Subj : How did you find out about bulletin boards?
To   : nelgin
From : Nightfox
Date : Wed Mar 27 2024 12:54:50

  Re: How did you find out about bulletin boards?
  By: nelgin to All on Mon Mar 25 2024 05:40 pm

My dad was always into computers, so when I was a kid in the 80s, I often saw my dad using his computer at home..  He had a TRS-80 when I was born (I've only seen it in a photo).  Later, he had an all-in-one computer he said he built as a kit computer, and later, he had an IBM PC-compatible along with a couple of Alpha Micro AM1000 computers:
https://ampm.floodgap.com/www/1000.htm

I never really knew what he used the AM1000 computers for (he had at least one in another room without a monitor attached), but I saw him use his IBM-compatible PC a lot, working on his own programming projects and dialing into services like CompuServe, Prodigy, etc..

In 1992, he gave me my own computer, a home-built PC with a 286 processor, along with a 2400 baud modem.  He told me about bulletin boards and gave me a list of BBSes, along with a communications program (Procomm Plus).  That's when I started using BBSes..  It was during the summer, so I wasn't in school, and I often started dialing into BBSes when my parents went to bed (after around 10:00PM).  I thought it was really cool that you could have your computer connect to someone else's computer remotely over the phone line..

A couple years later, my parents agreed to get a second phone line for my computer that I could use any time and not worry about tying up the main phone line or having my modem answer the phone.  I pretty much immediately set up my own BBS, which I enjoyed running, and it also made good use of that phone line.

Nightfox
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