[HN Gopher] BBS: The Documentary (2005)
___________________________________________________________________
BBS: The Documentary (2005)
Author : pelagicAustral
Score : 86 points
Date : 2023-12-23 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbsdocumentary.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbsdocumentary.com)
| guiambros wrote:
| Love the documentary; fond memories from those days of 2400bps.
| It has been posted here many times before; this is the one with
| most comments [1], 9 years ago.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9521867
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| I think it's a comfy Christmas must watch...
| leptons wrote:
| I got a 2400bps modem to hook up to my C64 and was a bit
| unhappy that I would get all kinds of errors when receiving
| data from BBSs, and I figured out that the C64's native serial
| port code was too slow, it was dropping bits. I was using CCGMS
| terminal program at the time so I figured out how to hack CCGMS
| and wrote my own bit-banged serial I/O code in assembly
| language and that fixed the problem up nicely.
| nshkr wrote:
| I used to hang both online and IRL with one of the folks in the
| documentary. Seems like yesterday. Still have nostaligic memories
| of being enamored by his stack of USR 16.8k HST modems and the T1
| (iirc) he managed to get to his residence.. (again, iirc), his
| house was like under 1000 feet (loop length) to the CO (central
| office) where the 4ESS (telephone switch) was located. (could be
| inaccurate recollections..)
| ghaff wrote:
| As I recall, I never knew any of the people in the documentary,
| but definitely used to hang out with various people in the
| community who were members of a large Cambridge MA BBS.
| rwmj wrote:
| https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary in case you're
| looking for a version which isn't 27GB.
| themew wrote:
| The day I was able to upgrade my 'shoebox' 110 baud modem to a
| 300 baud modem was the day I thought "I'll never need this kind
| of speed, but it's nice to have."
|
| Thanks for posting about this documentary. I ran a BBS from
| 1983-1986 on a Commodore 64, a 1200 baud modem and 5 1541 floppy
| drives. An amazing time for this technology.
| leptons wrote:
| Which BBS? I was on a lot of C64 BBSs.
|
| I actually built my own 300 baud modem for my C64 from
| electronic components I got at Radio Shack. I was kind of a
| nerdy kid.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Modems used to cost about a dollar per baud.
| ghaff wrote:
| BBS's are mostly a pre-web thing (and were largely divorced from
| the internet--for which you basically had to work for a small
| number of companies or universities to get on) so this
| documentary from @textfiles is a valuable piece of pre-web
| computer history. BBS's were a pretty important part of my early
| computer experience once PC's came out.
| loceng wrote:
| BBS's were the first point of access for the internet for many
| - the more professional or BBS-as-a-service charging fees, one
| local one for example had something like 20 concurrent users
| possible (20 phone lines in) - were some of the first to get T1
| lines following universities, etc.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, my commercial BBS was my first ISP for a time until I
| got broadband.
| divbzero wrote:
| Are there places where BBS is still in active use?
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Well, there is about a thousand on
| https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/
| fintler wrote:
| If you're near the Bay Area, CA, there's a few N0ARY BBSes
| accessible via packet radio. For example, there's one on Mt.
| Umunhum in the Santa Cruz mountain range.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| You can telnet to many BBSs. If you want something a bit
| similar to the original modem experience, you can buy device
| that emulates modem but actually uses WiFi and connects to
| telnet instead of a phone number.
| jlundberg wrote:
| I am really happy to have experienced bbses during my youth.
| Being too young (born 1983) for their golden age, I was lucky to
| have an older brother who allowed me to get a glimpse into this
| world.
|
| Check out https://16colo.rs/ for good art from the time. And from
| groups who keep releasing such art to this date.
| loceng wrote:
| I was born in '83 as well but seemed to catch the tail end of
| it - definitely part of my formative years, with experiences
| like stumbling upon my first "sex chat bot" at age 11 or 12.
|
| BBS's were also my introduction to MUDs [multi-user
| domain/dungeon games] as well, though it was only once we got
| dialup internet at home did I find a copy of CircleMUD to then
| implement ideas I had for my own MUD I called Fallen Shadows -
| and where a small community of voluntary contributors to create
| rooms and mobs formed over a fairly short period; someone even
| made an awesome ASCII art login page spelling out Fallen
| Shadows in gothic-like style.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2005)
|
| Also available in the IA:
| https://archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Some more recent related threads with nice anecdotes and
| connections:
|
| 2022: _Really Enjoyed Jason Scott's BBS Documentary_
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31740247)
|
| 2021: _Ask HN: What was it like to use BBS?_
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29140217)
|
| 2016: _Social Media's Dial-Up Ancestor: The Bulletin Board
| System_ https://spectrum.ieee.org/social-medias-dialup-
| ancestor-the-...
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12784307)
| joquarky wrote:
| As a teen, I used to enjoy playing around with the limits of what
| I could do with Amiga C-Net's MCI commands as well as the
| standard terminal ANSI escape codes.
|
| I used to enjoy posting comments with those sequences embedded to
| make the reader think they had left the forums and were now
| elsewhere on the BBS. They eventually gave me co-sysop access so
| I could write games, which is when I really started programming
| for others.
|
| Now I do mostly UX design and implementation. I miss the
| simplicity of 80x24.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Fidonet - 2400K baud modems - it was awesome for this sheltered
| loner.
| Bayaz wrote:
| It's surprising how much of this era has just disappeared. I
| recently searched around to see if I could find a few of the door
| games from my youth (Legends and Virtual SysOp) and there really
| isn't much out there. Some games like Tradewars live on, but
| software for TBBS/TDBS is basically forgotten.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| I believe Usurper and Legend of the Red Dragon are still
| running somewhere. They're basically just old DOS games running
| on someone's computer you dialed into.
| bilegeek wrote:
| If you haven't come across this already: the most comprehensive
| archive I could find is http://archives.thebbs.org/
|
| It's dial-up slow when downloading files, but maybe you'll find
| what you're looking for.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| There's a service to play vga planets over the Internet as
| well. Googling will find it.
| dang wrote:
| The videos are at https://archive.org/details/bbs_documentary
| (via the first link below).
|
| Related. Others?
|
| _The Full BBS Documentary Interviews Are Going Online_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16221915 - Jan 2018 (1
| comment)
|
| _BBS the Documentary (2013) [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9521867 - May 2015 (23
| comments)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-23 23:00 UTC)