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

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

#91

Post by icedchai »

tptacek wrote: post #86
icedchai wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major thing missing with Reddit is the focus on geographic locality. BBSes had more of a community feel because 99% of the users were local, and this was enforced by financial reality. Few people in the 80's or 90's wanted to call long distance, unless they were distributing warez at someone else's expense (in which case they probably weren't reading and posting messages anyway!) You can get "some" of this feel f…

Right, but FidoNets didn't have this localization; that was part of their point.

Some FidoNet boards did, actually! The FidoNet boards near me all carried "regional" forums / echoes that were available only within the regional network itself. I was actually way more active on those forums than the global ones.

(By "active", I mainly mean participating in flame wars. If any of those sysops are reading, I do apologize for the behavior of my teenage self.)

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

#92

Post by tptacek »

icedchai wrote: post #91
tptacek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but FidoNets didn't have this localization; that was part of their point.

Some FidoNet boards did, actually! The FidoNet boards near me all carried "regional" forums / echoes that were available only within the regional network itself. I was actually way more active on those forums than the global ones. (By "active", I mainly mean participating in flame wars. If any of those sysops are reading, I do apologize for the behavior of my teenage self.)

Sure, in the same sense that there is an /r/chicago on Reddit. :)

The huge win to hooking your BBS up to a FidoNet (or the FidoNet) was that you'd immediately be having conversations with people all over the country.

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

#93

Post by hollerith »

nickdothutton wrote: post #77
hollerith wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very helpful to those of us who never experienced BBSes.

I'm the downvoted poster above, and I used to run a BBS. Mostly hosting info files and CP/M software (Thanks U.S. Robotics, couldn't have done it without HST). I am genuinely interested in know where (and if) such a network of people could ever exist again. For those who may be too young to get the joke... Reddit is certainly not it.

>For those who may be too young to get the joke...

I'm going to continue to assume that GGP is sincere until its author says it was a joke.

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

#94

Post by sedatk »

chris_armstrong wrote: post #65
sedatk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I completely forgot about Wolverine, but you've reminded me I was using that back in the day to read my mail from Fidonet point (as well as Bluewave).

Wow, amazing! I didn't know it had caught on outside Turkey. Putting it on Simtel paid off I guess. :)

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

#96

Post by garethsprice »

jlundberg wrote: post #71

It is hard today to grasp what Fidonet really was. But for me and many others it was such a life changing thing. Do you know of any good articles, books or blog post written for outsiders to read?

https://www.fidonet.org/inet92_Randy_Bush.txt - contemporary account that is still a pretty good overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS:_The_Documentary has an episode entirely on Fidonet (creative commons, freely available online)

Memories of being amazed to see messages from all around the world arriving to my hometown's local BBS, merely days after they were posted.

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