Die-Hard Sysops Are Resurrecting BBS's From The 1980s (arstechnica.com) 245
Ars Technica reports on vintage computing hobbyists "resurrecting digital communities that were once thought lost to time...some still running on original 8-bit hardware." Sometimes using modern technology like Raspberry Pi and TCPser (which emulates a Hayes modem for Telnet connections), they're reviving decades-old dial-up bulletin board systems (or BBSes) as portals "to places that have been long forgotten." An anonymous reader writes:
One runs the original software on a decades-old Commodore 128DCR. Another routes telnet connections across a real telephone circuit that connects to a Hayes modem. And after 23 years, the Dura-Europos BBS is back in business, using an Apple IIe running its original GBBS Pro software -- augmented with a modern CFFA3000 compact flash drive, and a Raspberry Pi running TCPser. [It's at dura-bbs.net, using port 6359.] Ars Technica blames "the meteoric rise of the World Wide Web and the demise of protocols that came before it" for the death of BBSes. "Owners of older 8-bit machines had little reason to maintain their hardware as their userbase migrated to the open pastures of the Web, and the number of bulletin board systems plummeted accordingly...
"Despite the threat of extinction, however, it turns out that some sysops never quite gave up on the BBS," and for many modern-day users, "it's simply a matter of 'dialing' the BBS using a domain name and port number instead of a phone number in their preferred terminal software." There they'll find primitive BBS games like STARTREK, Chess, and Blackjack, but also "old conversation threads dating back decades were available verbatim... It's like a buried digital time capsule."
One user says visiting a web site today "has a very public feel to it, whereas a BBS feels very much like being invited into someone's living room." The article also remembers "the dulcet tones of a 1200 baud connection (or 2400, if you were very lucky)," adding that "to see what was accomplished with so little was simply humbling."
"Despite the threat of extinction, however, it turns out that some sysops never quite gave up on the BBS," and for many modern-day users, "it's simply a matter of 'dialing' the BBS using a domain name and port number instead of a phone number in their preferred terminal software." There they'll find primitive BBS games like STARTREK, Chess, and Blackjack, but also "old conversation threads dating back decades were available verbatim... It's like a buried digital time capsule."
One user says visiting a web site today "has a very public feel to it, whereas a BBS feels very much like being invited into someone's living room." The article also remembers "the dulcet tones of a 1200 baud connection (or 2400, if you were very lucky)," adding that "to see what was accomplished with so little was simply humbling."
never fear... (Score:2, Insightful)
migrated to the open pastures of the Web
Not to fear: the internet is being closed back up against as fast as people can sign up for Facebook, use closed/proprietary IM systems, and DRM everything in sight.
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It is the way of things, the old ways die off (or are forgotten and persist regardless like usenet) and are replaced with new things, whether or not the new things are better will be determined by the users, or dumb luck.
Stuff from our past, when we grew up... (Score:5, Interesting)
...We remember them with fond memories.
I remember when I spent so much of my savings as a kid to purchase that expensive 1200/2400/4800/9600 multimodem. Not to mention when I got two phonelines into my bedroom. My parents thought I was completely nuts, they complained about the "iiiiiii...ryryryryryryr....shhhhh" sounds at night, and I remember waking up to that music thinking, oh boy - someone is logging onto my computer.
Sometimes they just called the BBS system just to chat with Sysop. ...Paging sysop....
Sysop Coming Online...
Ah, the memories.
Just for the same reason I have my Commodore 64 next to me, I don't actually use it, and when I do - it's frightfully slow, but fun to do raster-interrupts and simple code challenges on anyway.
We only do this because we are still remember the good times, they have very little to any good use today, but it's really just for the nostalgia.
GOOD TIMES!
Re:Stuff from our past, when we grew up... (Score:4, Funny)
I still use old computers, but not out of nostalgia. I do it because "Lemonade Stand" for the c64 is way more fun than an XBox and all the fancy graphics in the world. I play it for like two hours a day.
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Is it even possible for most people to use a modem these days? I suspect most phone traffic is already passing through an ADC->DAC translation anyway. Trying to put a modem signal through that seems like a painful exercise.
