[HN Gopher] An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
___________________________________________________________________
An old photo of a large BBS (2022)
Author : xbryanx
Score : 141 points
Date : 2026-03-12 19:41 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rachelbythebay.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rachelbythebay.com)
| bigwheels wrote:
| Would these machines have been networked with CAT-3? Daisy
| chained phone cords?
| icedchai wrote:
| It's also possible they used coax, either ethernet (10base2) or
| Arcnet.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Depends on the exact date.
|
| I never worked with DOS BBS systems, so I can't say about this
| photo specifically, but the ones I did work with had between
| one and four dialup modems hooked up to each machine, depending
| on its capabilities. They did "networking" through a store-and-
| forward messaging system. It wasn't networking as we'd
| recognize it today.
| petra303 wrote:
| More likely coax. 3com 509c network cards. Much less
| infrastructure to have a lan that way.
|
| IBM had a network that ran over phone cords that were
| daisycbained from one node to the next.
| mcculley wrote:
| I am surprised by the assumption that each box could only handle
| one modem. I seem to remember that some DOS BBS packages could
| handle multiple modems/users concurrently and only needed
| multitasking operating systems for "door" programs. Am I
| misremembering?
| icedchai wrote:
| I'm fairly certain you are correct. I remember the MajorBBS
| could handle multiple lines on its own.
|
| I knew a couple of local DOS BBSes that ran multiple lines with
| PCBoard under DESQview.
| ghewgill wrote:
| MajorBBS could handle multiple lines on its own, but you had
| to handle ALL of the lines with one box. That meant a serial
| port interface like DigiBoard which provided some number (8
| or 16 or more) of serial ports that you would connect to
| modems.
| icedchai wrote:
| I remember DigiBoard from my early ISP days. We attempted
| to turn a mid 90's-era Linux system (Slackware) into a
| terminal server. The Linux drivers for DigiBoard weren't
| quite up to it so we wound up going with Telebit
| Netblazers, I think.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I think we used RocketPorts for a while until switching
| to Livingston Portmaster 3s, which you plugged a T-1
| into.
| icedchai wrote:
| Portmasters were very popular. Later on the ISP I worked
| with moved on to Ascend boxes which had digital modems
| (T1 / PRI lines.)
|
| PRI was a huge step. The "individual modem" days were a
| mess. Each modem had a serial cable, phone line, and
| power brick. I remember doing some maintenance in one of
| the POPs. There were at least 100 modems, stacked on a
| cheap plastic shelving unit. The shelving unit was
| sagging from the weight and heat of all the modems.
|
| This early POP was haphazardly built, so no cable
| management. I remember a river of phone cables coming out
| of the wall. The power bricks were also crazy. We had
| power strips 2 or 3 levels deep, making it a hazard to
| even get behind the rack without tripping on something.
| kstrauser wrote:
| They'd already switched to PRIs before I started so I
| missed out on that "fun", but I can personally vouch to
| the younguns here that every word you just wrote was
| completely plausible and likely.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| For sure. I knew people who ran multi-line BBS's on DOS PCs
| under DESQview, just like that (running Searchlight BBS, in
| my case). I know of a four line that was just using multiple
| external modems and non-standard IRQ's for COM3 and COM4
| (since, by default, COM1/3 and COM2/4 share an IRQ).
| js2 wrote:
| Even the Apple II had multi-line BBSes[^1], so I'm not sure
| about her assumption.
|
| [^1]: e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversi-Dial
| nickdothutton wrote:
| Even for a standard PC, you could buy a 16 port serial card and
| hook it up to 16 modems, either discreet devices or the
| dedicated ISP kit which might support dozens of incoming calls
| (possibly on a single bearer) via various means. Telebit
| netblazers and then ascend maxs were common in those days.
| j45 wrote:
| Serial ports are a fun thing to learn about, computers had more
| than one. Now with USB, computers can have many serial ports.
