5 ms·

You can think of a BBS as a single web site that only one (or maybe a few) users can use at a time. It is really slow, with a text user interface or menu drive

You can think of a BBS as a single web site that only one (or maybe a few) users can use at a time. It is really slow, with a text user interface or menu driven interface. It might have a forum or text-only email that does not get updated very fast. There are some files that you can download, but not very many (maybe a hundred), but it takes several minutes to download one file. You can upload files you want to share, but that takes several minutes per file as well. There are some multiuser games, but in most cases only one or two users are playing at a time. One of my favorite was Trade Wars 2002: http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php?title=Jumpgate http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php?title=Jumpgate It was not at all similiar to today's web and social media because each BBS was local (who had the money to call long distance for far away BBSes?), and it was so much slower than today's Internet speeds. Seriously, BBSes over a 2400 baud or 9600 baud modem were so much slower than the data speeds that most cell networks offer today. Another big factor was that calling BBSes used a phone line. If your family had a single phone line, it was in use when using the modem. No one could make or receive phone calls when you were online. This meant that serious BBS users and sysops running BBSes had multiple phone lines. Those who couldn't afford multiple phone lines were calling late at night when no one else was using the phone.

User23 5y ago
> Another big factor was that calling BBSes used a phone line. If your family had a single phone line, it was in use when using the modem. No one could make or receive phone calls when you were online. This meant that serious BBS users and sysops running BBSes had multiple phone lines. Those who couldn't afford multiple phone lines were calling late at night when no one else was using the phone. My brother would pick up the phone and yell into it to knock me offline. BBSes were the gateway drug to MUDs for me. And even at 1200 baud a DIKUMUD was plenty playable.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  > My brother would pick up the phone and yell into it to knock me offline. Yup this is why I rerouted the phone line through my room and had it hooked up to a switch :P
whartung 5y ago
> It is really slow, with a text user interface or menu driven interface. It should be stressed that "really slow" is relative. 1200 baud for text, specifically scrolling text, is really usable. You feel it much more if you're constantly repainting a screen (because now you're sending 2K of text over at 120 cps). But scrolling simple prompts, simple menus, text messages are all fine at 1200 baud. That's faster than reading speed for most people. Systems were kept terse due to slower rates, but when it came down to actually "using" the systems, folks weren't typically shouting at their machines to go faster. When BBSs became more focused on software than messaging, speed became a much bigger issue.
- thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
  >> but when it came down to actually "using" the systems, folks weren't typically shouting at their machines to go faster. Did you ever download or upload files? >> scrolling simple prompts, simple menus, text messages are all fine at 1200 baud. Yes, on a 80 column text screen, there was only so much you could see at a time. People who have only seen web pages with inline images at high resolution that load instantly would probably see 1200 baud as slow.
  - laumars 5y ago
    You are arguing the exact same points the GP made but using selective quoting to make it sound like a rebuttal.
- jasonjayr 5y ago
  Really slow -- as in waiting for the messaging system to search/display the list of all waiting messages, being loaded over a slow IDE hard drive with limited memory .... But yea. Once you got to 1200 baud; the phone line could fling text at you just beyond normal reading speed; if all it was doing is sending that. Add in a lot of ANSI or terminal escape codes, and it can feel a bit sluggish till 56kbps
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Emacs still has aggressive terminal optimization code in it that calculates the smallest set of terminal commands necessary to repaint a screen in one state, into the desired state. So Emacs may still be usable -- not ideal but usable -- at 1200 baud. Something similar exists for vi, but I don't know if Vim has it.
13of40 5y ago
> It was not at all similiar to today's web and social media because each BBS was local... This is an important distinction, because depending on the size of your town and how social you were, there was a good chance you might meet these people in real life. Imagine if everyone in this thread actually went out for a beer or played disc golf with each other every once in a while.
- logosmonkey 5y ago
  Yeah, I ended up meeting a bunch of the regulars on my local BBS.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Indeed, we often had meetups. This really made it much more fun. On the packet radio side it was even more fun because you could see all the packets flying through the air and you could 'eavesdrop' on other people's conversations. Which sounds worse than it is - on the CB it was already a given that conversations were public so everyone was already used to that. And it didn't require any wizardry, pretty much every program showed a running log of the packets received. We're talking 1200 baud so you could actually follow it. People would often send stuff by broadcast too (usually many times because of the high packet loss and the chance of people missing it). In fact this really helped my early grasp of network tuning, messing with window and repeat timers to improve performance. Because it was all going in slow-motion you could really see the effects.
- evilbob93 5y ago
  IBM PCs didn't come out until after I was out of high school. A few years later I decided to join a meetup of the people who were users on the BBS I was on. It was mid 1980s, and it turned out that all the users I had been chatting with were in High School. First of many experiences where I felt pretty old.