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Most of the 8/16-bit BBS's popping back up are using things like Lantronix UDS or iPocket232 serialethernet adapters that emulate a modem. You actually telnet to them. For extra authenticity you can use something like Syncterm to get real ANSI, PETSCII or ATASCII support.
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It dosen't hurt me one "bit"
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Is it even possible for most people to use a modem these days? I suspect most phone traffic is already passing through an ADC->DAC translation anyway. Trying to put a modem signal through that seems like a painful exercise.
I did some work on a legacy embedded system using a 2400bps modem about 5 years back and it still worked fine over a modern phone system when the receiving end was VoIP with an analog modem attached. It was part of a gas meter reading systems where it piggy-backed on a POTS line and reported usage once a day, the tiny amount of data being transmitted only needed about a 30 second connection so a few hundred reporting back to a single line overnight with staggered connections and retries was practical. Some
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Remember "1200 Baud, no lamers"?
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Couldn't the modems be muted back then with ATM0 command?
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Same here. I ran a BBS in Barcelona for a few years and was a Fidonet node during that time (2:343/163). The atmosphere in those message boards was so much better than almost everything on the Internet today.
Re:Stuff from our past, when we grew up... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Astonished)
"iiiiiii...ryryryryryryr....shhhhh"
I've never seen someone so accurately spell phonetically the sound of a modem connecting.
Re: Stuff from our past, when we grew up... (Score:4, Funny)
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
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Vinyl records making comeback as well.
And leeches, don't forget leeches. Doctors will be using them again real soon now.
A 128DCR? (Score:2)
With a 1581? Or for real old-school power, a SFD-1001.
1200 baud? Get off my lawn (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember when 1200 baud was unobtainium expensive and many dial up services didn't even have 1200 modems at all. 300 was decent, but you had to put up with 110 once in a blue moon if the modem pool got full.
For the longest time I had an AppleCat that would only do some weird half-duplex 1200 baud that was unusable with normal 1200 baud. Somebody figured out a simple handshake system and made it possible to send whole floppies at 1200 baud.
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I think the general modem pool for the timeshare system used in CompSci 3104 might have been 1200 baud capable in 1986 at the University I attended. I know for a fact in high school it wasn't -- there were a handful of 1200 baud lines restricted to admin logins, and an admin I knew used to gripe a lot about wasted money on a Hayes 1200 modem that seldom could get the 1200 baud lines.
FWIW, I think the AppleCat had a Bell 212 "normal" 1200 baud option, but it was nearly twice the price of the non-212 version
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Ya, I had exactly that thought. I have a full backup of the day I took C.A.T.I.E. offline. I did a google and it may as well have never existed.
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I had a sad, and what does the left and right pointy brave mean that a post just ignores it ? (shift , and .)
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dammit "brace" not brave.
Don't slashdot drunk my fellow kids. Not even the red underlines can save you!
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After some Googling, the AppleCat was doing Bell 202 signalling to make 1200 baud and it could do it with anything else capable of it, but it was a one-directional standard and required some kind of timing to make tx/rx work, so basically you needed to be running software aware of this on both ends to make it work.
I don't remember Bell 202 supported by any other product, they usually were Bell 212 if they supported 1200 baud.
The other thing that made the AppleCat kind of attractive at the time was that it w
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It's interesting that Bell 202 is a pure one-way standard. Outside North America we got CCIT V.23 which was 1200 Baud in one direction and 75 Baud in the other direction, so you usually had to decide in advance which direction you wanted to be fast, depending on which way you were copying files. Generally it would default to fast download (and slow upload) from the point of view of the party initiating the call.
Ahhh, the memories (Score:5, Insightful)
[imdb.com]http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460402/]BBS: The Documentary[/URL
is a pretty good look back. It would also be intensely boring to anyone who wasn't there.
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I'd love to see a follow-up/sequel of it.
The pre-Internet days... (Score:5, Informative)
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Perhaps an ATDT bust rather than dot com.
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2400 in 94/95? Dude, your BBS sucked!
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2400 in 94/95? Dude, your BBS sucked!
BBSes with 2400 modems weren't uncommon in Silicon Valley at that time.
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Cool stuff indeed, but I would humbly request that you not call 1994 "pre-internet".