| cmpb wrote:
| That assumption feeds into the moral of the post and its
| followup
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| A guy who was local to me, when I was a kid, wrote multi-user
| BBS system (called "MUBBS" originally-- I don't remember what
| the name was changed to later) in Turbo Pascal that had a
| preemptive multitasking loop running in x86 real mode to handle
| multiple lines simultaneously. The coolest part was the console
| was just a "line" so you could logon to the board and interact
| while somebody was online with the BBS, too. Most other DOS BBS
| packages were only available for the SYSOP or the caller
| individually.
|
| Edit: Ugh... I'm gonna have to go back to floppy images to find
| it. There's a "MUBBS" for Mac from 1992 showing up in search
| engine results but that's not the one I'm thinking of. It was
| more like 1989 or 1990.
| layer8 wrote:
| Some details/speculation from the original thread here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30098186
|
| "as modems got faster, supporting 16 modems on a single machine
| became impossible, and it was often cheaper to buy a new
| commodity desktop PC rather than a much more expensive machine
| with a 16-port serial card capable of handling the IO."
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And the follow-up article:
| https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2022/01/27/scale/
| roxolotl wrote:
| The quote at the bottom is great:
|
| You can have a second computer once you've shown you know how
| to use the first one.
|
| -- Paul Barham, quoted in the COST paper
| bjenkins358 wrote:
| The real question is: Was the turbo button pressed?
| richstokes wrote:
| Probably not. That would slow them down. The turbo button
| under-clocked CPUs :-)
| SneakyMission wrote:
| Higher resolution photo
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230531042903im_/https://static...
| ryanjshaw wrote:
| That telephone cord is impressive.
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| Pretty standard option for any home with a teenager, to be
| honest. Long enough to drag the handset into the nearest coat
| closet when needed.
| jprd wrote:
| Glorious. This must be what is like when old people long for
| the hot car they lusted for in their youth.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| I recall old people being glad that air conditioning was
| invented.
| louwrentius wrote:
| In this picture it seems that all machines have a 3.5" floppy
| disk inserted. Maybe they had no hard drive and only booted
| from floppy and then ran software over the network?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| A lot of network interface cards had a socket for an option
| ROM that would allow network boot, but you could definitely
| fit a client on a floppy and boot that way, too. Novell
| Netware server would be the mostly likely server for that
| vintage of rig and a Netware client fit easily on a floppy.
| cheschire wrote:
| Oh that's a breaker box (or a box of wiring of some sort), not
| a mirror!
| ssl-3 wrote:
| A mirror? I first saw it as a common (US-centric) exterior
| metal door, with a window -- and with a shelf blocking the
| opening.
|
| The blur does interesting things.
| cheschire wrote:
| yeah the shine in the top left of the rectangle was what
| led me to think it was a mirror, which from my experience
| would have been really strange for the types of nerds that
| would work in windowless rooms back in those days.
|
| The black cable underneath looked like the shadow of an
| oval frame
| whatthe12899 wrote:
| wait, are you OP? or did you happen to find a high res version
| of the same paper-copy picture that OP supposedly was given 30
| years ago and then scanned and then threw out. or did OP make
| it up? or is OP just a bot?
|
| maybe i'm a bot.
|
| anyway i used to call into BBSs back in the early 90s and the
| thing I'm remembering is that they survived mostly on
| donations, and now that I am seeing the infrastructure that
| supported those systems and recalling the price of hardware
| back then I'm starting to second guess everything I thought I
| knew.
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Rachel says she had the photo as a postcard. It's likely that
| more postcards were printed, and that other people had owned
| those copies, rather than people being bots.
| layer8 wrote:
| Click on the HN "past" link for this submission near the top
| of this page, then you'll get to
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30096565 (see the top
| comment there) from when the original image link was still
| working.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Many sites including Google offer reverse image search. You
| give it an image and it gives you a list of places it
| appears, sometimes in higher resolution or with more context
| (or different context, which can be interesting).
| themafia wrote:
| Apparently "Software Creations" BBS, which ran PCBoard BBS
| software and was operated in cooperation with Apogee games.
|
| https://x.com/ScottApogee/status/1593729387106512896
| myself248 wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| In the alcove on the right, I think I'm seeing 66-blocks,
| breaking out the phone lines that must be routed to each
| machine. Two blocks stacked, each with a fanout of wire on the
| right side.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I can recall people being very impressed at unix systems being
| able to handle many clients, and being personally confused at the
| idea of a computer only being able to handle a single user.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I can recall people being very impressed at unix systems being
| able to handle many clients_
|
| That seems odd to me, too, because before DOS and the Commodore
| 64/Apple ][ era, multi-user systems were everywhere.
