I'm old, so I was an adult during the golden era of the BBS. I started off with a Commodore 64 in about 1984, first with the plug-in 300 bps Commodore modem. I

I'm old, so I was an adult during the golden era of the BBS. I started off with a Commodore 64 in about 1984, first with the plug-in 300 bps Commodore modem. I was active in my local C=64 user group, and a couple of the other guys worked for the local Baby Bell. They hooked me up with a surplus 1200 bps modem that required me to plug my phone line into a touchtone phone that controlled the modem. I called only local BBSs, and several of them were run by other members of our user group. We spent a lot of time being technical, talking about file transfer protocols, online game programming, etc. Since it was just my wife and me and we lived in a tiny apartment, there was essentially no competition for the phone. About the time I became president of our user group, Steve Case started up the QuantumLink online service (which eventually became America Online). As club president I was supposed to get five hours of time free each month. I'm pretty sure they didn't really pay much attention, because I spent a lot more than five hours a month on the service and never got a bill for it. In the late 80s, BBSing seemed very advanced, and the memory of the duck-choking-on-a-kazoo sound of connecting still stirs something in me. It was oddly thrilling to exchange email and even chat with the sysop, even if he was a guy you saw on the bus a couple of times a week.