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41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

theregister.co.uk

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Re: 41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

#81

Post by JustSomeNobody »

Endy wrote: post #54

Like so many of us, I miss the days of the BBS. But I think I know precisely why I do. BBS systems and Usenet were plain-text communications which were fast and open. There wasn't much space for user tracking, analytics, etc. There just wasn't much corporate space. Yes, there were corporate BBSes and public FTPs; but by and large they couldn't pull your call log and see what you'd been up to. There was a sense of pri…

It seems everyone back then on BBS's were enthusiasts. We all had at least that in common. I remember groups of us would all gather on some random night of the week for drinks just to kind of put a face to the handle. It was great. And after we'd hurry and dial back in to see who else just dialed in.

Social networks today just leave you feeling gross.

Re: 41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

#82

Post by linker3000 »

aedron wrote: post #61
User23 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played MUDs on a 1200 baud modem, and I was at a distinct disadvantage. Going to 9600 was incredible.

I lived out several years of my youth at 1200 baud. The word "U.S. Robotics" was like porn to me.

In the early days, I had a Miracle Technology WS2000 with manual, rotary knobs to select speeds (all the way from 300 to 1200bps), plus a manual connect/disconnect knob, so making a connection consisted of dialing the BBS number, listening for the tones and putting the modem online.

Unfortunately, my modem had a sticky phone line relay and so to disconnect the call the procedure was: turn knob, listen for click, thump modem a couple of times just in case, lift phone and check for dial tone.

Pic here, although mine was an even earlier model with a brown case:

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/86/...

Re: 41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

#83

Post by trollied »

There was a brilliant set of local BBSes where I grew up in Nottingham. The local cable company, Diamond Cable (since taken over by NTL/Virgin Media), offered free local calls to other cable customers.

This obviously provided the perfect ecosystem for BBSes to pop up and thrive.

I fondly remember old door games such as LORD [0], and downloading the Quake 1 demo using a 14.4k modem - That took some time!

BBSes themselves used some technology that wasn't mainstream, DESQview being a good example - a nice text UI for multitasking DOS.

[0]: https://www.pcmag.com/feature/340587/the-forgotten-world-of-... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

Re: 41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

#84

Post by pjc50 »

nkozyra wrote: post #80
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed plain-text BBS (over a slow modem) were faster than loading 10 MB of javascript over an ADSL. Also the information density and signal-to-noise ratio was higher. Even if you use ad-blockers.

I have a lot of nostalgia for my bbs days, but one thing I distinctly recall was the slowness of it all. The palpable improvement when you went from 300 baud to 600 or from 14k to 28k to 56k. I think we romanticize this stuff too much. Even showing a splash screen of ASCII text was stuttered. Chat operations were slow over the wire, you just never knew because ... maybe they just hadn't typed anything?

Yeah, I don't think interactive use was actually faster. Noninteractive use however - FidoNet (an early messageboard system with similar properties to UseNet) supported downloading a chunk of posts which you could then read through offline in a native, responsive program.

Re: 41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

#86

Post by bluedino »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #81
Endy wrote: post #54

Like so many of us, I miss the days of the BBS. But I think I know precisely why I do. BBS systems and Usenet were plain-text communications which were fast and open. There wasn't much space for user tracking, analytics, etc. There just wasn't much corporate space. Yes, there were corporate BBSes and public FTPs; but by and large they couldn't pull your call log and see what you'd been up to. There was a sense of pri…

It seems everyone back then on BBS's were enthusiasts. We all had at least that in common. I remember groups of us would all gather on some random night of the week for drinks just to kind of put a face to the handle. It was great. And after we'd hurry and dial back in to see who else just dialed in. Social networks today just leave you feeling gross.

I can remember that. A group of us who go to whoever's house had just gotten a new game, piece of hardware, etc

When we left we'd always say "see you on the roadhouse!", which was a multi-line board that we'd all dial into when we got home

Re: 41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

#87

Post by bluedino »

geocar wrote: post #75
sk5t wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mp3s from a BBS at 9600? Surely you jest. MOD and STM, with an outside chance of WAV, were more like it.

Whilst I can't recall downloading an mp3, I remember them existing and I was still at 9600bps in late 1995 when I was on Zipcon. MP3 was introduced in 1993, which was around the time 14400bps modems were introduced. These things cost something like $350+ in 1990s-dollars, and I at least had more time than money at that point in my life.

I downloaded my first mp3 (White Zombie of some sort) from a FSERVE on IRC, at 14440bps of course

Re: 41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

#88

Post by bluedino »

fb03 wrote: post #74
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #70

How we used to marvel at bidirectional transfers. x-modem, y-modem, x-modem, q-modem. I can hear the handshaking as shrilly as they ever were. Good time.

And then came z-modem and we could squeeze an additional bytes/s out of the connection, depending on the content. I remember seeing a steady 4.0kB/s on a 33600 baud USRobotics modem and going "wow we are at peak performance, let's just hope noise line or something doesn't degrade it" heheh good times indeed.

At my first computer related job, they had a T1 line. My jaw hit the floor when I downlaoded a driver at 150kB/s

'that was faster than copying a floppy disk'

Re: 41 Years Ago, There Were BBS Instead of the Internet

#90

Post by eeZah7Ux »

nkozyra wrote: post #80
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed plain-text BBS (over a slow modem) were faster than loading 10 MB of javascript over an ADSL. Also the information density and signal-to-noise ratio was higher. Even if you use ad-blockers.

I have a lot of nostalgia for my bbs days, but one thing I distinctly recall was the slowness of it all. The palpable improvement when you went from 300 baud to 600 or from 14k to 28k to 56k. I think we romanticize this stuff too much. Even showing a splash screen of ASCII text was stuttered. Chat operations were slow over the wire, you just never knew because ... maybe they just hadn't typed anything?

> a splash screen of ASCII text was stuttered

...on a 600 baud modem. Not on a 28.8Kbps. I remember doing timing analysis at the time.

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