|
| Not just mainframes and minicomputers, but there were many
| dozens of multi-user systems based on CP/M, MP/M, and other
| operating systems. Even Tandy had them.
|
| The revolutionary part of the "personal computer" era was that
| it was your "personal" computer. You finally didn't have to
| share it with anyone.
| criddell wrote:
| There were also commercial multi-user systems like Compuserve
| and Delphi.
| bombcar wrote:
| Everyone seems to assume you need protected mode to run
| multi-user systems, too.
|
| It wasn't as secure or as easy, but you could certainly do
| multi-user systems without protected mode and within very
| small RAM amounts.
| slongfield wrote:
| Looks like the shelves were custom-built for those machines. I
| wonder what the monitors were hooked up to, or if they were just
| spares.
|
| My first thought was that this was built someone who clearly
| cared about the system they were running.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I remember thinking that I would reach absolute peak-coolkid if I
| could start and run a BBS. I even installed WWIV and DesqView to
| fuel the fantasy and prepare. But my parents didn't understand
| technology and couldn't grasp why I wanted to hook up (and pay
| for) a second phone line for the house. So, unfortunately I would
| remain a mere luser until I went off to University where the
| Internet was just getting popular and 10-Base-T ethernet drops to
| the dorm rooms were standard, and I very quickly forgot all about
| BBSing.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Cool Kids run T1s ;)
|
| Really Cool Kids T3s...
| tiahura wrote:
| By the early 90s didn't most BBS software support multi-line
| setups on a single pc?
| jacquesm wrote:
| The OS that was running on these is irrelevant, the important
| part is the BBS software.
|
| And these usually ran quite a few lines per box, sometimes they
| would use external racks of modems, but I'm not seeing that here
| so maybe these were using internal modem cards, so maybe 6 per
| box, but if they were using external modems it could easily be 12
| or more, with the PC cards hosting multiple serial ports, 4, 6 or
| even 8 per card.
|
| Typically a card would have a single large connector at the back
| and then a pigtail with a DB9 or DB25 (yes, I know) for every
| modem.
| icedchai wrote:
| The OS was relevant if your BBS software was limited to a
| single simultaneous user, like many of the early DOS BBSes. The
| late 80's "PCBoard" BBSes I'm familiar with needed one PC per
| user, plus a file server with Netware.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ok, but that's just the vehicle, it is the BBS software that
| does the works. And even in the 80's there were ways to run
| multiple instances of 'single user' BBSs on one box, for
| instance (dare I say it...) OS/2 and TV.
| rconti wrote:
| Yeah, this jumped out at me too. It's a wild misunderstanding
| of how BBSes worked.
|
| That said, I have no idea how a multi-node BBS would work, in
| terms of keeping state synchronized.
| icedchai wrote:
| It depends on the era.
|
| Earlier: one PC per user, shared file system using a Novell
| network. Later: multitasking OS (Desqview, OS/2) or BBS
| software that natively supported multiple users (like
| MajorBBS.)
|
| I ran a BBS on an Amiga for a while. The OS natively
| supported multitasking, but I only had one line. At least I
| could log in the same time as a user...
| daneel_w wrote:
| The older brother of a friend of mine in the 90s was the
| co-sysop of one of Sweden's largest "elite" BBSes at the
| time, Farout BBS. I got to tag along to the sysop's
| apartment once and see the setup, which was an Amiga 2000
| with 3 active nodes and available serial ports for a total
| of 7 nodes, though the sysop hadn't gotten around to get
| more telephone lines wired to his apartment.
| icedchai wrote:
| awesome! getting more phone lines into a residence could
| be a pain. I knew a guy who had an 8 line BBS in his
| (parents', actually) basement. Getting more was difficult
| because they were "out of facilities" and he had to move
| it to an office.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I've seen NetWare, Vines, some proprietary hacks to form the
| backbone.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| > It's a wild misunderstanding of how BBSes worked.
