I really miss BBSes reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chefgroovy · 2014-07-12 03:37 I know it has been said many times before, and I am not romanticizing it, but in same ways the old BBSes from the 80s and 90's were better than the internet, gaming-wise. Sure, it was only place to get games besides going to the meetings, but the door games were where the action was. I ran a 2 line Wildcat (v4??) on OS/2 back in the day. the only multi line BBS in the area code. I can only imagine what the kids thought, being able to check with their friends. I did it for free, for frequently got donations to register to doors and just keep the phone lines going. Recently I got back into the scene, just to play Barren Realms Elite and some of the classics. Particularly joining boards that have no players but are networked, just so I can attempt to kick all their asses. And things haven't changed much in the scene, the ANSI is still there, which is an artform all to itself. But now, there are ZERO file sections, why bother? haha. Also I haven't seen many message boards. It is still worth getting into, just for the nostalgia. As mentions, there are tons of lists of tenetable/flash accessible boards. And for an unsolicited plug, check out www.ewbbs.net The only downside I could see to the BBS's, is since they are essentially on the "darkweb", unindexed, in theory they could be used for some illegal activity. Imagine a BBS, that accepts bitcoins for credits to access the elite areas? hmmm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nolageek · 2014-07-12 04:23 I run capitolshrill.com - DC board. :) BRE as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-07-12 07:12 I think I'm the last [OS/2 board on the internet](http://bbs.superglobalmegacorp.com/)... and to be honest I'm already starting down the road on replacing it. I'm not much into art, mostly because I'm not an artist. And my skills are mostly a joke. Some sites have plenty of files, I think that they don't want to be indexed by the world at large, and deal with the gods that be. So yeah it sort of is a big dark net. But it's not just BBSes, even the old PDP-11/VAX folk built their own darknet, [Hecnet](http://www.update.uu.se/~bqt/hecnet.html) to run their DecNET on. The most active message board has to be Synchronet's [DOVENET](http://www.synchro.net/docs/dove-net.txt), mostly because it's so simple to setup. The latest major hurdle I see as everything drifts more and more into Linux territories the options for running ancient MS-DOS multiplayer BBS doors are really few and far between. Although I've recently dug up an old C emulator so I'm hoping to add to the chaos and bring LORD/TW2002 (although v2 since it's 8086 friendly) into the Linux world. I figure if I can pull that off for me, I'll finally retire OS/2. The killer feature of OS/2 for me was it's great ability to multitask MS-DOS, but over the last 6 months the number of idiots port scanning me, and trying to logon as root is killing SIO, which I really can't do anything about other than reboot. So yeah, TL;DR too many sysops not enough users, and it's (unsurprisingly) getting harder and harder to deal with software written in the mid 80's early 90's. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shortie446 · 2014-07-12 14:08 How did donations work on BBSs? Was there a place to put in credit card info or was it somehow through the phone company? Seems like the e-commerce era was a long way of in those days. I guess it's most likely that people just mailed you cash or a check? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- worldsfastestweiner · 2014-07-12 15:29 My BBS documentary I watched said that people would put up a "Mail me" sign on their board that had an address or what ever. You could then send a check or cash. It would probably be infinitely easier to integrate bitcoin + paypal or something today. I am working on building a way for the MysticBBS system to allow you to load Dogecoin into it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-07-12 16:41 there is a bbs in Hong Kong, [smarties](http://smartiesbbs.no-ip.org/) that takes a [direct deposit](http://i.imgur.com/mZZvul8.png). Although this kind of system is quite common here, people give out their account #'s and get people to make deposits. So you could walk up to a Bank of China ATM, and deposit money directly into this guys account. But in North America I know it was either meet the sysop or it'd be a snail mail exchange... Life before paypal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- larryvillain · 2014-07-12 16:48 Unless you're going for some kind of "security through obscurity" and are just hoping that no one is paying attention, illegal activities via telnet (unencrypted/plain text) is a bad idea. And taking CC or bank account info via your BBS is just irresponsible in this day and age.