A Trip to 90s Kansai: Exploring the XD FirstClass Network BBS

https://cdrom.ca/games/2026/05/30/xd.html

by zetamax • 10 days ago

58 9 10 days ago

richharms2• 8 days ago

The FirstClass BBS software itself was something I'd found extremely interesting back in the nearly pre-Internet days.

Single dialup connection, multiple virtual connections over that serial connection (you could open multiple Windows in the client and have them all updating), non-blocking communications (did some nasty stuff in the client to give a progress bar in the title bar of each window as the contents would load), object database on the server based on the Mac's filesystem (took advantage of file system IDs mapped to folders, files, etc. - copying your server to another drive was a nightmare).

It was almost like a remote, multi-user Finder for Macs. Unfortunately it never transitioned to the Internet well - the license cost for the server software was cost prohibitive for most hobbyists once discussion forum software started showing up everywhere back in the day.

Really neat technology at the time though, and inspired some early communications work of mine before the Internet became ubiquitous.

gregsadetsky• 8 days ago

What was your FirstClass server / where was it? Mine was used by a large-ish (2.5k people at peak) Macintosh User Group in Canada.

It was definitely formative - I still have friends from back then, and remember logging on daily.

As you say, the transition to the real Internet and web was painful/slow for them, and obviously being a commercial software made it especially hard. The software and the user group all disappeared around the same time - hard to say which came first.

richharms2• 8 days ago

A friend of mine, Michael Pester, ran The Mouse Hole BBS in Des Moines, IA. He was running multiple lines, and I can't remember if he eventually got it up on the Internet or not - I was headed down the Internet/ISP path at the time. He was great though in letting me take a close look at all the software and how it operated. He's unfortunately passed away now, but he developed a lot of FidoNet and communications software for the Mac at the time.

k4200• 8 days ago

I was in Kanto, not Kansai, and a rock guy, so didn't know about this BBS. But this article is quite interesting to someone like me who has experience of using a BBS at that time. I'm writing this listening to the playlist.

bitwize• 8 days ago

Japan? Techno music? Pre-internet electronic communication?

This is one of the coolest things ever! It's the next best thing to being straight out of a Gibson novel!

buserror• 8 days ago

There was a well known Firstclass server in France in the 90s called Ellis, dedicated to everything Apple/Macintosh. I still have real-life friends I made back then on that server.

pibefision• 8 days ago

My father installed a First Class BBS in Argentina in a private college (San Martín de Tours).

Kids were using it everyday to learn how to communicate using forums on Macs. This was pre internet. The user experience of this software was amazing. I used to help him to configure the forums (called Conferences)

Previously we used GBBS in an Apple II.

davidcollantes• 8 days ago

I ran a FirstClass BBS server in 1992, fully connected to other FC hobbyists. I remember that mail transfers happened at a scheduled time, and mine used to fail because my father was a Ham radio and, when he used his transceiver, the radio signals would drop the modem connection.

EvanAnderson• 8 days ago

Zow! I had no idea FirstClass was a BBS server. I had a Customer in the early 2000's who was using a FirstClass server on a LAN for email, calendaring, and collaboration. It struck me as a really neat piece of software, albeit I would have preferred a web interface to the thick Win32 client. It was very well thought-out software, albeit I didn't have to sysadmin the thing (so I don't know what the back-end was like in terms of reliability, backup/restore, fault tolerance, etc).

I'm off to go down a rabbit hole re: the FirstClass software.

A Trip to 90s Kansai: Exploring the XD FirstClass Network BBS

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