Engadget 1985

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I still remember the phone number to the 288 line of the local bbs. I remember getting my 1200baud modem upgraded to a USRobotics external sportser and thinking how awesomely fast LORD displayed. This is around 1996, so it's been almost 10 years and I don't have to even blink to remember the number.

Crazy.

Anyone in the L.A. area remember The Kremlin BBS? It was super popular, hundreds of us exchanging software and ideas; damn I miss it.

I miss those days :(

Phoenix-area shackers - any of you frequent Flatland or The Unknown BBS (TUBBS)? Met quite a few people at the GT's, good times.

go buy the BBS documentary, its fucking awesome.

Give me a break. The advent of the web and the internet was a huge paradigm shift. It has fundamentally changed the way the world does business and the way I do my work.

I would argue that it is the biggest fundamental shift in how the world operates since the railroad. In many ways, its even bigger.

I remember downlading amiga .MOD files and future crew's .S3M from BBS and listening to them in Cubic Player or Fasttracker ][ on DOS

those were the times...

Anyone in Toronto's BBS community? Ablelink, SuperSONIC, Crystal Palace...

I remember getting an email address so I could contact people over the *Internet* and FidoNet!

I remember downloading the Wolf3D demo over FTP over 9600 baud...took HOURS, and then I realized I had downloaded it in ASCII mode!

Don't get me started, I'll cry. ANSi scene FTW!

Old BBS messages from at textfiles.com:

Numb: 6
Subj: SEARCH FOR SPOCK
From: St. Paul c64 & IBM
Date: 06-04-84 at 11:38 AM

trekkies, don't waste your money - the search for spock is boring, not really believable, and by far the worst of the three. the only high point is seeing christopher lloyd ('jim' from taxi) dressed up in monster makeup and costume, still talking like a spaced druggie. score now: 1 for 3 on trek dreck -- only the wrath of kahn was any good!

He doesn't mention Lloyd's role in Back to the Future since that movie hadn't even been MADE yet. It boggles the mind! Here are some messages from a year later:

Numb: 36
Subj: P.C. jr
From: BLACK FALCON
Date: WED MAR 20 6:05:51 PM

With the canceling of IBM's pc jr, only Apple and Commodore,and maybe Atari are left to fight for the home computer market.Guess who's gonna win!?

P.S. C=

Numb: 37
Subj: Apple canceled
From: GEMINI THE SECOND
Date: WED MAR 20 6:57:16 PM

Hey dudes.. Did ya all here the news thi morning??? Apple closed down a few
factorys fer a while!!!

Apple is in the SHIT!!
Same as with IBM!!!
Commodore forever!!!

Numb: 44
Subj: a comment
From: GREYFAX GRIMWALD
Date: FRI MAR 22 5:58:45 AM

Just because IBM has dropped the PC_Junior does not mean that they're out of the home computer race. They still have the PC,XT,AT ect... though they are pretty expensive i wouldn't count them out, they will also most definitly startto manufacture a different type of computer to try to establish themselves once more in the home computer market.

well, lator

You called it, Greyfax Grimwald!

i like this quote:
"and then save the images to 3.5-inch floppy disks (if only those things didn’t cost so damn much, anyone have a hook up on cheap floppies?)"

it's before my time, but there's something appealing about the old bbs days.

I still remember how I started...

Friend of mine got AOL and I was hooked with him. so we go hunting around. I realize shortly, that AOL is just a big pile... I can't find anything on this place, and it costs money!? WTFBBQ!?!?11

I purchase Tie-Fighter and X-wing... reading through the manuals (I used to read them yes... I am a nerd), I discover that they have a lucasarts BBS, and tons of fan infromation is there. I get a 386 from my parents (this was after my old pong/sports games on XT/etc). It says that I need a modem to work with these beebeeesses? I remember my dad had an old 2400baud fax/modem somewhere...I go rummaging and find my treasure, and old PCI 2400baud modem.

I'd never even taken apart a system before, but for some reason I had no problem pulling apart the case and figuring out the connections for these systems. I jam my new modem in there and get to work about loading a terminal program (one comes with the modem apparently)...

I bring the computer to life and learn about IRQ's and Memory addresses... After several hours of fighting with it, I now am literate to the point of computer hardware setup. I begin loading the terminal program and enter in the magical 415 number (remembering that you had to dial 1 to get to anybody in America/Canada, I didn't yet even understand dialing codes) and I view for the first time... a magical lucasarts ansi screen.

I then spent a few weeks searching through the Lucasarts BBS content, loving it all. At the end of which I begin to branch out to other sites, some more local than others, some with more speed/lines than others... Its...amazing... My friends and I download apogee games and many other shareware games... I'm going crazy... then the end of the month comes and my father finds a phone bill for $500...the first of many.

I had a $1200 phone bill once from calling long distance for internet connection so I could play doom on dwango. It's not really the same, but still. it sucked.