The Internet didn't become popular with the public at large until 1995. I had my first dial-up UNIX account and browsed the Internet with Lynx in 1995. For me, anything before 1995 is pre-Internet.
That was my 10th year on the internet!
Anything that suddenly becomes popular with the public at large has probably been around for at least ten years or more. Thanks for confirming what everyone else already knows.
Discovering usenet in the mid 80's was... interesting.
So much ASCII porn, so little time.
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highly doubtful as pre internet in 1992 was more or less always on BBS'es that did little more and often time less than the most basic bbs
yea great you ping ponged machines during college classes, called it the internet post 1995 when it was kewl, but really you didnt, lets be honest here
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In 1993 to 1994 I was on the internet at University of New Brunswick in Canada (Fredericton). They had a few UNIX systems set up. It was my first introduction to UNIX and X-Windows. I primarily used it to connect to Usenet and news groups. It was where I found a ton of apps for my HP48 programmable calculator from other university repositories.
So yes, the "Internet" was around in 1992. However, web sites and browsers were not in use until years later.
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The internet was not "BBS's", and neither was it "AOL".
The Internet prior to 1995 was the like the dial-up UNIX account I had in 1995. I could telnet into other systems (typically a university mainframe), transfer files from a university ftp server (the early days of shareware and Linux distributions), or give someone the finger [wikipedia.org].
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The point is, you spoke as if the internet "came along" in around 1994, but it had 3 million hosts and over 10 million users by then.
As I pointed out to someone else, when the public at large becomes aware of a technology it has already existed for at least ten years or longer. The technology for TVs existed in the 1920s but didn't become a consumer item until the 1950s. One could argue that TV's didn't exist prior to the 1950's.
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Bullshit. You could get SL/IP access for a few years prior to 1994 and UNIX shell accounts on internet connected systems LONG before that. Windows systems were at a disadvantage in that timeframe because you needed a buggy third party TCP/IP stack. MacTCP worked just fine though.
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14.4 modems were common in 1994, and 28.8 was common by 1995.
Common, yes. Inexpensive, no. Not for a college student who got kicked out of the university and worked three years as a restaurant cook. Most of my hardware were hand me downs from people who upgraded their PCs. Once I got my technical career started in software testing, I was able to start custom building PCs.
Fond memories (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the day I would dial into Chrysalis BBS in Dallas, TX. At one point the BBS had 96 lines into it so it had chat rooms and multi-player games. I started out on a 2400 baud modem, stepped up to a 14.4 modem and when I got the 56K modem, I was on top of the world.
They had one MUD that I would play, every night at 3am the in game goodies would reset. There was one area that you could buy gold, silver and copper. The supply was very very limited so you had to be in the area when the game reset cause it was gone with in mins. I remember setting my alarm for 2:55 one morning, I got up got the goods, sold them and went back to bed. This MUD had active devs that would add new areas which kept it fun. May I wish I could remember the name of it. At one point the SysOp tried to bring the BBS back online through a web portal about 10 years ago, but it really went anywhere.
telnet links (Score:2)
Telnet links still work AFAIK so why not post them?
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you're welcome
-dk
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Telnet links still work AFAIK so why not post them?
Most are just muds now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Binkleyterm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't be excessively annoying.
Don't be easily annoyed.
Fuck AOL, for how "far" we've come.
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Yup. I was running the northern california fidonet hub back in the 90-91 range. Those were the days...
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I ran a Fidonet system as well. I can't remember what frontend I used, maybe it was Front Door. I even wrote my own mail tosser in Turbo Pascal. Somewhere I still have that old PC, and it still boots into OS/2 and the BBS. OS/2 was the best DOS multi-tasker ever.
I stopped caring so much about in the late '90s, but in early 2000, I got DSL with a small static IP block, and I've had a static IP at home ever since.
I think about running some kind of BBS or local-focused web forum from time to time, but there'
Concepts of BBSes are still missing from the web (Score:5, Insightful)
I wrote this circa 2012, on the relevance and missing community aspect of BBSes these days..
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Over the past months I have thought a lot about how social networking websites such as Myspace and Facebook (and the newer Google+) always seem to have their “golden age” of popularity – and then steadily decline.
