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

An old photo of a large BBS (2022)

rachelbythebay.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 196 posts

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

#121

Post by throw0101c »

bink wrote: post #101
throw0101d wrote: post #59

> It's possible they managed to do some rudimentary multitasking with DESQview (or worse...) and so supported two whole users with each box. Does that mean they had to be at least 386s to do protected mode? Or was it virtual 8086 mode? I (fortunately) have forgotten the finer points of how that stuff used to work. I DO remember how damn crashy a box became when you ran it "under DV". Constant system freezes. Yep. I d…

DESQview was absolutely not crashy. I ran several different types of BBS software in it without issues. The "DESQview (or worse...)" comment raised the hair on the back of my neck. DESQview was revolutionary at the time and I was annoyed at having to use Windows many years later. ASCII windows may not have been everyone's cup of tea but I loved it.

> DESQview was revolutionary at the time and I was annoyed at having to use Windows many years later.

I remember running Win3.11 with-in a DESQview window (and IIRC there was a full-screen mode as well).

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

#122

Post by rasz »

somat wrote: post #106
SneakyMission wrote: post #10

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

Hmm, that is interesting, why was that version originaly hosted on 3drealms site? Probably nothing, somebody there just wanted to share a cool picture. But what if that were an early apogee shareware distribution bbs?

it was 3D Realms official BBS

https://nitter.privacyredirect.com/ScottApogee/status/159372... Scott Miller - Apogee/3D Realms Founder :

>BBS's (bulletin board systems) were the backbone of the online world before the Internet came along in 1995. Apogee teamed up with Dan Linton's BBS, called Software Creations, and we poured $200k+ into it to grow it to nearly 140 call-in nodes with a T3 (high bandwidth) line.

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

#125

Post by calmbonsai »

joemi wrote: post #97
gxd wrote: post #41

Those were the days. I still believe nothing replaces the camraderie of the small, local BBSs. The large ones were good too, but these tended to resemble the modern Internet forums a bit more. I miss BBSs and that's why I featured them in the story of my sci-fi game! If you are interested: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/

I go back and forth on whether BBSes were better or AOL was better. I had great experiences on both in my formative years.

For me it was BBSes hands-down.

I was user #12 on the Bloom County BBS and, eventually, got the coveted sysop perms.

It felt far more of an "adult" accomplishment than (much later) when I got my driver's license.

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

#126

Post by icedchai »

api wrote: post #108

The pre-Internet BBS era is something I remember fondly. I was a kid, so there's that halo effect of course, but I loved the indie DIY nature of it and the diversity and community you'd get. There's a site called textfiles.com that's kind of a museum, and a documentary you can find on YouTube. There's stuff on archive.org too. It wasn't actually that long of an era. The first modern BBS was probably CBBS in Chicago i…

I remember that time fondly also. You are spot on with the glory days. I dialed into my first BBS in 1988 with a 1200 baud modem. By 1995, they were basically dead.

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

#127

Post by driverdan »

throw0101d wrote: post #59

> It's possible they managed to do some rudimentary multitasking with DESQview (or worse...) and so supported two whole users with each box. Does that mean they had to be at least 386s to do protected mode? Or was it virtual 8086 mode? I (fortunately) have forgotten the finer points of how that stuff used to work. I DO remember how damn crashy a box became when you ran it "under DV". Constant system freezes. Yep. I d…

I used DESQview with my BBS. It only had one line but I ran a second local node so I could be online at the same time as my users. I don't remember ever having any problems with it.

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

#128

Post by beloch »

"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 these computers would have lacked.

This room was neither quiet or cool. While the CPU's were comparatively low power back then, all the other stuff (modems in particular) would have put out a lot more heat than their modern equivalents. However, this room could realistically have been in somebody's residential home basement without any exotic A/C measures. Maybe a wall-mounted unit or two. It would not have pumped out nearly as much heat or consumed as much power as modern gear of equivalent volume.

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

#130

Post by userbinator »

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…

Indeed, a single high-end desktop today at full load would probably use more power than everything in that room.
Post reply on HN