Back in the '80s, my dad ran a BBS called The Wasteland off an IBM XT in the back of his computer store. I was only 8 at the time, but I'd have a blast getting online and sending messages to people I didn't know at all. I remember some of their handles: MR COOL, MR ICE, MATT MCFADDEN. *shrug*

He'd also use his Apple II Plus at home to dial into scores of BBSes and trade pirated Apple II games. The II Plus and most of the disks we had for it still work, and are preserved safely in my apartment. All I have to do is crack open a Tab, boot up the original Castle Wolfenstein, and suddenly it's 1985.

God, I miss the old days.

I ran a BBS for about 8 years (From April 89 till sometime late in 96) called Moon Base Tycho. Ran software such as Telegard, TAG, Renegade, and WWIV. Use to run that thing with Desqview and then os/2 for multiline connection. I had like the only free 3 line (4 if I was on) chat back in 92 in the area and all three lines were busy. And let me tell you, getting three 14.4 k modems working together in the same computer was a nightmare.

My BBS was briefly the main hub for Fidonet in Maryland but my BBS was spending 14+ hours just handling net traffic and it got in the way of my users.

My files were mostly freeware apps, BBS software and mods, Doom mods, and porn.

Most popular game: I kid you not, Scrabble. In 95 we were holding live get togethers with about 120 people showing up to play on a real scrabble board that played online. There was this 70 year old guy (Tom.... someone) He was on ALL the time challanging people and winning. People drove in three states away just to play him in person.

It was a lot of fun but then came 1996 and everyone seem to find the internet at once. (I was on the net since the late 80s myself but I had a government account) It was November and the BBS had 3 calls all week I knew it was time to put her down.

I some times get the sysop itch to run a forum and almost do but most foryums are dead without an active front page of news and I really don't have the time to generate content for a news page just to have the forum. So, I just hang out here and a dozen other forums.

As for calling BBSs. I started in the early 80s calling Atari BBSes and then compu$erver. I never had huge phone bills had a few that hit the $60 mark who I was into programming and was dialling into a support BBS across the country.

My little brother and I used to run our own BBS in San Francisco... ATOMIC BBS. Running on WildCat! 4.0, we had LORD, TradeWars, Usurper, a pretty decent files library... What a blast that was :)

I used to run an Atari BBS on my parent's second phone line: Atari 800, 1200 baud modem (which was blazing fast at the time), and 4 floppy drives. Topics of conversation included the normal teen talk (for the early 1980s) complete with as many games for download and upload as could fit on those 4 floppies. I remember when Superman for the Atari was a must-have game. That and some Aliens-type game. It had, for the time, amazing graphics and an epic storyline. I can't for the life of me remember the name of that game... Help me out...

Nothing beat Quantumlink at 300 baud on the C=64.

http://www.jbrain.com/vicug/gallery/qlink/IMG_1895

QuantumLink bitches.

My first modem was a 300 baud 'freebie' for subscribing to QLink, a service I would later be kicked off of when it was discovered that I was cheating at Bingo in Rabbit Jack's Casino.

I started in the BBS scene. Played Doom and Doom 2 up to 4 players through WorldComm BBS's Game Connection feature (if I'm remembering the naming correctly) over 28.8k modem. It was great. Good times... Ticdup settings, sercom programs for duping IPX network, etc. This was about 1989.

Then the internet came. First ISP in Fort Wayne, IN I got hooked up with a free account from one of the guys I knew from the big local gaming BBS. Winsock, PPP on Windows 3.1. Direct dialup and terminal-based IRC... It was all downhill from there. That was about 1992.

Mid 90's I was playing Warcraft 2 over Kali's IPX-fudging wrapper. Friends TvB for hours on end. Altavista was the primo search engine.

By the time I left for college in 1998, browsers, IRC, and USENET were in their prime. Not a whole lot has really changed since then to be honest, besides instant messenging and spam. Nothing of real consequence at least.

Although LORD was kind of cute, it started jumping the shark once it allowed plug-ins and all sorts of stupid minigames appeared. At the same time, people who "knew" would be whoring the Jennie code every day when it appeared (at some point, Seth got a huge boner for Jennie Garth.)

I kind of liked Planets a bit more, myself, even if lacked the amusement of players trying to steal Violet the Barmaid.

I don't know how many hours I spent on BBSs. I used to dial in and grab antivirus updates and loads of shareware games. I remember the lobster board was one of the highly used local ones in my area, place had lot of interesting pictures ;) Had a second line just for the 1200 baud modem which was nice.

I also played doom every friday night, I used to get crushed every friday with scores like 56 to -7. I blame it on the fact that I didn't have a sound card :)

Is it actually 1985 you guys are talking here? How fucking old are you people?