I’ve thought about when I switched from Myspace to Facebook. There just seemed to be a specific point where it would have been more productive to invest my time in my (newly created) Facebook profile – and a majority of my flock of friends and family I had connected with had migrated as well.
And then I’ve thought about my transition from Friendster to Myspace. Friendster was one of the very first generalized social networking websites. It was great in its own regard, though it was primitive compared to what Facebook and Google+ are today. At its core, though, it was a beautiful creation and a great idea to bring casual conversation to a worldwide audience.
Going back further, I reminisce about the rise of the Internet and the subsequent decline of dial-up Bulletin Board Systems. Anyone who knows me personally from the mid-90’s and earlier knows how nostalgiac I am about BBSes even today. There has always been something about them that Internet-based social networking websites today can’t seem to hold a candle to – something I could never put my finger on.
Just the other night I was reading a paper called “The Temporary Autonomous Zone”, which describes communities of past and present – all different types from 18th century pirate utopias to the (then) modern computerized communities of Bulletin Board Systems. It described the social aspects of these communities and their decentralized (some would say anarchy-based) nature. Though most of them hold no place in history books, their ideals were always the cornerstone of their purpose. Many of them were actually meant to be temporary; the lifespan of the community was inherent to its validity.
Myspace, Facebook and Google+ all have the same idea – connecting and socializing with people you know in real life. What seems to be the common decline with these sites in general is quite simply that once your userbase reaches a certain threshold, the communal foundation itself starts to wobble and eventually comes tumbling down on top of itself. More specifically, once your “friends” list becomes more than you can handle, you start to question the validity and value of the people you have connected with as well as the community as a whole.
For me, it started with a “friend sweep” – going through my list and removing the friends who I didn’t find completely necessary to communicate with. My first sweep list consisted people I knew in school and past jobs, but never really conversed with anyway. Then came the ones who I did genuinely care about, but just couldn’t stand to see one more post about their political stance/life story/band/business happenings. After many months and multiple sweeps, however, the stale smell of wasted time still hung in the air for me. This resulted in me leaving the site for a time, declaring my independence and recaptured freedom and liberty. (Dramatic, aren’t I?) Of course, I have come back and left a few times, repeating the same shenanigans. The desire to communicate with those I care about draws me back. The feeling of distance, the feeling that people are screaming through a bullhorn at a ginormous crowd (i.e. their friends list) makes me leave because I feel like I have no real connection with them.
With all of this back and forth came a realization to me that old-school dialup Bulletin Board Systems rarely encountered these kinds of issues. For the most part, BBSes always seemed to hold a small, passionate community that kept themselves on target with what they were trying to accomplish (which was the same goal as modern social networks – informal human to human
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Quite possibly creating an artificial limit to your network will help it thrive – be it restricted to family members, friends from school, specific workplaces you get the idea. The key is to harness the power of the quality of your community and not the quantity.
Probably. Though one thing that set BBSes apart is that they often amounted to singular communities of people, like you describe. Not multiple (though overlapping) networks belonging to individual people each with their own circle of friends, like modern social networks. Nor communities of interest, like many FB groups, web boards, or Usenet groups.
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And it suddenly came to me – It’s the community, stupid!
This is something I have realized for quite some time now. I would really like to run a local-focused web forum. The effort of actively pruning people outside the area trying to gain a foothold is probably less than the technical effort to run an actual dial-up BBS these days, so I won't even begin to consider running a "real BBS". And not being limited to a single physical channel by dial-up will be so much better anyhow.
One of these days. Right now I'm in the middle of a lot of IRL crap that's keeping me
I wish... (Score:2)
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Ideas like Hotline did try to offer a more modern feel and communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Lazy coders (Score:2)
Because coders are lazy. Your average desktop today is orders of magnitude faster than 20 years ago. Programs never load any faster and pages never render any faster either.
revive? they never left... (Score:2)
I only shut mine down about 4 years ago after a hardware failure, there were still plenty then.
