Even before reading the article I was going to mention RIP and how it came along just as the web was spinning up. Even if the web never became a consumer-level

Even before reading the article I was going to mention RIP and how it came along just as the web was spinning up. Even if the web never became a consumer-level technology, it was clear that modem speeds were starting to ramp up around this time and BBS systems were starting to take serious looks at moving beyond ANSI and ANSI-like text-mode systems. RIP was notable because of how much it looked like more serious commercial dial-up systems like the Prodigy On-line service (pre-internet) [1] One of the ones I remember the best was the FirstClass BBS system for Macs. I think a modern version is still around for school systems. It offered a full GUI, I believe it could transfer multiple things at once, and had pretty good graphics support. There's pitiful little information I can find on the internet for what it used to look like in the mid-90s, but here's one of the best screenshots I can find. [2] IIR there were maybe 2 or 3 other similar systems, each with their own server-client system and protocol -- these all seem to be lost to time. The main problem of course is that user-uptake needs to be massive to really make these a success. With ANSI systems, pretty much any dial-up client could connect to any BBS systems regardless of what server software it was running. Even in the case where a weird character set was being sent back (like say when a MS-DOS system connected to an Amiga) you could more or less still use the BBS. But for RIP BBSs (and others like FirstClass), you needed a specialized client to dial-up just the one or two BBSs in your area that provided it, and if you were an avid BBSer, it really took you out of your normal "flow" from your main BBS terminal software. Once you were connected, the content of a RIP BBS may not have been all that compelling as BBSs were really driven by the interests and passions of the Sysop. For those that don't remember those days, the average BBS user's workflow looked something like this: 1 - Fire up your dial-up software 2 - Start dialing every single BBS you've been able to dig up and add to your dialer phonebook, this is automatic, but you'll get mostly busy signals since most BBSs are run off of one line. 3 - Eventually connect to one, maybe 20-30 minutes later. Is it one you're really interested in? 4 - Do some things, you only get a few minutes each day. 5 - Disconnect, start dialing again. Having to jump out of this fairly automated flow to fire up another different client just to dial in to one or two boards was just never going to fly. However, around the time the Web started to really take off some terminal clients were starting to integrate RIP and most RIP servers had an ANSI fallback. One of the reasons I think the web really took off was that you only needed to connect to your provider, and then all the sites were accessible. You didn't need to jump around between different applications or clients or anything. Just connect once, and you can go everywhere even if the content at that time was more or less the same and graphics and display capability weren't really much beyond what was theoretically already available. 1 - https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=prodigy%20on-line%20service%20-site%3Apinterest.*&tbs=imgo%3A1&oq=prodigy%20on-line%20service%20-site%3Apinterest.* https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=prodigy%20on-line%2... 2 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/57572221@N00/88477451 https://www.flickr.com/photos/57572221@N00/88477451