBS using the RemoteAccess BBS software and the Frontdoor mailer (and later, Maximus and BinkleyTerm). The most amazing thing about it all was that it wa…

There's a Website that helps you find FidoNet address in case you've forgotten it, it helped me find mine: http://nodehist.fidonet.org.ua/?address=2%3A400%2F466

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#103

Post by bananaboy »

Does anyone remember the terminal software "Terminate - the final terminal"? Does anyone know what happened to the original author, Bo Bendtsen? I'd love to send a registration check, since I never registered it as a youngster! There's a Bo Bendtsen from Denmark on twitter but alas it's not him (I asked!).

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#104

Post by WalterBright »

chrissnell wrote: post #40

The late 80s/early 90s BBS scene was an amazing time for me. I was in high school and I've never been as interested in computers and communications as I was then. I never ventured into the "dark" side like OP--I was too scared of my parents--so I ran a legit FidoNET BBS using the RemoteAccess BBS software and the Frontdoor mailer (and later, Maximus and BinkleyTerm). The most amazing thing about it all was that it wa…

> it was the public internet before there was a public internet

The internet was invented several times. Many people assume that it wouldn't have happened without ARPAnet, but that doesn't line up with history. I remember the olden days :-) and anyone with two or more computers tried to hook them together by inventing a network.

It's like when the steam engine was invented (to pump water out of mines), one of the first things people tried was putting wheels on it. It's just obvious.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#105

Post by wccrawford »

WWIV BBS and "doors" (games, basically) were my intro into system administration and further experience programming back then. I had so much fun setting that up. My parents even let me have 2 telephone lines so that I could have 2 users (plus someone in the house) on at the same time. I had exactly 1 multiplayer "door", but that was fine.

My favorite door was Legend of the Red Dragon (LoRD) and I remember playing it a lot back then. My users (all half-dozen of them) did, too. It was a small town, and I was surprised to get that many people.

So much nostalgia, and I can definitely link it to my career today.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#106

Post by drittich »

X86BSD wrote: post #61

Maybe I missed it in the comments but was I the only one to run Wildcat! software for their board? I loved Wildcat!

I ran it too! A co-worker and I who were sys admins at a Canadian provincial ministry ran it on behalf of the ministry, because no one knew enough to tell us not to :)

Also, what about RoboComm? That thing was incredible to me back then.

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#107

Post by jug »

Arizhel wrote: post #16

Computers were a lot more fun in those days.

People may say it's just nostalgia but I think what I loved most was the competition and variety. It was like living in a golden age of home computing. You had the Amiga, Atari, ZX Spectrum, C64, all these sorts of incompatible home computing systems. And I think being incompatible was kind of a benefit for home computing culture. Because this spawned multiple magazines and communities that could survive because they could target various systems, rather than more consolidated cultures that have happened since the IBM PC days, where you end up with just a few big web sites no one can compete with. I miss that diversity, and also hacker spirit compared to today when building systems is often much like using big pre-built Lego blocks.

We need to give a new Internet traction just to relive this, haha... Use the opportunity to fix DNS and decentralize it while at it. :p Then get Haiku OS or something going...

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#108

Post by josteink »

apaprocki wrote: post #18

Re: losing BBS/source from the 90's -- I was fortunate enough to regularly back things up to QIC tape, and lo and behold, 22 years later a hacked up box restored the BBS perfectly and it ran in DosBox on my laptop. I was pleasantly surprised that it all worked immediately. Hardest part was finding parts for a floppy tape and installing the right Windows version. Seeing the ANSI art made it all worth it... https://twi…

> Hardest part was finding parts for a floppy tape and installing the right Windows version

Surely you mean floppy drive?

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#109

Post by jamesjyu »

AvocadoSushi wrote: post #76

Here in Taiwan BBS is still popular, PTT [0] has ~120k avg. concurrent users every day. For those interested, their codebase is available on GitHub [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTT_Bulletin_Board_System [1] https://github.com/ptt/pttbbs

Fascinating! I would have thought most people didn't have land lines in Taiwan. Are they dialing in using mobile phones?

Re: A look at my BBS Software from '93

#110

Post by ethomson »

Imagenuity wrote: post #58
djsumdog wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Glad to hear someone still remembers RIPscrip graphics. I was a co-founder of TeleGrafix Communications, who made the RIPterm and RIPaint software for viewing and creating those graphics.

What a blast from the past. I remember TeleGrafix fondly; if I'm being honest, I didn't really use RIPterm all that terribly often; I've always felt more at home in text. But I did run a BBS (1:233/24) and I enjoyed hacking on it more, I think, than actually running it. So I spent a lot of time trying to shoehorn RIPscrip into Maximus, more for the novelty than for any actual demand on the part of my callers.

After googling, I just realized that Maximus 3.0 eventually included RIPscrip support built-in, but I had lost interest in my BBS and moved on to hacking on Unix systems by then.

But I remember RIPscrip being a nice format. Thanks for providing me with many an afternoon spent tinkering with it.

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