I definitely miss the local and human aspects of BBSing. I grew up in rural Ohio, and we had just a few (3 - 4 at any time) BBS that were local calls in the lat

I definitely miss the local and human aspects of BBSing. I grew up in rural Ohio, and we had just a few (3 - 4 at any time) BBS that were local calls in the late 80's and early 90's. Knowing the local "cast of characters" was a lot of fun, and it was always exciting when somebody new popped-up on the scene. We had some get IRL get- togethers and a lot of behind-the-scenes drama. I wrote some software for a friend's board that used an NTSC frame grabber and Soundblaster card he had attached. You could upload a sound file (WAV or VOC) and it would play over the PA downstairs in the gym he ran. After your sound played the machine recorded 5 seconds of audio from a mic in the gym and pulled a single black and white frame from the gym's surveillance camera. You'd get back a ZIP file with a single GIF and a VOC file in it. That was a ton of fun. I really miss the old "hacker" boards, too, but that's arguably nostalgia for my youth more than anything. I'd still love to talk to somebody who frequented the old Bit Truth BBS (203). I very occasionally talk to friends who were on the old Unphamiliar Territory (602). The Internet helped change that "scene", but the it was already a pretty established tradition that most people would either go to college or get a "real job" and move on. Ahh... growing up...