[HN Gopher] BBS: The Documentary (2005)
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BBS: The Documentary (2005)
Author : pelagicAustral
Score : 173 points
Date : 2023-12-23 17:45 UTC (1 days 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.
| tjohns wrote:
| There's also a torrent there, in case you feel guilty about
| their hosting bill for direct-downloading 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.
| gmiller123456 wrote:
| Cool. Did you ever do a write up on how to do it, or know of
| one. I'm just curiuos, I assumed it was pretty involved.
| leptons wrote:
| A 300 baud modem was pretty simple actually, it was just a
| tone generator/decoder with digital controls. I think I
| used a simple PLL chip to decode the tones and probably 555
| timers to generate tones. Anything faster than 300 baud was
| far more complex. I built it as a final project for an
| electronics class I was taking in like 1989 or something.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Modems used to cost about a dollar per baud.
| Bayaz wrote:
| Rich folks with their 56k.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| And 501k!
| 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.
| nullc wrote:
| The Umunhum packet bbs has great range. I can work it from
| northern Marin maybe 90 miles away. But sadly, whenever I've
| logged in it seems kinda dead except for national network
| traffic. Maybe there is local stuff I missed in the flood of
| non-local stuff.
| 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.
| spiderxxxx wrote:
| I just built one of those today, the Wirsa v2 (its on github)
| and it's great for getting older devices "online". You can
| telnet, or playback text files, or download files from sd
| card all via a DB9 serial - you can use a DB9-DB25 converter
| if you want. I got it so I can get my TRS-80 Model 100
| online, and maybe even an Epson HX-20, but I still need to
| build a cable for it.
| nullc wrote:
| A few years back I realized I had a non-used landline due to
| DSL and I thought it would be fun to try to log into every BBS
| remaining in the country. I picked up a nice external courier
| modem from weird stuff for a couple dollars and started
| dialing.
|
| I was thwarted by two factors, one is that the vast majority of
| the numbers I could find were now answered by humans who I felt
| bad for bothering. The other was the apparently even a lot of
| landlines (including my own) have VoIP steps in their transport
| that modem traffic doesn't work well across.
| tjohns wrote:
| Now I'm wondering:
|
| 1) Can you get a digital line to support 56k BBS hosting
| anymore?
|
| 2) Can you even get an analog copper line from AT&T for
| outbound calling? (I know the FCC recently said carriers
| aren't required to offer it anymore.)
|
| 3) Absent either of the above, what's the best speed you can
| reliably do over VoIP, assuming G.711 / no compression?
| nullc wrote:
| So I found the modem unreliable even with it constrained to
| lower speeds. I don't recall what I used, but I'd WAG it
| was V.32 (9600 bps) as that's the lowest speed that still
| has forward error correction (and also happens to be fast
| enough to be reasonable to use).
|
| Maybe I also tried 1200? Not sure, as mentioned I also had
| the issue of accidentally harassing people.
|
| I think in general the issue is that there is a jitter
| buffer and async clocking that causes timing slips that
| upset the modem. A sufficiently advanced(tm) demodulator
| could presumably handle it, but I can't control the remote
| side... There is a lot of text out there on getting _fax_
| to work right, but there are options for fax that don 't
| apply to the general case of modems.
|
| Very very few BBSes were _ever_ 56k. V.90 eliminates the
| extra low resolution A->D stage from the provider to the
| user by having the provider connect digitally (via ISDN PRI
| or T1). So in the downstream direction the only A->D stage
| is in the users modem and can be higher resolution, so all
| codewords are reachable.
|
| 33.6k BBSes and 28.8k (including in the async HST form)
| were certainly a thing.
|
| By the time technology for 56k was available (1998?) we
| were well into the internet access age, and the monthly
| cost for a PRI or T1 was well out of budget for all except
| the largest BBSes (many of which were transitioning or had
| transitioned to be ISPs by that point in any case).
| johnlinvc wrote:
| ssh://bbs@ptt.cc is the largest one in Taiwan with ~60k
| concurrent user at this moment. You'll need to switch to BIG5
| encoding to display properly.
|
| There's also a web version https://www.ptt.cc/bbs/index.html ,
| which supports Unicode.
| 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.
