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An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

rachelbythebay.com

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Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#131

Post by nine_k »

beloch wrote: post #128

"Imagine how much power those things used. Every watt of heat they dumped into the room then had to be pumped out, so that means a corresponding amount of air conditioning to take it outside. That seems like a whole mess of juice to me. " -------------- A 286 used around 3 Watts of power, while a current generation PC PCU uses upwards of 150 W. That's a factor of fifty . That's not even factoring in the GPU's, which…

Well, it's truth but not the whole truth.

An IBM AT was capable of consuming nearly 200W [1]. Of course a typical machine would not consume as much, because it did not have its RAM and disk slots maxed out. The CPU indeed consumed around 3W, and normally even lacked a radiator.

A modern PC can consume large amounts of power, mostly determined by the appetites of the GPU. But here is plenty of desktop CPUs with 65W and even 45W TDP, and a typical recent Intel or AMD CPU would consume 3-5W when idle. A quite powerful ARM A7 based system, such as an Orange Pi 5, would draw [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_AT#Power...

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#133

Post by dwd »

jacquesm wrote: post #25
ryandrake wrote: post #20

I remember thinking that I would reach absolute peak-coolkid if I could start and run a BBS. I even installed WWIV and DesqView to fuel the fantasy and prepare. But my parents didn't understand technology and couldn't grasp why I wanted to hook up (and pay for) a second phone line for the house. So, unfortunately I would remain a mere luser until I went off to University where the Internet was just getting popular an…

Cool Kids run T1s ;) Really Cool Kids T3s...

Thanks for the reminder. Those were heady days.

My first programming job out of Uni had dual ISDN to the office.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#134

Post by radar1310 »

I think the standard BBS modem for most BBS’s was the US Robotics brand if I’m not mistaken.

My first modem was a Supra 2400 baud, then thinking about all the speed I would have with my new 56.6. My first hard drive was a 20 meg, new it was $320. 20 megs $320 kids, imagine that.

That was for my wonderful brand new Amiga 500. Those were the days.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#135

Post by pseudohadamard »

SneakyMission wrote: post #10

Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...

That's not a real BBS. A real BBS is one where you dial in at 20:50 and the sysop's mum answers and says it's not 21:00 yet and you need to call back a bit later when the phone line is switched across to the modem.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#136

Post by beloch »

nine_k wrote: post #131
beloch wrote: post #128

"Imagine how much power those things used. Every watt of heat they dumped into the room then had to be pumped out, so that means a corresponding amount of air conditioning to take it outside. That seems like a whole mess of juice to me. " -------------- A 286 used around 3 Watts of power, while a current generation PC PCU uses upwards of 150 W. That's a factor of fifty . That's not even factoring in the GPU's, which…

Well, it's truth but not the whole truth. An IBM AT was capable of consuming nearly 200W [1]. Of course a typical machine would not consume as much, because it did not have its RAM and disk slots maxed out. The CPU indeed consumed around 3W, and normally even lacked a radiator. A modern PC can consume large amounts of power, mostly determined by the appetites of the GPU. But here is plenty of desktop CPUs with 65W an…

People's intuition is based on what a rack in a typical modern data centre would be like. i.e. High end server CPUs and multiple GPU's per box, which really should be factored in since they're the bulk of the power draw and heat production. Put a few of these in your basement and you're going to need special cooling and power solutions.

The pictured room is not full of high-performance computing machines, even for the day. (HPC was ruled by mainframes back then, although if this picture was taken well into the obsolescence of the room, high-end workstations (e.g. Silicon Graphics and Sun) may have been gaining on them for some applications.) This room was built for getting a couple hundred callers networked into a BBS where they could access the same files, text chat, and perhaps even MUD a little. This was a fundamentally different beast.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#137

Post by herodoturtle »

leptons wrote: post #118
yarone wrote: post #51

Ahh BBS's: where I learned the difference between a local call and a "local toll call" (parents were not happy)

Same here, except I took it further and was calling out of state BBSs to download the latest warez. First phone bill after getting the modem was $250, in around 1984 (or about $800 in 2026). Parents were pissed. That's when I learned about phone phreaking.

> That's when I learned about phone phreaking.

“And never again have to pay for a service that would be dirt cheap, if it weren’t run by a bunch of profiteering gluttons!”

- Razor & Blade

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#138

Post by voidUpdate »

wvbdmp wrote: post #110
Aardwolf wrote: post #26

Office chair technology also has really advanced since then (looking at the chair on the picture, which is commonly seen near computers in photos of this era)

Indeed, the Aeron chair, which became a design classic and the apparently the best-selling office chair ever in the US, only came out in 1994. So about the same time as the web. Not sure if it’s the only office chair design with a dedicated wikipedia page? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeron_chair

Depends, is the deck of a battleship an "office"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeco_1006

Theres also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirra_chair. (wikipedia has a page for "list of chairs", but not all of them have a dedicated article)

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#139

Post by cucumber3732842 »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #27
SneakyMission wrote: post #10

Higher resolution photo https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...

That telephone cord is impressive.

We have them at work on our voip phones so we can roll around to each other's cubes while talking to a client without putting that client on speaker. We have headsets and the like too but you're not always wearing it when the phone decides to ring.

Re: An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

#140

Post by manarth »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #76
whatthe12899 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait, are you OP? or did you happen to find a high res version of the same paper-copy picture that OP supposedly was given 30 years ago and then scanned and then threw out. or did OP make it up? or is OP just a bot? maybe i'm a bot. anyway i used to call into BBSs back in the early 90s and the thing I'm remembering is that they survived mostly on donations, and now that I am seeing the infrastructure that supported t…

Rachel says she had the photo as a postcard. It's likely that more postcards were printed, and that other people had owned those copies, rather than people being bots.

postcard-sized photo
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