History of Fidonet (1993)

#1

Post by unilynx » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 11:47 AM UTC

History of Fidonet (1993)
olografix.org

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#2

Post by harrigan » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 1:01 PM UTC

BBS: The Documentary Part 4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cm6EFYktRQ) has some great interviews with Tom Jennings & co. on the beginnings, growth and decline of Fidonet.

"It just runs in spite of the idiots." (Tom Jennings)

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#3

Post by andrewshadura » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 1:44 PM UTC

I used Fidonet in Belarus just before the sunset, so to say, from 2004 to 2009 or so. It was very interesting experience.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#4

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

in 1992..1996 FidoNet was almost the only means of connecting with the world in Russia. I think I can still determine the baud rate of the connection by how it sounds.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#5

Post by gtirloni » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

This brings back so many good memories. Getting a message from someone on the other side of the world and thinking "are you kidding me?". This was back in '94 and this document about Fidonet's beginnings was written in '85. It just goes to show how far behind my country was.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#6

Post by NelsonMinar » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

After FidoNet Tom Jennings has gone on to have a long and fascinating career mixing art and technology, with a good side dose of car hacking and queer activism. His current website is at http://sr-ix.com/

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#7

Post by gravitas » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

What I remember of my '94 sysop kit: 486/dx2-66, OS/2 (3.1?), Synchronicty, MailGate and XeniaMailer (I ran a fido uucp node) and something I'm forgetting I'm sure.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#8

Post by magoon » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

Running a FidoNet-connected BBS meant I had direct access to read every EchoMail group I could subscribe my BBS to. At the time it was a great source of real, insightful written conversation. Because the readers were text-based, and it was all on my hard drive, I could consume postings at such great speed. (spacebar, spacebar, spacebar...)

The memories.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#9

Post by herohamp » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

For the people like myself who do not know what Fidonet is, and just want to read the comments.

FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems (BBSes). It uses a store-and-forward system to exchange private (email) and public (forum) messages between the BBSes in the network, as well as other files and protocols in some cases.

- Wikipedia

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#10

Post by throw0101a » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

magoon wrote: post #8

Running a FidoNet-connected BBS meant I had direct access to read every EchoMail group I could subscribe my BBS to. At the time it was a great source of real, insightful written conversation. Because the readers were text-based, and it was all on my hard drive, I could consume postings at such great speed. (spacebar, spacebar, spacebar...) The memories.

> Because the readers were text-based, and it was all on my hard drive, I could consume postings at such great speed.

You didn't have to run a BBS to do this. Using an offline mail reader like Blue Wave [1] and downloading QWK files [2] allowed anyone to do it—and helped keep the lines, as downloading was (relatively) quick compared to reading 'online'.

I initially got "on" Usenet by downloading SOUP files from a local free-net [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Wave_(mail_reader)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWK_(file_format)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-net