Did anyone use the government's Starburst BBS project? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iheartbaconsalt · 2014-03-18 11:00 I wrote to Fort Gordon yesterday to ask if they had anyone there who remembered the project. It was a toll-free BBS to give kids, in school and at home, a safe way to connect to others on a BBS, and a gateway to tons of other BBSes via telnet, and even some real MUDs, or you could enter your own address/port and save a list of favorites. They even had a gateway to other BBSes too. Anyway, the address of the place was ***starburst.gordon.army.mil***. If anyone has info, I'd love to hear about it! There were lots of other toll-free BBSes, but this one really had everything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ominous_squirrel · 2014-03-18 21:38 I can only imagine that the doors section merely had the prompt, "Shall we play a game?" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iheartbaconsalt · 2014-03-18 22:08 That would have been funny, but it was all Wildcat :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lurkastan · 2014-03-19 04:07 Yeah, I was on that board and remember playing MUDs using it. In fact, I can remember the sysop tactically suggesting to me that I not spend ALL my BBS time mudding (when I used it, I think we were limited to an hour per day) and do something educational as well. I think it had a pretty good file base with lots of educational programs/games. It's odd, though, I don't really remember the gateway to other BBSes thing -- we're not just talking FedWorld, right? It seems like I would have noticed something like that. I think I stopped using it as much when it started to became very, very difficult to find an open node -- it just became too popular. It seems like the toll free number went away not that long after it exploded, but I'm not sure if I trust my memory at this point. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iheartbaconsalt · 2014-03-19 04:33 YES it was an hour a day! I spent a lot of time chatting and mudding. It had a prompt to enter an IP address I was sure, because we all would telnet to 199.190.82.10..which we later learned was chat.aliens.com haha. (turns out that stood for Alternative Lifestyles Chat) which was kinda deep in the down-low back then. I remember having other numbers for things, one seemed to be government related but it just dumped to a KERMIT> prompt! I had a 2400 baud modem, so I was used to using the Kermit protocol! You could telnet to IPs from it and FTP, but only with IPs, no names. One in Texas was the Window on State Government, and it was running WorldGroup, and had an open admin menu with a dial-out prompt. We (people were chatting by broadcasting messages from the same admin panel) would all trade phone numbers that way and dial away. It was some of the most fun I ever had. EDIT: I just found that IP on a list, and just had flashbacks of all the other places I went. [Here it is](http://cd.textfiles.com/scene96-1/text/english/inetsits/readme) AND thanks for the post! I am so glad someone else had fun :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lurkastan · 2014-03-19 21:51 It's funny -- I actually do remember the Texas Window on State Government board! Somehow I don't remember connecting to it via Starburst at all, though. I think you've finally helped me figure out what was going on at that board. I remember connecting to it and having weird, unfriendly messages broadcast to me so I figured the sysop was really pissed at how people were using his board...based on what you've said, it seems more likely that the "in-group" was trying to scare off n00bs. Scoring any form of Internet access was huge for me back then, and outbound telnet was more desirable than Web access (though I logged plenty of hours using Lynx in my time). It's funny -- back then, I liked BBSes but above all else I wanted Internet access. Now I find myself really missing the dialup BBS scene as it was. Why couldn't we have both at the same time? Darn you, humanity! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iheartbaconsalt · 2014-03-19 22:42 ohh I know, it makes me think of www.fdisk.com and the old 800-BBS list and slip and cslip in DOS and using netTamer for some DOS internet goodness.. it was a slight step up from doslynx back then. Shit, remember JUNO? The Internet Tourbus? Surfing the web by e-mail? FTP by e-mail? The Usenet Oracle? hehe so much good stuff