Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

History of Fidonet (1993)

olografix.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 76 posts

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#61

Post by [deleted] »

throw0101a wrote: post #10
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 loc…

[deleted]

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#62

Post by throw0101a »

sedatk wrote: post #23

Turkey had its own FidoNet-style network called HitNet (with the prefix "8:" instead of "1:") back in the 90’s. It had about 400 active users nationwide. I had even written an offline mail reader software compatible with QWK and BlueWave: https://github.com/ssg/wolverine

> Turkey had its own FidoNet-style network called HitNet (with the prefix "8:" instead of "1:") back in the 90’s.

Given that FidoNet only went up to Zone 6, they could just leverage the same technical standards:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet#Geographical_structure

I remember there being other "nets", but cannot for the life of me remember their names.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#63

Post by throw0101a »

gravitas wrote: post #7

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.

> OS/2 (3.1?)

DESQview and QEMM on DOS was also popular. It wasn't fully multi-taking, but it worked quite well.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QEMM

You also had to have a COM port that was connected to a 16550A UART, often done via a serial add-in card, because it had a whopping 16 byte buffer:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550_UART#The_16550_FIFO

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#64

Post by jsjohnst »

rsync wrote: post #29
jsjohnst wrote: post #18

Man talk about flash from the past. My MajorBBS based BBS was on Fidonet from 1993-1994 before I switched over to being a dialup ISP. The guy who co-ran the BBS with me leaked our serial number after we had a falling out. Was “fun” trying to get support from Galacticomm after that, despite having the original manuals with the serial number printed on it as proof I really owned it.

nwgeegd9j ?

Nope, that’s another one that started showing up online a few years later.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#65

Post by throw0101a »

EricE wrote: post #42

Net209 - those were the days. Of course having a local call to the Western Star didn't hurt either ;-) Sysop meetings at Shakey's Pizza - nothing beats in person meet ups! EDIT: It just dawned on me - how amazing is it that now that long distance calls are generally free (at least here in the US) that lots of people don't get the significance of "local call". What at time.

(Zone 1) Net250, Toronto, Canada, checking in.

> Net209

Las Vegas?

* https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/reference/net-directory/hos...

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#66

Post by tudorw »

azinman2 wrote: post #47
EricE wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pshaw - I still have my Supra 14.4, 28.8 and 56 modems. Use 'em to feed fax servers since that's about the only real use for modems still. Stacked on top of each other with their displays rotating... the memories!

Don’t forget US Robotics we’re really the kings, always faster with their not-yet-standards. Meanwhile I was doing pretty well with my Spectrum Peripherals 14.4k before I got my fancy Zoom 56k...

I'll be buried next to my PSION Gold Card :)

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#68

Post by 0x445442 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #11
NelsonMinar wrote: post #6

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/

Indeed! It's hard to describe how influential and wide-ranging his career has been, but I'll try: Besides pioneering FidoNet, Tom Jennings also started another early ISP in 1992 originally running out of John Gilmore's basement in San Francisco called TLG: The Little Garden, named after a Chinese food restaurant in Palo Alto that was popular with techies: https://ask.metafilter.com/266181/Ill-take-Palo-Alto-in-the-..…

I saw a somewhat recent interview with Jennings where he called Silicon Valley a "cult of money" now. This struck me as such a succinct label that captures the essence of the current state of things on so many levels.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#69

Post by bjourne »

alor wrote: post #50

I've always struggled to understand how Fidonet (and BBSes) was different to Usenet. From what I gathered, Usenet was a decentralised network from the start, whereas BBSes were distinct communities and Fidonet was a solution to connect these communities together. I believe Usenet also runs on TCP/IP, unlike BBSes which you dialed into. Can anyone shed some light on the above?

It was kind of similar. But insane phone bills was a major issue at the time. We're talking 1€ or more for a few minutes of connection. Plus, internet service was very expensive and there weren't many advantages to it because the www didn't exist. Instead you had BBSes in your own local area code which were much cheaper to call. From those you got your latest FidoMail and also the latest games. :) Given that it was all volunteer-run and (almost) no money exchanged hands, it worked amazingly well.

Re: History of Fidonet (1993)

#70

Post by ghaff »

rsync wrote: post #28
harrigan wrote: post #2

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)

Highly recommend this documentary and, especially, the entire episode devoted to Fidonet. For those that don't know, the BBS Documentary is something like 6 DVDs and has hours of well produced and documented material and interviews.

Yes. A lot of pretty rare information. BBSing existed as a relatively niche mostly hobbyist community that was largely both decentralized and disjoint from the early, pre-mainstream Internet.

As a result, with a few exceptions like Jason Scott's textfiles, there was relatively little archived documentation/stories/archives about BBSs at the time and very little of that has survived. (BBSs pretty much all got shutdown at some point and there's very saved from discussions, especially outside of the relays.)

Post reply on HN