|
| That's quite the assumption.
|
| There were a lot of different BBS hosting programs. They
| wildly varied in what they supported and how they were
| implemented. Further even within a given piece of software
| the ways you could configure them and the consequences also
| varied. Even if a given software supported concurrent users
| on a single PC for various reasons a BBS might choose not to
| host that way.
| layer8 wrote:
| Aren't the modems the black boxes sitting on top of each PC in
| the picture?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, you're right, I totally missed them. Those look like USR
| 'Courier' modems but the resolution is really crappy so hard
| to be sure and it looks like there are multiple types. There
| might still be modems in the boxes themselves as well. It
| doesn't look like more than two modems per box if there
| isn't.
| jasongill wrote:
| yes, most of them look like USRobotics Courier modems. Note
| that not all the machines have one, and some have two.
|
| Assuming that the parent commenter is right and that they are
| using internal line cards, I wonder if the external modems
| were being added to support higher speeds.
|
| However, the fact that we can see at least 2 (but I think
| four) 66 blocks means they had 50 to 100 phone lines for the
| machines visible, which would make sense that the external
| modems are the primary connection and no internal modems are
| being used, based on the number of modems visible and the
| fact that each 66 block can handle 25 lines.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think you're right and that there were only two modems
| connected to the boxes so that's just the built in serial
| ports, here is another copy of the same picture by someone
| that apparently funded the board with some details:
|
| https://x.com/ScottApogee/status/1593729387106512896
| xenadu02 wrote:
| "usually" and "typically" are doing a lot of heavy lifting here
| :)
|
| Access to knowledge, equipment, and budget varied dramatically
| prior to widespread internet access. Someone setting up a BBS
| might not even know about multi-line modem cards or serial port
| expansions. Even if they knew about them they may not have been
| able to reasonably obtain them. Or they may have been operating
| on donations, surplus, or discount equipment. Or they simply
| may not have had the luxury of time to research all of that as
| user demand meant they were too busy laying tracks in front of
| the train.
|
| Many BBSes ran on 1-2 lines per PC because that's what they
| understood how to build or the hardware they had access to. You
| might be surprised at just how _many_ lines some BBSes setup
| this way had!
|
| People forget there was a time that anything outside the
| standard PC was extremely expensive, often had flaky or
| nonexistent software support, locked you into a fly-by-night
| vendor that might go out of business tomorrow, was only
| available via a distributor who wanted to have you talk to a
| "sales consultant" before they'd sell you something, etc. Many
| many people chose sub-optimal implementations because it was an
| off-the-shelf PC they could replace at any time with trivially
| simple software requiring no special CONFIG.SYS drivers or TSRs
| to fiddle with. Especially if you'd ever been burned
| previously.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Office chair technology also has really advanced since then
| (looking at the chair on the picture, which is commonly seen near
| computers in photos of this era)
| Vaslo wrote:
| I remember trying to set up a bbs on my pc in the 80s and I
| didn't have a separate phone line so I just put it on while I
| slept. Then people started calling and annoying my parents with
| daytime modem calls, because I was like 10 and I didn't think
| through any of this.
| bredren wrote:
| I set up a uh war dialer around the same age over night and my
| mom got some pretty upset calls the next day.
|
| She had no idea who these people were or why they were upset. I
| don't think I copped to it, it was not an easy thing to explain
| but I did not do that again.
| bluedino wrote:
| Would love a technical explanation of how all that stuff worked
| by someone who did that kind of stuff in those days. In the old
| days I personally never saw anything bigger than a four line BBS.
| But I remember reading about that one in shareware README.TXT
| files
|
| Wouldn't mind hearing war stories from the cdrom.com guys as
| well.
| dekhn wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9904/08/cdrom.idg/ and
| https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/wow-what-a-system-ftp...
| I'm not aware of any others with more details and war stories.
| crmd wrote:
| In the 90's we had microsystems, in the 2020s we have
| microservices.
| saltyoldman wrote:
| In 2030 we'll have microagents
| dublin wrote:
| If they were really badass, they had a rack of Telebit modems.
