Ask YC: How many people here were regional BBS users back in the day?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=146006

by thorax • 18 years ago

27 59 18 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Just struck me that maybe the BBS era aligned with a lot of news.YC's hacker beginnings with online computer usage.

I, for one, began initially with a national Commodore community called QLink. I ran up ridiculous bills before hopping into the regional BBS scene, where I met my eventual wife and almost all of my most enduring friends.

What about you? Or are all of you too young for that era?

tjr• 18 years ago

I used a local BBS set up for Amiga users. Didn't really use it for communicating with others, mainly for file uploads/downloads... freeware games and what-not.

I remember being so excited to have access to "literally thousands of files!" Back then it was totally awesome. :-)

brk• 18 years ago

I was a BBS user, and also ran a multi-line TAG board (you probably wouldn't know TAG unless you were from Michigan) for a while. Was a FIDOnet node, and was active on the CyberCrime (I think that was the name of it) that some guy out of FL (I think) administered, plus a few other 'nets that I've long since forgotten.

During my short college stint in '91 I found one of the main patch panels for our campus and patched an unused line to my dorm room to run a small BBS out of the dorm for a while. The dorms were setup then so that 2 rooms shared 1 phone line (and 1 bathroom as well). My dorm room had the shared line, a dedicated line, and "access" to the phone lines of the room above us, as the inhabitants never seemed to be there on weekends and it was a waste to fight over phone usage when there was a free line just sitting there...

mixmax• 18 years ago

I'm not too young for that era (37) but I have never used a BBS. Didn't even know how to operate a computer before I got one in 1996...

I caught up pretty quickly though.

sarosh• 18 years ago

I am 10 years your junior and I had the privilege of playing on BBS (512) in 1994-1995. I was enthralled with my old Packard Bell. True, it was mostly a file dump board (what wasn't back then), but it was fun nonetheless.

gibsonf1• 18 years ago

I wrote the code for moondog BBS (Santa Barbara, CA) - using all but about 10 bytes of memory on a Commodore 64 with a floppy drive. I invented a db system that made us look like a big IBM system. It was really great fun (coded it while in HS).

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

Yeah, I was on local Amiga BBS's in the 613 area code. Fun times.

carpal• 18 years ago

I was on the Index BBS in Atlanta, as well as gobs of smaller ones. I was a L.O.R.D. addict, so I'd run out my turns on one BBS and then hop to the next.

johns2• 18 years ago

When I didn't know what exactly went into running a BBS I paid $15 for a L.O.R.D. license in the early or mid-90s. A couple years back I thought I'd try it out again and couldn't find my key. I emailed the company and they sent it over almost immediately. I couldn't believe they were still around.

dgabriel• 18 years ago

I was totally into the BBS scene in high school. There were three run by friends within our local calling area, and I remember dialing & redialing each of the three, getting a busy signal, cursing my timing, and trying again.

I spent waaaaay too much time playing TradeWars back then...

Bluem00• 18 years ago

TradeWars is still alive and kicking if you're interested. Now you just need a telnet client and a server. I assume you have the former, so here are some links to the latter: http://oregonsouth.com/ice9/ and http://www.thestardock.com/

sam• 18 years ago

Wow, I haven't thought about trade wars in forever. I used to play back on "The Berlin Wall" in Berlin, CT.

(P)ort (T)rade Buy (E)quipment

That's about all I remember

thorax2• 18 years ago

Random note: my hacking career really began writing/selling scripts to automate TradeWars turns.

mechanical_fish• 18 years ago

I used BBSes in Columbus, OH and remember them... fairly vaguely. Not much of a user until the multi-user systems came along, with 8 or even 16 modems at a time, on multiple phone lines -- those were much more interesting.

I remember that in my freshman year of college one of the primary uses of my awesome 10Mbit fiberoptic dorm-room Ethernet connection was to telnet to an open machine at Ohio State that happened to have an outgoing modem that you could use to make local BBS phone calls in Columbus. No password required. Man, those were innocent times on the Internet.

I still find it painfully ironic that I had such great broadband connectivity in college, from 1989 to 1993, when HTTP hadn't been invented yet and all there was to do was FTP, Telnet, and eventually Gopher.

earle• 18 years ago

BBS The Firm FTW! 2af / LOD

;)

apathy• 18 years ago

Niiiice. THG ate your lunch though ;-)

Emulex FTW!

timcederman• 18 years ago

I ran a BBS in Brisbane, Australia which was fairly successful. Still shows up on some current Fidonet listings :) http://bbs.ricta.net/zone3ip/n640.html

pibefision• 18 years ago

Century 21 BBS. +54-9-11-4632-7070 I was sysop of on of the first Argentinean BBS. Nice times!

wheels• 18 years ago

I ran one using Osiris XLT up until 1994 or so. I remember mowing lawns to save up for a ($200) 14.4 modem and to pay for my private line. :-)

thorax2• 18 years ago

Now that I think about it, "having your own BBS" back in the day is a lot like "having your own domain/site" nowadays. Pretty much everyone wanted to do it, but there were a lot of lonely boards out there.

dstillz• 18 years ago

Too young. My early scene was meeting up with the local kids to swap BASIC programs, pirated games, and 8-bit video game cartridges.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

There were regional BBSes?