User23 5y ago

> Another big factor was that calling BBSes used a phone line. If your family had a single phone line, it was in use when using the modem. No one could make or receive phone calls when you were online. This meant that serious BBS users and sysops running BBSes had multiple phone lines. Those who couldn't afford multiple phone lines were calling late at night when no one else was using the phone. My brother would pick up the phone and yell into it to knock me offline. BBSes were the gateway drug to MUDs for me. And even at 1200 baud a DIKUMUD was plenty playable.

GekkePrutser 5y ago
> My brother would pick up the phone and yell into it to knock me offline. Yup this is why I rerouted the phone line through my room and had it hooked up to a switch :P

whartung 5y ago

> It is really slow, with a text user interface or menu driven interface. It should be stressed that "really slow" is relative. 1200 baud for text, specifically scrolling text, is really usable. You feel it much more if you're constantly repainting a screen (because now you're sending 2K of text over at 120 cps). But scrolling simple prompts, simple menus, text messages are all fine at 1200 baud. That's faster than reading speed for most people. Systems were kept terse due to slower rates, but when it came down to actually "using" the systems, folks weren't typically shouting at their machines to go faster. When BBSs became more focused on software than messaging, speed became a much bigger issue.

thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
>> but when it came down to actually "using" the systems, folks weren't typically shouting at their machines to go faster. Did you ever download or upload files? >> scrolling simple prompts, simple menus, text messages are all fine at 1200 baud. Yes, on a 80 column text screen, there was only so much you could see at a time. People who have only seen web pages with inline images at high resolution that load instantly would probably see 1200 baud as slow.
- laumars 5y ago
  You are arguing the exact same points the GP made but using selective quoting to make it sound like a rebuttal.
jasonjayr 5y ago
Really slow -- as in waiting for the messaging system to search/display the list of all waiting messages, being loaded over a slow IDE hard drive with limited memory .... But yea. Once you got to 1200 baud; the phone line could fling text at you just beyond normal reading speed; if all it was doing is sending that. Add in a lot of ANSI or terminal escape codes, and it can feel a bit sluggish till 56kbps
- bitwize 5y ago
  Emacs still has aggressive terminal optimization code in it that calculates the smallest set of terminal commands necessary to repaint a screen in one state, into the desired state. So Emacs may still be usable -- not ideal but usable -- at 1200 baud. Something similar exists for vi, but I don't know if Vim has it.

13of40 5y ago

> It was not at all similiar to today's web and social media because each BBS was local... This is an important distinction, because depending on the size of your town and how social you were, there was a good chance you might meet these people in real life. Imagine if everyone in this thread actually went out for a beer or played disc golf with each other every once in a while.

logosmonkey 5y ago
Yeah, I ended up meeting a bunch of the regulars on my local BBS.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Indeed, we often had meetups. This really made it much more fun. On the packet radio side it was even more fun because you could see all the packets flying through the air and you could 'eavesdrop' on other people's conversations. Which sounds worse than it is - on the CB it was already a given that conversations were public so everyone was already used to that. And it didn't require any wizardry, pretty much every program showed a running log of the packets received. We're talking 1200 baud so you could actually follow it. People would often send stuff by broadcast too (usually many times because of the high packet loss and the chance of people missing it). In fact this really helped my early grasp of network tuning, messing with window and repeat timers to improve performance. Because it was all going in slow-motion you could really see the effects.
evilbob93 5y ago
IBM PCs didn't come out until after I was out of high school. A few years later I decided to join a meetup of the people who were users on the BBS I was on. It was mid 1980s, and it turned out that all the users I had been chatting with were in High School. First of many experiences where I felt pretty old.