Best BBS Memories? 154
TerryAtWork asks: "What are Slashdot readers' best BBS memories? The BBS ruled before the common man got on the Internet and a lot of older Slashdot reader's first on-line experiences were with them."
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Best BBS Memories?
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In the UK... (Score:5, Interesting)
You see, we pay even for our local calls here, which did put rather a downer on the whole BBS thing.
I remember being envious of the US with the free local calls thing.
"Back in the day" in the UK it was not uncommon to get phone bills of around $300 a month for BBS usage at wonderful 2400 baud.
Then of course we got the "high speed" 9600 model modems. Ahh nostalgia.
In the third, no wait, fourth world ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember expensive phone bills (which my dad covered at the time of course, it's a good thing DSL finally found our little country by the time of my financial independance), and a terrible sense of envy for the folks with 9600 and 14400 connections (i had a 2400 modem).
On a more positive note though, i got a 24 hour reminder of the whole 'BBS era' thing, since i met my wife in one of those networks
Re:When I was 10 years old... (Score:3, Interesting)
Memories of playing Legend Of the Red Dragon in the early 90s, my first chatroom, learning what shareware was for the first time... All things I fondly remember. Getting laid by Violet back then somehow made me feel like more of a man (er, boy)
And the cool thing is they were all local for the most part ('cept those comming in from telnet, of course). Some of the best memories I have, for instance, are from years after that BBS shut down, and I met a few of the old time members in real life (highschool, work, etc).
If anybody else was from Techlands BBS in South Florida, please e-mail me... I used to be "Davy Crockett" back then
Soundtrack music files (Score:4, Interesting)
Virginia Tech ROLM Phone Network (Score:2, Interesting)
RIP Fold, Spindle, or Mutilate
RDI (Score:4, Interesting)
To be young and phreakin' again...
(tig)
Re:Trade wars 2002 (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone? Bueller?
Re:In the third, no wait, fourth world ... (Score:4, Interesting)
My first BBS experience? (Score:3, Interesting)
Meeting my wife (Score:4, Interesting)
Chat-BBS (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was 15 years old I got my first modem. And my cousin was sysop for two local (I'm from Munich) BBS's, one was a chat-BBS called StadtNet.
It literally changed my life, since for the first time I met people with whom I could talk about computers (noone in my suburb was into programming, and by the age of 15 I already knew four or five programming languages). But the most important part was that since we were all from Munich or from suburbs of Munich we did a lot together, like having brunch every Sunday or meeting at different restaurant every Tuesday, going to the cinema together, having parties, etc.
I met a lot of people that heavily influenced me because they really impressed me (like a guy who was a real old-school gentleman... it really did me good to have known such a guy, helped later on with flirting to have learned from him ;-)
MUD BBS (Score:2, Interesting)
Most of my boarding occured in Texas, most notably on After Hours BBS, Adrenalyze (later just called Adren), and Adam's Garden.
Through these boards, I made the best friends of my teens, some of which I still talk to now (and others, I've lost contact with for eons, and then seemed to re-meet 8 years later on some random MUD). I also recall having two short-lived boards of my own, one running Renegade, the other running MajorBBS (which later came to be called WorldGroup -- about the same time they put a windows GUI to it).
The most special, however, after getting over the "Oooh I'm special cuz I'm a SYSOP like everybody else", was playing MajorMUD, and then Adren started hosting something similar to MajorMUD, a place called Realms of Thoth, that later became a telnet MUD.
I've been addicted to text-based RPG's ever since then. (amaranth.wehostmuds.com port 4080.. we're not hack-n-slash, we require brains!)
The Day I Got my Dual Standard... (Score:5, Interesting)
The 9600/14.4 modem retailed for almost $1500 in the late Eighties, and there was a sysop's discount of 50%. It took me months to save up that $795 plus shipping. I had them ship it to my office so I wouldn't miss being there to receive it. Fortunately my immediate boss (who also operated a BBS) had an appreciation of the finer things in life, and we spent half the afternoon looking at it, reading its large and content-filled manuals, and going over what I would need to do to to get it to function with my Fido/Opus BBS setup.
I well remember stopping by Baynesville Electronics to pick up my 16550/AFN UART, and as well the new driver chips. These were quickly installed, and I set to work after supper configuring the system and the modem. It had a wonderfully rich and complex set of registers and commands; you could get it do do just about anything you wanted. Friends passed around prized init strings the way church ladies pass around prized recipes, and I received several "Heard you got your modem. How's it going?" phone calls that evening. I had it up and running by midnight. Most fun was to watch the mail transfers running along at warp speed. The final touch: Adding that prized "HST" to the BBS's tag line. Noblesse oblige, and I became a mail point with the next Nodelist update.
I mostly remember two things:
First, I enjoyed and greatly miss the sense of community among most of the BBS sysops of that net--Net-261. Knowledge was shared freely, help was forthcoming, and the group was an extended family. I formed friendships that are still valued almost twenty years later. We often got together personally, and our families got to know one another as well.
Second, there's never been a piece of hardware as much fun to work on as a modem that's intended to drive a BBS.
Anne
The Keeping Room: Opus 1:261/1055 HST
Gone these many years, but never forgotten