That’s funny. One of my favorite software ideas is to create means for local communication so that people can form actual human real-space relationships, including marriage and enduring friendship. Wait long enough and old things become new again.

doubleplus• 18 years ago

I was on BBS's whenever I wasn't in high school in the early 90's. Met my first 2 girlfriends on there. 619 a/c - San Diego.

rplevy• 18 years ago

There were a bunch of bulletin boards that I used as a teenager in upstate/central NY. My favorite in terms of bulletin board software were the the ones using Citadel.

rationalbeaver• 18 years ago

It was a BBS that first introduced me to the beauty of multiplayer FPS goodness as well as the infamous MUD, Legend of the Red Dragon. My friend and I used to play Doom on a local BBS using a program called MILK. Those were good days.

tthurman• 18 years ago

I started out with British Telecom's Prestel, moved on to a VAX-based BBS that all the kids in my town had accounts on, moved on to local Wildcat! BBSs and ended up on a telnet-based BBS (which has been around since before JANET supported TCP/IP) and I'm still there. I did meet my wife online, but not on a BBS (and not on news, and not on the web).

borga• 18 years ago

I used for a couple of years in Brazil.

Flemlord• 18 years ago

Guilty, regional and national. Quite the little phreak.

ten-seven• 18 years ago

Not too young for that. I actually used BBS software, sort of, to run a UUCP node at home and receive low-volume mailing list digests.

davidw• 18 years ago

When I got started, there were BBS'es, but there was also a local internet "onramp", which was, I decided, way cooler than screwing around dialing into a bunch of BBS'es.

webframp• 18 years ago

hell, they're still around! hehe, http://members.aol.com/sfritz2994/pdxbbs.htm

ruslan• 18 years ago

I used to run my own BBS back in early 90th based on OS/2 and Maximus, it had an 8-lines modem pool, it was a Fidonet node hence was loaded with tons of usenet news and Fido echos and no-one knew what TCP/IP was and that was tough! Oh, I love those old days... :~-[

johns2• 18 years ago

There was a local paper called ComputerNews (it may still be around) that had multiple pages of BBS numbers listed. My brother and I would just keep trying each one until we got through and found a Legend of the Red Dragon game we could get in. Nothing was worse than being in the middle of the game when the connection time limit expired.

bct• 18 years ago

I was pretty young at the time, but I got in at the very tail end. There was a BBS for farmers called FBMInet that my parents were on. I don't remember much about it (except that there were lots of pirated games). I still use the same password that I chose there for sites I don't care about.

My first web access was via a BBS run by an organization called Edmonton Freenet. For a (very) small yearly fee you could dial in and use (amongst other things) lynx and pine. Very rustic, but considering that a decade or so before we were on a party line...

colortone• 18 years ago

I was there on the 2400 baud, wishing for that 9600 baud and a 486

epi0Bauqu• 18 years ago

Sysop in ATL.

drm237• 18 years ago

local Edinboro BBS - Bases Loaded in 814 area code.

SwellJoe• 18 years ago

Too young?!?! Hah.

I ran my own, of course. Customized version of Color 64 on my Commodore 64, in Greenville, SC. A couple of my friends ran part-time boards (usually 8PM to 8AM), but I paid for a second phone line so I could run 24/7, and I had a second system for my personal use. A stack of 1571 disk drives, 1200 baud modem, and memory expansion. I lusted after a 10GB hard disk, but never had a hard disk until the Amiga days a few years later. I dabbled with a PC board, as well, running...I think it was Wildcat. But it wasn't as much fun to play with. So it was only up for a few weeks.

By the time I moved from South Carolina to Houston, I was an Amiga user, and so spent a lot of time writing and trading MODs with other Amiga nuts in the area. A year later ('93) I started spending time on the Internet, and never started another BBS--redirected the effort into my first website.

savrajsingh• 18 years ago

Yeah I was there in BBS world. I would just hate getting that busy signal and re-dailing again and again... Thank god for the internets.

jawngee• 18 years ago

Ran a six line BBS off Renegade in Minneapolis back in 89-92.

notphilatall• 18 years ago

Mobile, Alabama had a lively BBS scene in the early to mid nineties. I spent my teenage years on various boards and even ran one for about a year.

User acquisition with BBSes is much harder than websites; it taught me a lot.