/ducks

Srsly though, I started actively using pc and bbs stuffs back in 1996 after military discharge, the days when Netscape and Yahoo were the shit. Paid dialup bbs's were still hot here in korea back then. Quake / Diablo mp via ppp connection \m/

I remember those days. I remember trading a friend a full size foosball table (thing weighed 300 pounds) for a 1200 baud modem. At the time, I got the far better end of the deal.

I remember having a huge collection of 5.25" discs of games from BBS systems. I learned to game on my C64 and as a matter of fact still have the entire collection in my garage now.

This scene is what inspired me to go on to get a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering. Who says video games are all bad?

It just occurred to me I have BBS's to thank for me getting to mapping, specifically all the Wolf3D level editing tools that weren't sposed to work with the shareware version but for some reason, did... actually, BBSs got me into modding and everything. My first mod involved me putting MOTHERCARE' onto the Doom chainsaw. Hilarious stuff.

I'm more interested in the golden age of clan warfare, playing netmech over kali - clan black sheep(first clan on the net) and good stuff like that. I remember people freaking out b/c I was using a p166 and runing at 640x480 :)

it was right when the ISP's moved into my area... awesome stuff.

I remember running my own 2 line BBS when I was 11. I had a bunch of blind dates... Funny thing is how scary that shit is these days.

In case anyone is up for a game LIKE Legend of the Red Dragon:

http://frozone.gorillapond.com/logd/

the bbs days owned, I loved coming home from school, dialing up my local amiga bbs and checking out all the new "elite" warez that were out, and to get access to the elite file section took me like 2 years of warming up to the sysop, lol.. and also playing those online text games, legend of red dragon i think it was? heh good fun though

BBSs owned. i almost started one but never got around to it. infact i had the whole thing up and ready to go but couldnt talk my parents into giving me my own spereate phone line for it :(

also L.O.R.D FTW

I even ran one on my blazing 1200 baud modem. We hacked up a version of Pyroto, a trivia/magic warfare kind of game. It was a ton of fun. It's since been adapted to the web, you can check it out here: http://www.pyrotomountain.com/ (not my site)
Definitely some great memories...

I used to BBS back in the early 90s in the 1200baud days and ran my own three node PCBoard-based BBS with international callers all the way from Turkey and Singapore. I also ran some TriBBS and Renegade BBS' but found PCBoard to be the best. I remember having multiple windows in Desqview open to run the separate nodes, and my 486 DX2/66 with triple 28.8s (later with a single 56k v.92) and it being all the talk of town.

I was just reminiscing with some friends the other day about how unique it was to have long distance users from abroad, nowadays the Internet's made it common place.

I remember logging into a local BBS to play Doom and Doom II 3 player. We usually ended up playing 2vs1 (them against me). I remember we had to have SirDoom to sync all the Doom clients. Man, that was alot of fun!

I remember when my dad got a 33.6 modem and all my friends were so so jealous. Haha....funny to think about how things have changed.

I remember dialing into BB's all the time, I even got caught one time because I didn't understand what Long Distance charges were, and ended up going to Adult BB's and downloading lots of porn onto floppy's! :)

I used to co-sysop an 8 node BBS called The Wasteland, it had APCIDoom and Game Connection. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

I still remember the old joke of of telling someone that the way to get to the super secret sysop menu is to hit SHIFT-DEL-ALT-CTRL.

I used to dial in to the amiga demo scene bbs's back in the day including one called Digital Candy in the UK which had 6 node ringdown. This was the biggest in the uk at least for legal files, some of the pirate ones might have been bigger (did not connect to them).

The files I downloaded were like gold dust to me which I transferred from pc floppys on the my amiga (pc was the only computer with a modem in my house). Ran up some huge phone bills as I was calling long distance most of the time. Most of the boards had a ratio system where you had to upload at least 1mb to get 3-5mb down again, was a pain on some boards as 100 other people were competing for upload credits.

I used to get online with in the early 90s with an old luggable Amstrad XT 'portable' that had a built in 2400bps modem.
http://www.computercloset.org/AmstradPPC640.htm

I didn't have the cash for a modem, so I borrowed that from school and used it to get 'online' with my Amiga.

I would take it home, set it up on the kitchen counter, log into BBSs and download files etc.

Since it didn't have a hard drive, I had to save things onto 720kb disks and sneakernet them on to my Amiga.

Remo stole abrasion's argument!

http://www.shacknews.com/ja.zz?id=10563646

Just kidding, but it's funny to see that you two agree on the same idea but brought it up on the Shack through different channels.

I used to dial in to a couple of local BBSes in West Michigan. Then I discovered MERIT, which was a 'network' that basically put a computer halfway between cities that you could dial into and then dial out of to reach another computer with no long distance fees. I used to call from Grand Rapids MI into a computer in Lansing, I believe, and then that computer would call Detroit for me and pass the info on.

It was not fast.