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So I didn't fully get it: what is BBS?
by mettamage 7y ago
So I didn't fully get it: what is BBS?
- tptacek 7y agoIt's like Reddit except lots of unrelated people ran it and you dialed into it with a modem.
- rkagerer 7y agoQ: What's a modem? A: It's like Wifi you can hear.
- karthikb 7y agoA2: It's like WiFi you can sing.
- slantyyz 7y agoAnd the number of concurrent users was directly correlated to the number of phone lines there were for the BBS. So there were a lot of indie BBSes that scaled to... 1 concurrent user.
- lowtolerance 7y agoWhile that’s true, even single-line BBSes were still technically multi-user, as the sysop could be logged in locally while another user was on the line.
- slantyyz 7y agoYes, that is true too. It also depended on what software being used to run the BBS.
- tptacek 7y agoBut that was OK! Because BBS's worked like Usenet. You logged in, checked your messages, and logged out. A lot of multi-line BBS's had lines dedicated to downloads and lines dedicated to interactive use. I am having a weird time-travel moment remembering Telix continuously trying to redial through busy signals to BBS's to play my next turn on some door game while I listened to Smiths songs on FM radio and soldered crystals into Radio Shack touchpads so I could get free calls from pay phones. Let's see how many of those concepts the median HN user remembers. :)
- slantyyz 7y agoMy friend's BBS had a dungeon style role playing game (this is around 1986), so you could waste quite a bit of time playing that game. The best "purchasable power up" in the game was an "All You Can Eat"... which ran out very quickly, so not quite what was advertised.
- kikoreis 7y agoTelix but not Telemate? ISTR the scripting language for Telemate was really nice and I definitely built something pretty sophisticated for x25 NUA scanning. Payphone hacking was not much of a thing in Brazil but I spent days on Bluebeep on international R2 connections. It is amazing to think how hard you had to work to be able to call abroad. The scarcity in everything made for a lot of fun. Toneloc was also something I recall from the era that was outstanding. It is a pity I never printed out the full exchange scans I had, as they were beautiful.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- codetrotter 7y agoBulletin Board System. You connected via telnet over dial-up and could chat and participate in discussion threads with others, play games, download files. A lot of people hosted their own BBSes on their home computers. BBSes were largely out of style by the time I got a computer so I don’t have first-hand experience from the golden age of the BBSes but I’ve read a little about it on the web.
- slantyyz 7y agoWhen I started BBSing, chatting was still a luxury feature available only from the larger corporate BBSes or the indie sysops who could afford multiple lines. Back then, the indie sysops didn't have access to stuff like ads to monetize their efforts.
- cheeze 7y agoThe best BBS when I was young were the ones that were only online for certain hours, because the op's parents wanted to use the phone during the day.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- arthur5005 7y agoSweet summer child...
- albertsondev 7y agoYour predecessor's fora. This is the meeting place of phreakers and warez enthusiasts. Not as random or as clumsy as a public tracker; an elegant platform for a more... civilized age.
- drivers99 7y agoHere’s a 5 hour documentary series: https://youtu.be/nO5vjmDFZaI https://youtu.be/nO5vjmDFZaI