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Fidonet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History (1993)

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Re: Fidonet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History (1993)

#34

Post by kylemaxwell »

This was my first exposure to an internet (as opposed to the Internet), via BBSs, when I was a teenager. I keep thinking we should bring the term "sysop" back, in fact.

Nostalgia may be a form of depression, I've been told, but a little touch of it once in a while is good for the soul.

Re: Fidonet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History (1993)

#35

Post by kylemaxwell »

ck2 wrote: post #16

one thing I distinctly remember is that when simultaneous two-way Zmodem transfers came out replacing Ymodem, it absolutely blew my mind (previously all transfers, Xmodem/Ymodem, were one-way with CRC checks on each block slowing things down)

My 8th-grade science project was doing a "statistical" analysis of X/Y/Zmodem transfers (and Kermit, I think?). It did well enough to get me to the county science fair here in Dallas, at least.

And yeah, Zmodem was mind-blowing for us.

Re: Fidonet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History (1993)

#36

Post by ex-aws-dude »

Too young to have used it but I watched the BBS documentary recently and what surprised me was how much stuff was already possible pre-internet

A lot of stuff I would typically associate with the internet like pirating, forums, mail, large scale multiplayer games actually predates it

Re: Fidonet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History (1993)

#39

Post by rendx »

reconnecting wrote: post #18
yummybear wrote: post #17

I have very fond memories of fidonet: discussions, friends made, parties held. I wish i was back there :)

FidoNet was my first network. I still remember the sysops and the parties. An interesting aspect is that it was impossible to obtain an address without providing some service or newsletter on a specific subject to the sysop in return, so it was a privilege to have your own FidoNet address.

> it was impossible to obtain an address without providing some service or newsletter on a specific subject to the sysop in return

Huh? Not when I joined in my region. I didn't have to provide anything.

I was 14, but the BBS owner and mostly old guy heavy metal user base only found out when I later showed up at their annual user group meeting - and we had lots of fun (and drinks) together! They even took me clubbing later with a fake ID, and I woke up heavily wasted in the BBS owner's student apartment and we had microwaved frozen pizza together. Fun times.

Re: Fidonet: Technology, Use, Tools, and History (1993)

#40

Post by sedatk »

sedatk wrote: post #9

There was a FidoNet clone in Turkey called HitNet (short for “Hi Türkiye Net”). Its node addresses were like “8:103/119”. İ developed a Netmail server for Hitnet called HitBase in 1995 or so. It allowed people to discover others around their city to meet. Possibly the earliest thing that resembles Facebook. Similarly, it was a privacy nightmare too, luckily short-lived. HitNet introduced me to great people some of wh…

Forgot to add, I also developed a BlueWave-compatible offline-reader called Wolverine that worked for all Fido-style networks: https://github.com/ssg/wolverine

It was quite popular in Turkey in the 90's.

You can try it out in DOSBox here with some random HitNet packages: https://github.com/ssg/wolverine/releases/tag/2.32

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