BARK BBS (and other 1-800 boards) reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HotCharlie · 2015-07-15 19:28 Pubescent me had a pretty good time on there back in the day. My area was quite rural (we had party lines right up til the late 90's), so BARK, SBA and others were pretty much my only options. It was right on the cusp of the internet (or "intermyth") being a thing. My first "real" email address was @sba.gov, in fact. BARK had a booth at Woodstock '94, I think. Somewhere in my estate I have a 3.5" disk with the last load of QWK mail on it from BARK (right before Polygram shut it down - dark days, man). Any other former users out there? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HotCharlie · 2015-07-16 17:59 Not a one, huh? That's disappointing. Not that it'll stop me from reminiscing with myself: Again, PolyGram Records ran the thing, for whatever strange reason (it certainly didn't do much for promotion...and I imagine those toll-free calls added up). When it was announced that they were shutting down, a member of the community posted some contact info for PolyGram, such that we might stage a write (meaning: letter) and/or call-in campaign. He gleaned said info from an old Fat Boys cassingle. That's about all I can recall at the moment. That and a lot of ASCII art. Surely this wasn't all some shitty fever dream, huh? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PhotoJim99 · 2015-07-16 19:13 We poor Canadians didn't have access to this, I imagine. That's probably why I've never heard of it before. Sounds like it was fun, though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HotCharlie · 2015-07-16 23:02 It was a lot of fun. Mostly frequented by pubescent males like myself. Given the setup (not unlike Reddit), I figured there might be a few on here. One more memory: there were at least a few ladies on there, and one in particular was named Missy. She made a regular habit of calling us all fags (and made other observations concerning our complexions and masturbatory habits, most of which weren't too far off the mark). High drama, sir. In the midst of it all, someone made the accusation that she was actually a he (how the hell they knew, I can't remember). He/she was a troll before I'm even sure we had the term. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9600bps · 2015-07-22 20:03 I never called BARK but it sounds interesting. Where did you find the number? Was it printed on a Fat Boys tape, too? :) Was BARK part of FidoNet or was it a total stand-alone thing? Sounds kinda like CyberDen... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HotCharlie · 2015-07-22 21:15 Stand-alone thing, as I recall it. I remember getting a .txt file loaded w/800 # BBS's...pulled off one of the closest (but still long distance) boards. Mostly crap and/or for private use by the different companies that ran them. AT&T had one, for instance. I remember calling that one in '98 or '99 - still functioning - to download a generic VGA driver for a 386/Windows 3.1 set up I was cobbling together for my mom. Pretty sure I had those numbers memorized at some point. How bout this Den of yours? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9600bps · 2015-08-02 16:28 Ah, that makes sense. I've seen a few off those 800 number lists but I never came across anything interesting. It wasn't cheap to run a toll- free board! I wasn't a CyberDen caller but it's a really neat, unique music board. It was briefly a BBS/WWW hybrid system and some of the early site was crawled by Wayback so you can check it out here: http://web.archive.org/web/19971211225945/http://www.cyberden.com/ Cyber-utopia for 90s cyber-goths! :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HotCharlie · 2015-08-02 17:41 Oh man. How bout that [5.25" Sleeve Archive.](http://web.archive.org/w eb/19980126053108/http://www.cyberden.com/cyberden/sleeves/sleevearchi ve.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- piranhaphish · 2015-08-14 14:08 Wow, BARK. It has been a long time! I was on it for a while back in the early 90s. I had the same handle back then, "Piranha". I originally dialed up at 2400 but that was too slow for even QWK posts so I eventually upgraded to 14.4k baud. The biggest thing I remember was the mock medieval popularity thing, but perhaps that was just between me and my other young friends on there. A frequent poster, "Dan" I believe, became the King and his interest, "Julie" maybe, was the queen. Eventually there was jesters and knights. My interest, Komodo Dragon, dubbed me "Piranha" which sounded cool and stuck for all these years. That was the only toll-free BBS I ever dialed up. Looking back, it definitely felt like the precursor to the Internet with how it was nation-wide. I'm surprised there are literally no other Google search results for it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HotCharlie · 2015-08-14 17:58 **YES!!** King Dan, upon claiming his throne, posted an ASCII picture of his castle. I responded with an ANSI (that's right) dragon, destroying the castle. It was a big moment for me. I'd forgotten all about the other titles....plus the handles. "Komodo Dragon" and "Piranha" are ringing some bells, though.... I have no idea what I was calling myself, if anything (and probably best that I don't). I remember spending a lot of time on that ASCII signature, though. Plus cultivating a rotating number of "sig lines," mostly ripped off from other users. Shit like: "Don't mince words, **Piranha**, tell us what you really think." And I think a lot of TNG quotes. Man I wish I could find that disk. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- piranhaphish · 2015-08-15 01:00 If you ever find that disk, and assuming I can find a reader for those files, I would love to have a copy! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HotCharlie · 2015-08-15 02:30 If and when I ever find that thing, I will certainly get you a copy. Thanks so much for confirming that any of it ever happened. So you and Komodo ever get together? ;) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9600bps · 2015-08-17 18:27 I see your ASCII and raise you my ANSI! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HotCharlie · 2015-08-17 20:52 Oh yeah. Full color. "Animated," even.