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- larryvillain · 2014-07-12 16:53 Something you might be able to do is put your BBS machine in line behind some kind of linux box (Raspberry Pi would be cheap) and leverage iptables with the conntrack module to temporarily ban rapid repeating connections. Or if you have a home router that can use DD- WRT or Tomato firmware, that would work too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iheartbaconsalt · 2014-07-12 16:57 We need a Reddit mailer to subscribe and read subreddits via qwk or bluewave packet :P I just miss taglines. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-07-12 17:05 I'm basically doing that now. I gave up running it at home years ago, I run my OS/2 inside of Qemu that in turn I run on a Linux VPS... So when I run a DOOR, it's MS-DOS inside of OS/2 inside of Qemu inside of Linux on.. Linux.. Honestly it's amazing that it works as well as it does. It's just all these morons portscanning, they eventually do a SYN flood, and it freaks out SIO. Which isn't surprising as it really wasn't built for the internet of 1994 let alone 2014. I get the feeling that if I get this emu thing working at least to XT levels it'll be useful, as most people are either going to Win64 or Linux/AMD64 which their only option for DOS doors is DOSBox, which can't do multiuser games. Maybe long term I'll keep OS/2 around I still haven't decided. In a way it's cool being the last one alive, but at the same time, well that extinction thing is pretty scary. I should say I'm also using OS/2 v2.0.. none of that warp nonsense! Although if I were to move it back home, I did get OS/2 2.11 loaded onto VMWare, and with a 'hotfix' from 1996, I did get it's ethernet networking to work. I just don't like that because, it's @ home, I'm on DSL, I Don't have a UPS, and my internet connection is the slowest in Hong Kong, so it'll be insanely slow from Europe or America. The idea of my BBS being in a data centre is a nice thing too... But yeah too many options. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-07-12 17:10 I never looked into the reddit bots, but I guess if they can read posts, they could 'forge' QWK's based on what they see... So I guess it could be done. You can always /r/botrequests ... All you'd need is something to read posts, and make a QWK packet. Then you need some place for them to be collected and injected into a board. It'd be kind of funny. And neat in a way. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iheartbaconsalt · 2014-07-12 17:55 haha yes it would be neat, but not really necessary.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-07-12 18:00 well there isn't anything really necessary about BBSes in 2014, but yeah.. neat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iheartbaconsalt · 2014-07-12 18:07 I think we NEED BBSes for the global internet shutdown.. the problem is nobody knows how to set up wifi peer mesh networks, and TOR seems too slow....if we had something fast and common that everyone ran, it might work as a mega BBS for messaging and group communications, and then I think file libs would grow again with text. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chefgroovy · 2014-07-12 19:39 At the monthly, in person meetings, or they would drop off cash at the D&D / comic books store. It was the 90s, there wasn't much going on :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chefgroovy · 2014-07-12 19:55 Yeah, I think I retired my OS/2 dream last night, when dug out my OS/2 box, and counted the floppies discs and was missing 2 of them from the 21 that it came with dunno how many bonus ones are gone. ISO is on the pirate sites tho, it has to be public domain by now. I just wanted to use Wildcat, because I paid so much for the compiler that let you program it. Anyways, wifey changed my mind, she says I will eventually get a job, and not want to mess with it anymore. Still gonna play BRE tho :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2014-07-12 23:58 > >The only downside I could see to the BBS's, is since they are essentially on the "darkweb", unindexed, >in theory they could be used for some illegal activity. Imagine a BBS, that >accepts bitcoins for credits to access the elite areas? hmmm > **HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA** ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2014-07-13 00:00 good luck with that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2014-07-13 00:02 >iheartbaconsalt 2 points 7 hours ago > >We need a Reddit mailer to subscribe and read subreddits via qwk or bluewave packet :P