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This predates me by at least a decade. How do you use the “BBS”? So once you dial in, it uses IVR to read and write messages? Sounds painful to me once you hav

by xyst 3y ago

This predates me by at least a decade. How do you use the “BBS”? So once you dial in, it uses IVR to read and write messages? Sounds painful to me once you have more than a dozen active users

pokot0 3y ago
It’s just text interface like running a program on a terminal, just the program runs on the remote computer. Much like a telnet session, with some primitives to transfer files.
porkbeer 3y ago
Typically BBS's were single user systems, although many multiuser systems existed too.
Delk 3y ago
All the data is digital (in case of BBS, mostly text, although file transfers are also possible). The analogue phone line is only used for transmitting digital data over the analogue medium. The dial-up modem converts the digital data to an analogue voice signal at the transmitting end and back from analogue to digital at the receiving end. (That's what a modem is: a modulator-demodulator.) So no, you don't interact with a BBS by speech.
op00to 3y ago
google a "telnet BBS" and see for yourself. the experience is the same, especially if you can set up a 1200 BPS serial connection.
numpad0 3y ago
AIUI, I'm myself way below BBS age too, I believe you sign in to a shell program to someone else's *nix box that offers BBS features. The shell that spawns at the remote side is a stripped down ncurses program rather than being /bin/bash. The program allows narrow range of actions such as `ls /var/bbs/threads/`, `cat /var/bbs/threads/$1`, or `cat | sed -e s/^/\n$(whoami),$(date)\twrote:/ >> /var/bbs/threads/$1.txt`. The grumpy neckbeards with accounts on the remote system would have extensive secret sauce for `/usr/bin/expect` that can aggregate changes for each file so they can catch up to the latest flamewars happening there, while it wouldn't be a requirement to be explained how far away you are on spectrum, or something along that. idk. More than happy to be corrected.

by xyst 3y ago

This predates me by at least a decade. How do you use the “BBS”? So once you dial in, it uses IVR to read and write messages? Sounds painful to me once you have more than a dozen active users

pokot0 3y ago

It’s just text interface like running a program on a terminal, just the program runs on the remote computer. Much like a telnet session, with some primitives to transfer files.

porkbeer 3y ago

Typically BBS's were single user systems, although many multiuser systems existed too.

Delk 3y ago

All the data is digital (in case of BBS, mostly text, although file transfers are also possible). The analogue phone line is only used for transmitting digital data over the analogue medium. The dial-up modem converts the digital data to an analogue voice signal at the transmitting end and back from analogue to digital at the receiving end. (That's what a modem is: a modulator-demodulator.) So no, you don't interact with a BBS by speech.

op00to 3y ago

google a "telnet BBS" and see for yourself. the experience is the same, especially if you can set up a 1200 BPS serial connection.

numpad0 3y ago

AIUI, I'm myself way below BBS age too, I believe you sign in to a shell program to someone else's *nix box that offers BBS features. The shell that spawns at the remote side is a stripped down ncurses program rather than being /bin/bash. The program allows narrow range of actions such as `ls /var/bbs/threads/`, `cat /var/bbs/threads/$1`, or `cat | sed -e s/^/\n$(whoami),$(date)\twrote:/ >> /var/bbs/threads/$1.txt`. The grumpy neckbeards with accounts on the remote system would have extensive secret sauce for `/usr/bin/expect` that can aggregate changes for each file so they can catch up to the latest flamewars happening there, while it wouldn't be a requirement to be explained how far away you are on spectrum, or something along that. idk. More than happy to be corrected.