BBSes, specifically the "Mobile Area Freenet", were also my introduction to the internet. Gopher was awesome at the time, and I flipped when I saw the first graphical browser and figured out how to establish SLIP connections with WinSock.

Kids these days have it too easy... ;)

webwright• 18 years ago

I was a SYSOP. Ran several BBS's on Macs.

dhimes• 18 years ago

I used DC-area Mac BBS and something called the General Electric Network Information Exchange (GENIE). Way, way back '85-86.

yrashk• 18 years ago

Was running BBS and FidoNet node (mostly on OS/2 and Linux) back in 90th in Ukraine.

mattrepl• 18 years ago

Oh yeah, downloading the latest shareware games (Wacky Wheels, Duke Nukem, Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit, etc.) and playing Barren Realms Elite, Falcon Eye, L.O.R.D., and TradeWars.

Was a member of several BBSes in the 703 area code. The BizZ BuzZ and R/C Connection are where I spent most of my time.

thenotself• 18 years ago

Hah.. I ran a Renegade board for a short period of time called NexxusOne in Toronto

eznet• 18 years ago

Oh, the days of a good tribbs board and L.O.R.D.

I frequented the Vagabond's Oasis and Galaxy BBS here in the Alabama, US. Also, I ran a small friend/family bbs, The Dismal Light, after 11:00pm on my families second line.

I kinda miss the days of the BBS and door games. I also remember the excitement associated with the prospect of the Internet coming to town - with pictures and everything!!!

acrylicist• 18 years ago

I remember the fun days of CMBBS, C-Base, and later everyone making some nice BBS systems, it was cool to see what you could do with the Commodore Basic, BLITZing it up and hosting it. Some of the older BBS systems rival the features provided by communities today greatly. Then there was the continuous dialing up other regional boards over and over again until you got an answer.

There were some really nice games in the limited way of BBSing, a premonition of MMORPG's and other network strategy games that addict people today.

fubar• 18 years ago

Hahahaha, yes indeed. Cracked a number of games removing copy protection, phreaked for some long-distance pickups & drops, ran wildcat, hotline, etc...

The good old days...

brianmckenzie• 18 years ago

Oh yeah - I was a SYSOP on two BBSes in the St. Louis area, one of which was my own. This was in the early-mid 90's, just before internet became widely available.

I met my high school sweetheart on my BBS. Man, those were the days.

deathbyzen• 18 years ago

Heh. I was. But I'm no hacker.

I live in the Chicago NW Burbs and I think the most frequently visted BBS for me was Jake's File Exchange and second place was probably North By Northwest.

Jake's File Exchange was where I got my first taste of warez and where I spent WAY too much time playing Legend of The Red Dragon.

Sigh... to be young again.

(This was with a Packard Bell 486DX2 and a 14.4k modem. LIGHTNING FAST!!! for the time. I used RipTerm to connect. This was around '94 I believe)

phaedrus• 18 years ago

I think all of the people who were too young have simply not commented, so I'll just throw this in: I was too young (I'm 24 now) - or at least if there were BBS's going on, no one I knew, knew about them. How late were they still in vogue?

snowbird122• 18 years ago

I used a BBS in the 806 area code on my commodore 64. Anyone ever play Empire? Fun game.

christefano• 18 years ago

Once when I was a teenager, my mother went on a business trip for a week and came back to an enormous phone bill. That's all I'm willing to say.

aykall• 18 years ago

That is funny!! I was sure very young back than but I love to log on the BBS back in Brazil. There wasn't a lot of them but it was great fun to spend hours doing nothing just making the phone bill go bigger and bigger

monkkbfr• 18 years ago

I started something called the OneNet Member Network (http://www2.onenet.org:8080/index.htm), a macintosh store and forward system baesd out of my garage in Los Altos when I was working at Apple Computer. Wired article here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.03/eword.html?pg=13

asmosoinio• 18 years ago

Sure! I used to chat and to "hang around" local BBSes all night long in '93-'95 (or so). I was using an IBM 486 DX 33, and a 14100 modem. This was in Finland, I don't know how much before my active time the BBSes were alive but I think they slowed down a lot afterwards.

tk12• 18 years ago

Was couriering for quite some time :)

mightybyte• 18 years ago

I never ran a BBS (although I thought about it), but I played SRE, BRE, TradeWars, L.O.R.D, and Falcon's Eye. I played SRE the most. Would love to play it again.

dehowell• 18 years ago

Oh, man... I spent a happy fourth and fifth grade dialing into Richmond, VA area BBSes to download shareware games. Wolfenstein 3D, Commander Keen, and many others... That lasted until my older brother got a dial up account with his university and let me surf the net with lynx on the family 386.

Ask YC: How many people here were regional BBS users back in the day?

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