| sdenike wrote:
| I remember years ago someone made a PHP version of Legend of
| the Red Dragon, I think it was Legend of the Green Dragon if
| not mistaken. I wish I still had my original registration
| code that was mailed to me and signed by Seth Robinson.
| bsagdiyev wrote:
| Is this it? https://github.com/stephenKise/Legend-of-the-
| Green-Dragon
| slowhadoken wrote:
| I had Usurper back in the day. It's one of those items I
| lost during a move.
| squigz wrote:
| I remember playing an Eragon version of this game when I
| was a kid. I couldn't figure out what the software was for
| years, and finally figured it out a couple years ago.
| Unfortunately I couldn't find any information on the
| specific instance I played, but it was nice to get an
| answer :) Good memories there
| 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.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| To relive a little nostalgia, check out "The Last Call BBS"
| game [1]. This is a collection of games framed as BBS online
| games, and very well done.
|
| [1] https://zachtronics.com/last-call-bbs/
| hollywood_court wrote:
| I spent hundreds of hours playing Tradewars as a kid.
| orionblastar wrote:
| Tradewars is still sold here: https://www.classictw.com/
|
| TWGS is Tradewars Game Server that uses Telnet to run on a
| Windows PC over the Internet:
| https://www.eisonline.com/downloads/
|
| It runs on WINE but it won't do the Big Bang, you have to Big
| Bang the universe from a Windows PC and then export it to be
| imported into WINE.
| 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)
| brianstorms wrote:
| I still have the DVDs in shrink-wrap. Have never watched. The
| documentary has a glaring omission, not covering COCONET from
| Coconut Computing.
| epcoa wrote:
| I was gonna say take it up with Jason. Looks like that has been
| done http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3415
| brianstorms wrote:
| It's a shame when a documentary series like this is made by
| someone with . . . issues.
| tbyehl wrote:
| They are _that_ Brian. I went to work for a BBS software
| company straight out of high school and can 't recall ever
| hearing of COCONET outside of this beef with Jason.
| brewtide wrote:
| I have no idea if it's chance, but my middle school "first
| class" BBS system was named... Yup. Coconet. Strange memory
| recall.
| quilombodigital wrote:
| Yep. Good old days... I also had a bbs with a friend in Brazil,
| we would make very expensive international calls twice a month to
| other bbs to download the news. Ah... and of course there was a
| group called applemaniacos that would send apple II disks every
| month by mail, with a very funny zine.
| shon wrote:
| Just a reminder that you can relive the good ole days and run
| your own BBS with doors FidoNET and all sorts of legit oldskool
| features all in a modern system running in Node
|
| EnigmaBBS:
|
| https://nuskooler.github.io/enigma-bbs/
| nullc wrote:
| I am so glad my teenage hijinx did not survive the transition to
| internet and I feel deeply sorry for children today. Sooo much
| cringe.
|
| The inherent locality of BBSes was pretty nice however, sure
| there were some long distance users but most people on most
| boards were local. I recently rediscovered this photo where 16
| year old me recreated the on-login BBS quote wall by asking BBS
| friends that came over to sign my wall:
| https://nt4tn.net/photos/wall.jpg
|
| It's been a few years since I've talked to anyone I knew from the
| BBSes (moving to the other side of the country no doubt
| contributed, some of them have died, etc) but they hung on longer
| than anyone else I knew as a teenager.
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| These are really great documentaries, I have watched them twice.
|
| Highly recommended for anyone under 40 years old to see where
| things came from.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| My USR HST 14.4 model was a gateway to another world, and as it
| turned out, a career. The SysOp discount encouraged me to start
| my own BBS. Somehow I don't think this marketing ploy is given
| enough significance. It was partly responsible for the explosion
| in BBS numbers.
| jonasmerlin wrote:
| Hah, learned about the existence of this documentary just 3 days
| ago while researching how .zips work[0]. The last episode is
| supposedly about Phil Katz, co-inventor of the format and kind of
| a tragic figure.
|
| Fun fact: Due to their structure, the first two bytes of many
| .zips are 0x50 4B, or PK-his initials-in ASCII.
|
| [0] https://indieweb.social/@jonasmerlin/111617397581024775
| christianvozar wrote:
| Not only are BBSes alive and well today so are many ansi artists
| who make the block art to power them. Be sure to give the ansi
| archive a look (https://16colo.rs). Create an account and give
| some rating love to artists who still keep this medium alive.
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