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agreed there's a ton of them for every gen and faction of computer that never even died
hell the one I used to co-sysop back in 1993 only went down last year for a few months just cause some 20 something year old ram shat itself on the original 386/DX25 finally got flakey
its running happily on a 90mhz pentium now
I remember Hotline Communications (Score:2)
I remember Hotline Communications
What happened to Slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who was there 25 years ago, I can tell you, it was no golden age. There were already trolls complaining about the 1990s version of "SJWs" and hollering that there were too many posts that weren't "tech" enough.
Imagine today's Slashdot, but in lower resolution, and having to wait while a GNAA comment loaded on the screen.
On the plus side, there was plenty of ASCII porn.
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On the plus side, there was plenty of ASCII porn.
Or with a few dollar donation one can gain access to the high-res 160x120 GIF porn section.
The interlacing along with 2400 baud only added to the mystique :}~
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Especially dick-nozzles like me.
WWIV + LORD + Tradewars. (Score:3)
WWIV + LORD + Tradewars. That was middle school in a nutshell, on a 14.4 bbs with a phone cord strung out from my room to the living room to sneak on at 1 AM...
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WWIV + LORD + Tradewars. That was middle school in a nutshell, on a 14.4 bbs with a phone cord strung out from my room to the living room to sneak on at 1 AM...
I played one game on an IBM BBS I really enjoyed called "Food Fight". A text based food fight where one earned or lost food...
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I ran a BBS, and so did a couple of my friends. A friend's BBS had a multi-player BBS door (maybe it was even LORD) that only one user ever played, and he called daily at the optimal time. It had a screen full of really cheesy flavor text when it started up ("You are the Lord of the Land!" type stuff), and I decided to hex-edit the text into a parody of the original. I don't think I changed anything else but that intro text. So my friend and I waited (we only had to wait an hour or so), and sure enough, he
Yes, it's hard to quit (Score:2)
I can't have what I had due to the Internet more so IRC.
I ran 3001 BBS (go figure), a 6 line chat board.
Cnet software on an Amiga 3000, a 6 port serial printer card, 6 2400 baud modems and a Robotics HST (1400 baud) which I allowed any one who wanted to log in for free, a donation gave more time forever (time was a commodity).
I ran it for close to 4 years 24/7, and it was the most popular BBS this area ever saw. Post I was going to the park and a few would show up, card games every weekend, it was a very ni
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It cost a bundle but my hobby, and I'd go back to those days in a heart beat but it's over.
I feel ya, really I do. Remember when the concept of entire international networks of computers being disabled by a government-funded, self-propagating, polymorphic computer virus was nothing more than hyperbolic science-fiction absurdity? Remember when we used to think to ourselves: "Yea, but in real life who would be stupid enough to hook software that insecure to an open public network?"
Oh, for the return of simpler times. We understood the technology so very well, but we understood people almost not at all.
While on the Amiga side during the "war", there was security through obscurity, I even hex edited the version number of the Cnet software so nobody knew what "exploit" could be used.
Yet yes it's a different time, I'm seeing Linux and the reported people connected to ones computer the only way of being sure your secure. More than one I'd consider a problem.
Door.sys (Score:2)
Does anyone else recall struggling with the door.sys file on your BBS? One door game generally worked fine, but woe to you when you tried to configure multiple door games on your BBS, particularly with more than one user at a time!
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IIRC DORINFO.DAT was a more stable solution. At least on Renegade.
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I think I ran mostly TurboBBS or Searchlight (before they went all crazy and modern with 'RIP' graphics.) Searchlight in particular didn't do certain things the standard way, even if they made other things a lot easier... I seem to remember having issues with the FOSSIL driver too.
The last time I did a thorough housecleaning, I ran across a floppy with Telix and a bunch of SALT scripts. Ah, memories.
This has been going on for ages.... (Score:3)
Most of the 8/16-bit BBS's popping back up are using things like Lantronix UDS or iPocket232 serialethernet adapters that emulate a modem. You actually telnet to them. For extra authenticity you can use something like Syncterm to get real ANSI, PETSCII or ATASCII support.
Many of these BBS's simply run on emulators but the die-hards use real hardware. I connect to a couple to play old-ass online door games. Normally I use SyncTerm but I have a tricked out 800XL (576K RAM, Happy 1050 floppy, IDE interface and Atari 850 RS232/Parallel interface w/ iPocket232) that I connect with occasionally.
