I'm an old sysop and I had a bbs in Europe with 8 lines called The Tribe, and boy I MISS THOSE DAYS! reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thetribe_bbs · 2014-07-17 22:39 It started in I think around 1991 I had my first bbs open, only after 19h until morning or something like that. It ran on a PC 386, pcboard later on, but migrated to 8 nodes ringdown on amiexpress (also tempest later on) on an amiga4000 that a friend borrowed to me, with those nice real modems US ROBOTICS couriers who were 9600 baud but upgraded to 14.4k *by just adding a little card into them* I quit the BBS in 1995, the internet was there and it wasn't safe anymore too. I was european HQ of RaZoR1911. I had callers from all over the world. It was invite only. I did some really really crazy things in those 4 years and met so many crazy people!! Did anybody remember those days? GOOD OLD DAYS!!! I MISS THEM!!! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mburke6 · 2014-07-18 03:19 I remember those days! I was not a sysop, just a user in Cincinnati, OH in the mid to late '80s and maybe a little into the early '90s. I moved to Washington DC in late 1991 and I remember connecting to a few local BBS's just for fun and seeing an ANSI sign that claimed they had access to something called the WWW, whatever that was. At first, I would connect using my 1200 baud Radio Shack modem. The people that had been into BBS's before me would tell me how fast that 1200 baud modem was compared to their 300 baud acoustic modems. When I was in high school, I remember watching somebody reading and posting on a railroad fan site using a 300 baud acoustic coupler and a TRS-80, but I didn't get into BBS's until later, with my Tandy 1000 IBM compatible machine, which I got around 1985/86. At some point, I upgraded that 1200 baud modem to an expensive but fast Hayes 9600 baud modem. I drooled over that modem for months at the computer store in the mid '80s until I had enough money to buy it. I would connect to a new BBS and immediately download their list of BBS's and print it out. I was always on the prowl for a new BBS and I was interested primarily in one thing, software downloads. Games, utilities, anything that I could trade with other BBS's for even more downloads. I was limited to the local calling radius of my phone, so I was only looking at BBS's in the Cincinnati area. Occasionally I would call a BBS in Chicago, or someplace else, just out of curiosity and when the well was dry, but I simply had no money back then. I moved to D.C. in the early '90s and was not really interested in the BBS anymore. I called a few up, just out of curiosity, but it never amounted to much, other than spotting what would end up being the doom of the BBS, the WWW. The TV station I worked at had a contract to provide content to America Online in the early '90s. I was a technician at the station, and a bit computer savey, so they gave me and AOL account. I remember the AOL access client was still DOS, and then a year or two later it changed to the Windows interface. I didn't do much with my AOL account for the TV station, but soon after they went to the Windows access client, AOL provided access to the internet. I think that this was the first way I connected to the internet, in 1993 or 1994, through my AOL account. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- derfherdez · 2014-07-18 06:20 > the first way I connected to the internet, in 1993 or 1994, through my AOL account. Ah yes, the [eternal September of '93](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September). I still remember the 'me too!!'s ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sonofagundam · 2014-07-18 19:55 Why not restart your board over telnet using Syncterm? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lagmonst3r · 2014-07-18 20:05 Check out /r/Amiga we get links to some neat interviews with old scene guys, devs, etc. Google can help you find many of your old friends. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thetribe_bbs · 2014-07-31 17:03 Thanks, I will. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thetribe_bbs · 2014-07-31 17:04 It's something from the past. It was very time consuming, heck it was my life for several years and it was a very underground scene. I don't know how this could be replicated. I was maybe part of a worldwide 500 person underground scene where literally everybody knew everybody of that 500 people network, it was virtually impossible to get in. That worldwide 500 people kept each other alive. And yes, I'm also talking financially. Remember, that was before the internet, the bits and bytes needed to be distributed in the world, as fast as possible, why? Because there was a market for it. Software needed to be cracked and released before it hit the shelves, or the moment it hit the shelves, there was a market for it. We did it. I have so many stories to tell. Take the wildest movies what you can imagine and triple it, and maybe it will come close to the reality :-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thetribe_bbs · 2014-07-31 17:11 Sweet stories, sweet memories. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sonofagundam · 2014-07-31 17:56 Do you have any backups of your board? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2400bps · 2014-08-01 14:20 hi sternone :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thetribe_bbs · 2014-08-04 13:48 :-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thetribe_bbs · 2014-10-07 17:28 Sort of, those tapes, you know :-)