| (Telebit made 68020 based modems that did 56+ Kbps long before a
| 56K standard, and literally had more compute power than most of
| the computers they were connected to.)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2022)
|
| Some more discussion then:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30096565
| gxd wrote:
| Those were the days. I still believe nothing replaces the
| camraderie of the small, local BBSs. The large ones were good
| too, but these tended to resemble the modern Internet forums a
| bit more.
|
| I miss BBSs and that's why I featured them in the story of my
| sci-fi game! If you are interested:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3040110/Outsider/
| joemi wrote:
| I go back and forth on whether BBSes were better or AOL was
| better. I had great experiences on both in my formative years.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| For a similar nostalgic hit:
|
| Related:
|
| _Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47321760
| SirFatty wrote:
| I used to dial into that BBS... long distance. It had a huge
| library of shareware.
|
| https://groups.google.com/g/bit.listserv.games-l/c/1tg85kGBH...
| joemi wrote:
| Same here! This brings me back. And makes me feel old. Dialing
| the big BBSes like this one were rare special occasions for me,
| due to the cost of long distance.
| yarone wrote:
| Ahh BBS's: where I learned the difference between a local call
| and a "local toll call" (parents were not happy)
| bch wrote:
| > do you think "wow, cool, they got to wrangle all of that", or
| do you think "OMG they _had_ to wrangle all of that "?
|
| I touch on similar point of view discussing digital audio work I
| do for fun. I use CSound, which I've heard described as "assembly
| language for audio", and I think that's accurate.
|
| Anyway, when I first, FIRST started, and got a tiny bit familiar,
| I thought "Wow, I can do _anything_! " but quickly realized I was
| also _responsible_ for _everything_. No free lunch.
| mehrdadrad wrote:
| Wow, I used to dial into BBS for around 3-4 years. good time!!
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _It 's possible they managed to do some rudimentary
| multitasking with DESQview (or worse...) and so supported two
| whole users with each box. Does that mean they had to be at least
| 386s to do protected mode? Or was it virtual 8086 mode? I
| (fortunately) have forgotten the finer points of how that stuff
| used to work. I DO remember how damn crashy a box became when you
| ran it "under DV". Constant system freezes. Yep._
|
| I don't recall DESQview to be all that crashy. I was aware of a
| number multi-line BBSes that used it (just in the 416). Some BBS
| software called out its use specifically:
|
| * https://www.synchro.net/docs/multnode_config.html
|
| * http://software.bbsdocumentary.com/IBM/DOS/OMEGA/
|
| Also, a comment from someone whose uncle co-founded the company
| Quarterdeck:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29396561#unv_29400530
|
| Also, also, if anyone wants to simulate the old-school DESQview
| experience, perhaps try out "twin":
|
| * https://opensource.com/article/20/1/multiple-consoles-twin
|
| * https://github.com/cosmos72/twin
| bink wrote:
| DESQview was absolutely not crashy. I ran several different
| types of BBS software in it without issues. The "DESQview (or
| worse...)" comment raised the hair on the back of my neck.
| DESQview was revolutionary at the time and I was annoyed at
| having to use Windows many years later.
|
| ASCII windows may not have been everyone's cup of tea but I
| loved it.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Does BBS still have a usage nowadays? I feel HN is not too
| different -- and actually offer less than a BBS -- back then
| there are a lot of goods on a large BBS. And it's easier to mix a
| pic with text, but I could be wrong.
|
| Also thinking it's a lot environmental easier to host a BBS than
| a Discord server.
| KevinF_ wrote:
| How do you dislike a post
| Bengalilol wrote:
| You need 500 karma for this
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| There is so much speculation in the OP that I am not even sure if
| the title is correct.
| neoCrimeLabs wrote:
| This makes me wish I took photos of Diversi-Dial (aka D-Dial)
| setups, which somehow impressed me more due to how much they
| accomplished with much much less hardware.
|
| They were able to set up a 7 x 300baud modems in real-time chat
| system on an Apple ][ . The original marketing called it a CB
| (Citizens Band) Simulator. They were able to run up to 1200baud,
| but I never saw one of those functioning.
|
| As if 7 people chatting through a single 6502 wasn't impressive
| enough, many of them dedicated one or two of their lines to
| interlinking with other D-dials.