Another option with Atari 8-bit machines is using something like APE or SIO2OSX and using your PC to emulate devices.... the adapter can be built for $5 using an FTDI FT232RL USBTTL serial breakout board. This is convenient for transferring or running real disk images/files as well as printer emulation and modem emulation. Makes running "backups" of all those old games you could never find or afford very easy. The Atari 8-bit machines are the easiest to pull this off on.
This is nothing new. It's just most people under 30 couldn't give a shit less.
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Oh and if you want a real dialup board.... magicjack or similar bargain-basement voip boxes should handle 2400bps just fine.
No they're not (Score:2)
"Hard Sysops Are Resurrecting BBS's From The 1980s"
No they're not. A few cranks are emulating legacy point-to-point systems because it's an insanely hipster thing to do, but no one is resurrecting BBS'.
Next on slashdot, ""Die-Hard Cowboys Are Resurrecting Buggy-whips From The 1880s"
Perfect storm (Score:3)
My favourite thing about this (Score:4, Insightful)
isn't the nostalgia angle. I like that it could morph into a viable, minimalist alternative to the corporately-owned, advertising-funded, privacy-annihilating crapcake that the Internet has become. It would be pretty tough for anyone to monetize BBSes in any significant way when they're running on low-bandwidth connections and have relatively small membership numbers. BBSes and modems would restore some fun and some adventure to the act of going online. There's one big difference, right there in those two words: 'going online' as a conscious decision, rather than 'being online' as a normalized state of existence.
Plus, wouldn't it be kind of 'modern steampunk' to have a modem app on a phone or tablet so you could 'dial in' to a BBS? Oh, wait - I guess that would require the Internetz again. Oh well...
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I've thought a few times that some kind of disconnected RPi / Wi-Fi BBS solution would be cool. Like at a coffee shop, a standardized SSID ("BBS" ?) that people would connect to whose only purpose would be to serve the BBS. It would purposefully not have Internet access, but would be a local-only social platform for brick-and-mortar places that may even help draw patrons in.
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I was reading some interesting things earlier as a result of this story.
Apparently, you can run multiple instances of dosbox on a *nix OS, and with the right code patches compiled in, dosbox emulates NE2000 cards and properly does the system realtime clock. This would let you emulate a whole fleet of nodes on a virtual network that are able to communicate with each other, able to run original software. (Actual Wildcat!, for example) You can pipe the virtual serial from the dosbox instance to a serial devic
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That's a terrific idea, and I'd be there in a heartbeat. Not just coffee shops, but also pubs. With the addition of some battery packs of reasonable capacity, the idea could be extended to public spaces, and perhaps even to food courts in shopping malls. Pop-up BBS events!
In densely populated areas, this idea could also become usefully subversive. Connections made between those local networks could form a mesh network - an open, democratic, providerless alternative to the Internet. That's definitely getting
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Do you really want the kiddies that need that spoon-feeding shit? Back in the day, they would never even have had any idea what a "modum" was. The very problem with fakebook and stinkaglam is the hipsters and normies using it, especially the ones who never access it except from their phone. There needs to be at least a minimum bar of entry, of which an SSID with no internet behind it (DHCP/DNS forcing you to the web-board interface, etc.) is a damn good start. The easier you make it, the lamer the people yo
Makes me wonder... (Score:2)
A BBS style public messaging system, coupled with PGP/GPG public key sharing, could be an interesting thing.
People just logging in see nothing but cypher text if they dont have the right keys. Meaning the conversation is private, even from the sysop. If they manage their keys properly, and have valid chains of trust, it would be a good holdout against the loss of privacy in the modern world.
Throw in a fully encrypted transport (like SSH), and there you go. Only other remaining thing would be decentralizatio
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The point of a BBS is community, and open communication. FFS, the name comes from a physical device for posting messages for everyone to see. Why would you think that *privacy* would make BBSes better?
Ah the History... (Score:2)
I wrote the k56 Flex modem CCL for the Apple Internet Connection Kit..... Used to run a Hermes BBS, then Nova Link.... But before that Wildcat.
It's deep in my DNA. But aside from an occasional wistful nostalgia... I've no desire to return to those days.