I just miss taglines. you can subscribe to this area and then have the posts on your bbs EASY. if you have the ability to reply via email to this sub, you can then post here as well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-07-13 00:30 it's a lot of work to setup, that is for sure.. and then there is finicky IBM tcp/ip ... It's one of those things that once you get it setup you really don't want to mess with it.. and the disks!!! well that's also why I'm using a virtual machine, first you have to install OS/2, then the big service pack, tcpip, the tcpip fixpack, SIO, and then you have to edit config.sys to setup virtual serial ports, setup vmodem to launch so you have your 4 virtual modems.. then get into the BBS. And then the doors..... Assuming you still have your codes. Wildcat! 5 will be much easier as it's a simple setup.exe on Windows... What compiler did you get for wildcat? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-07-13 00:58 The only money I've ever made with BBS stuff was a surprise $20 someone sent me because I spent a bored weekend [porting TradeWars 200/QuixPlus](http://sourceforge.net/projects/tradewarsc/) from Turbo Pascal to C. So yeah if anyone wants to make $$ with BBSes either get a time machine, or write a door. But don't expect to be raking in the $$$$.. You'll get more out of "free to play" games for facebook, iIOS, or Android that is for sure. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2014-07-13 02:54 bbses are very popular in asia. they have hundreds of people online chatting. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chefgroovy · 2014-07-13 03:29 To write native programs, I bought wcCODE back in the day for like $250. Used it to make Wildcat native Fidonet-type router, parser and encryptor for porn and pirate stuff. Don't judge me, I was young, and those ann nicole smith pics weren't gonna transfer themselves. I bought wildcat 5 back then, but by time sat it up, the real internet came out, so just used internet explorer ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chefgroovy · 2014-07-13 03:43 don't laugh, there was some pretty shady shit going on the boards back then. You know how easy it is to buy drugs now with cell phones and stuff, back then we didn't even have caller ID or answering machines. hell, my board was called Stone Free, others were Purple Haze, Burnout, Liquid Dreams and that kinda stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mro_1337 · 2014-07-13 14:08 well caller ID existed since the 1960's i think. it's was around for a while but not available to the public. yes, shady stuff went on back in the old days. i do not see a bbs nowadays doing anything shady. it would be too easy to take down the server. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sharphead_cgy · 2014-07-16 06:16 I run BRE as well, as a DOOR on bbs.thenexusbbs.com - The Nexus BBS. Seems there was a lot of MajorMUD players out there that were looking for a fresh game, so were serving those players now! Honestly, I would love for some door players to join up and play - turn based games were the shit in the day and I still like playing them today! (Hell I play Candy Crush and it's turn based too for crying out loud) It was a lot of work getting it all back online, but worth it - I enjoy running it and tinkering with it to see what else I can get working. Anyways, back in the day I ran a 20 line BBS, state of the art - 4 player multiplayer DOOM, Descent, Heretic - my lines were full almost all of the time, was an absolute blast to run. Weekly user meets at the pool hall, I got to meet all my members, and I still remember some by name today and this is now almost 20 years ago. Probably why I can't stop running a BBS... the nostalgia is just too great for me to ignore. I remember the other month and going through the SBI list from Dragon's Keep (another awesome BBS I used to TELNET into) and remembering some of those massive systems, 100+ line BBS's. I sure wish I could of gone back and saved screenshots of all those great systems, some real effort and work went into those menus and modules and now it's lost unfortunately. Anyways, great thread, but BBSing hasn't died, it's evolved into what it is today, and I hope ill be around for another ten years serving up games from 20+ years ago. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chefgroovy · 2014-07-17 15:43 Yeah. I do miss the community from back then. Physically meeting, swapping stuff and all that. Just made it all seem more real. and multi-player Decent server? Well done! I never could get it to work. I did make an ansi intro to my board for april fools that mimicked the Doom load screen. Had all that crap about loading WAD files and stuff. So dorky. lol