|
| Talk about an esoteric memory.
|
| - https://www.ddial.com/ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversi-
| Dial
| vinniedkator wrote:
| And the larger ddial sysops would daisy chain multiple Apple
| IIes together. A connector would take up one port on each
| machine. Two machine would give you 12 modems. Each new machine
| after the second would add space for 5 modems (-1 on old
| machine, +6 on new machine). For the sysop it was a big
| investment for very little, if any, monetary reward. I remember
| a user account would cost $5 a month.
|
| Our ddial was a few towns away so we bought a line in the
| exchange in between that would forward to the ddial. This way
| we would not pay a bunch on long distance calls.
| Bengalilol wrote:
| Apogee was somehow part of the party <
| https://x.com/ScottApogee/status/1593729387106512896>
| SirFatty wrote:
| Because of the shareware distribution. A lot of Apogee software
| was shareware (free).
| hackthemack wrote:
| If the site is not responding, can always try the way back
| machine.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220207120422/https://rachelbyt...
|
| I remember dialing up to a BBS in the area in 1990 that had 4
| phone lines. That was amazing at the time when most BBS only had
| 1 line.
|
| But I do remember downloading text files FILE.IDZ about other
| BBS, and reading some magazines that mentioned other BBS systems
| that had 32 and more phone lines but you had to pay. That seemed
| like it was just on another level in another part of the world
| that seemed like fantasy compared to the area I was in.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| Brings back memories ...
|
| Boardwatch was the magazine for BBS ( I do not know of any
| others)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boardwatch
|
| Some all? on internet archive
| https://archive.org/details/boardwatchmagazine I recall buyingthe
| magazine back inthe day...
| johnohara wrote:
| Not mentioned but very important was the number of inbound telco
| lines installed. Equally important was making sure the local
| phone company properly configured the hunt group for those lines.
| Without a properly functioning hunt group it would be very
| difficult to optimize the allocation of telco connections to all
| the users connecting and disconnecting.
|
| Also, it was unusual at the time for a local phone company to
| receive a request for 25 lines (or more) to be installed in the
| basement of a residence. They would generally push back thinking
| you were running a bookie operation or some such.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| How did they keep the room cool? that equipment must not be
| shown... Maybe fans to move the hot air ....
| icedchai wrote:
| If it's like the old ISPs I was familiar with, they didn't. The
| POP (point-of-presence, 100's of modems, plus several terminal
| servers, routers, etc.) would generally be in some basement
| without any cooling at all. There would literally be warped
| plastic.
| asdefghyk wrote:
| FROM
| https://x.com/ScottApogee/status/1593729387106512896?sort_re...
|
| Top comment about this photo is ( and the poster) Scott Miller -
| Apogee/3D Realms Founder @ScottApogee BBS's (bulletin board
| systems) were the backbone of the online world before the
| Internet came along in 1995. Apogee teamed up with Dan Linton's
| BBS, called Software Creations, and we poured $200k+ into it to
| grow it to nearly 140 call-in nodes with a T3 (high bandwidth)
| line.
| tcherasaro wrote:
| Nice computer "racks"
| Scubabear68 wrote:
| My roommate circa 1989 had a bunch of Apple II's with multiple
| modem cards per machine to run a bulletin board. Not sure why an
| Apple II could support multiple users logging into the BBS via
| multiple modems but DOS based machines could not.
| esseph wrote:
| > So then, when you see this picture (and remember, it might only
| be showing half of the whole setup), do you think "wow, cool,
| they got to wrangle all of that", or do you think "OMG they _had_
| to wrangle all of that "? It's an important distinction to make,
| and I think someone's gut reaction to this amount of hardware in
| one place might influence how they approach building new systems.
|
| Definitely in the "wow, cool, they got to wrangle all of that"
| camp!
|
| I remember dialing up to this BBS quite a bit, and I also
| remember downloading tons of demos from other BBSs that
| originally came from SCBBS!
| myth_drannon wrote:
| I imagine Rusty 'n' Edie's BBS was double of that
| pier25 wrote:
| You could probably replace all those machines with a Mac Mini or
| even a Raspberry Pi.
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