Not really new (Score:2)
There have LONG been internet ports into and out of BBS.
The first board I ever dialed into ran TBBS and had integrated FTP and Lynx browsing and some other things. I got my first @ email there too.
By the time 1995 came around, I was running my own Maximus board with nodes on Fidonet and a couple others. Had two phone lines, did co-sysop duties on two other Maximus boards, and generally had a lot of fun tinkering with Max, Binkleyterm, Squish, and my favorite mail editor of all time, tim-ed. Ah I miss tha
And then there were the packet radio networks. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
there is a bit to learn there (Score:3)
From the perspective of someone who wrote BBSes during the 1980's (Stonehenge, &c) what I find interesting is that the social problems associated with message systems are still largely the same (twits, trolls, spammers, and those who shout lies louder than those who speak truth). Every now and then I read about someone in the modern era who has a "new idea" (e.g. "selective invisibility" for obnoxious trolls) which was invented thirty years ago (and probably before that) by multiple folks working independently.
I remember the biggest struggle was making sure that networked messages didn't just circulate forever. Given the limited memory and mass storage and slow processing speeds I ended up with a primitive-but-effective combination of hop counts, expiration dates, and a use window. None of that is of much practical use today but the struggle to make it more or less work was an important experience for a then-larval coder. Actually, a lot of the interesting problems of that time were making relatively cheap and primitive hardware do something useful in a reasonable amount of time.
300 baud smartmodem (Score:2)
We had a 1200 baud and a 300 baud smartmodem. The aluminum case was snazzy.
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and I'm still poor.
That's no-one else's fault, and it's no-one else's problem.
Fuck all of you motherfuckers
And with that attitude, you'll stay poor and die poor.
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I have a VIC-20, a C64, a 64C, a SX-64, a 128DCR, 1764, 1351, 1541, 1571, and two SFD-1001s.... Yeah, a bit of a hoarding thing going on. Don't get me started on my vintage test gear!
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I had an electronic typewriter that survived all three C64s because instructors wouldn't accept print outs since wordprocessors turned students into lazy writers.
How could they tell the difference? Sure, they could tell the difference with a 9-pin printer in draft mode, but a 24 pin NLQ or daisywheel?
Heck, it's even possible to hook up a Deskjet or Laserjet to a C64, with a GeoCable. IIRC I once got a Deskjet to do text mode output from a C128 with a Xetec printer interface attached.
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Sure, they could tell the difference with a 9-pin printer in draft mode, but a 24 pin NLQ or daisywheel?
Fan fold paper was not always the same quality or have the sharp edges as regular paper. Typewritten pages are likely to have evidence of ink out or correction tape.
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That's OK.... I have an Atari 400, 800, 600XL, 800XL, 130XE all with some sort of RAM upgrades.... a 1050 Happy drive.... 850 Parallel/4xserial interface with serial-to-ethernet adapter that emulates a modem.... IDE controller (with 2 CF cards hooked up).... SIO2SD SD-card interface.... a 1010 cassette drive.... an SIO2PC Atari SIO-to-USB (USB to TTL serial basically) interface....
So yeah, I hoard a bit. Only 2 of those machines are hooked up though but most of the peripherals are on the 800XL. The 400 li
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I have a couple of broken (as in the plastic case) C64s with no power supply lying around.
No, you can not have the SID chips, I plan to hook them up to a microcontroller.
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It was dull unless you were awake when it actually found something.... then you practically shit your pants.
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Then don't. Go to 4chan instead.
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Yes, it is. But this is no different. powertripping neckbeard douchenozzles will blossom anywhere they get a chance, like dandelions.
The funny part is that they BELIEVE that they are special, but in actually they are the shitty weeds that anyone with a milligram of socialization would rip out by the roots and leave on the sidewalk to die.
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LOL!
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I recognized that as a Courier init string about a third of the way in. I still have mine somewhere, along with a stack of few others that I found in thrift stores in the late '90s/early 2Ks. Hell no, there was no way I was gonna let a Courier modem get junked. Screw Sportsters, though, even the externals.
And then there was the time I found a Courier that didn't have all its features enabled (like HST, for instance) and I found some Russian flasher software and firmware image to hack it with. I actually ha