I ran a BBS in from around 1984-1989 ultimately on GBBS Pro for my Apple and... reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-06 15:50 ...it was great. I actually started with a Commodore 64 with a 300 baud modem that I ordered via mail. When I came home from my first day of high school there was a package waiting for me on the dining room table. I anxiously opened it open and ran upstairs. I plugged everything in and was ready to rock and roll. I had already called a local computer store (via a suggestion I got from a Telecommunications book that I bought) to see if they had any phone numbers of local BBS's. And they did. It was called The Police Academy (not an actual police academy) and it was in the next town over and it ran on GBBS Pro. I remember on my first call to it I think I felt like Matthew Broderick in War Games. Especially when within the first 2 minutes I saw on my screen "SYSOP ONLINE". I watched as he performed some local commands and I was now "validated" and access to most of the system. It was fair to say that from this point on I was addicted. As time elapsed, I wasn't content with just being a BBS user. I wanted to be an operator. I tried (and floundered) for a while running it with a C-64 and 300 baud modem. Then upgraded to a 1200 baud modem. Then next came the Commodore Amiga and 2400 baud modem. That didn't last too long because I realized to have a "real" BBS I needed an Apple. So I went and got an Apple IIC and bought Greg Shafer's GBBS Pro. I ran a decent BBS but it was with floppy drives (a 3.5" drive and 5.25" drive). I noticed all the "cool" BBS's had hard drives. So I finally got a ProAPP 20MB hard drive. I believe the cost was $995. It was unheard of at the time (just about). The Police Academy BBS used to advertise "10 MEGS ONLINE!!!" and nobody could believe it. I eventually ditched the Apple IIC for an Apple IIGS and also bought a USRobotics Courier HST modem (9600 baud). I also traded up the 20MB ProAPP hard drive for a Chinook 40MB hard drive (these were both external by the way). I can remember buying mod's for it (through a 3rd party company. I forget the name of the company but one of the mods I bought was a game called "The Den of Iniquity". I also learned to write my own mods. I can remember sitting in my room until the sun came up writing these things and then running them through the compiler and keeping my fingers crossed that it was going to work. I kept this all up until I left for the Navy was I was 18. By the time I got out of the Navy in March of 1995, AOL and PC's were all the rage. The way I heard about this "internet" was kinda unique. I was on deployment in Sicily when I bought the new Megadeth CD Youthanasia. There was a sticker on the outside of the shrink wrap that said "Visit Megadeth on the World Wide Web at http://megadetharizona.com - I didn't know what the internet was or what it meant exactly, but I knew it had to be a more advanced form of what I was doing in the 80's. I think when I got out of the Navy and temporarily moved back home - that that was the first website I went to. Or attempted to go to since it took about an hour for 1/4 of my screen to be filled with content. I can honestly say, those days were exciting. Hearing the dial tone, waiting for the two sides to "shake hands". Reading and leaving messages. Hoping for an online chat with the sysop. The good 'ol days :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jobutex · 2016-03-06 18:48 Thanks for sharing! I love hearing first-hand accounts of the old BBS days and the sysops that ran them! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- evilcounsel · 2016-03-06 18:55 >I remember on my first call to it I think I felt like Matthew Broderick in War Games. Great reference. I think that movie was influential to a lot of people who got into BBSs and computers back in the day. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-06 19:55 It was for me. What happened was I was pretty heavily into computers starting in around 7th grade (just had a C-64). I had seen War Games many times and was fascinated by the entire modem thing. Every time I went to somebody's house and saw that they had a computer, my next question was "Do you have a modem?". Nobody ever did. Then one summer I went to California for the first time and my cousin had a C-64. I asked him and he showed me his modem. Then he did some demonstrations of logging onto his local BBS. When I was flying home from CA we had a layover in St. Louis. I used a pay phone and ordered a 300 baud modem for $29.95 out of the back of Computer Shopper. That's the modem that arrived at my house first day of high school. So I can imagine that War Games effected a lot of people similarly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-06 19:55 You're welcome :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coolaid213 · 2016-03-06 23:54 I was late to the party, I got my first PC in the late 80's but we didn't buy a modem until the early 90's, a 2,400 baud external. We had a lot of BBS's around here, and at some point around 1995 the local public library opened up a bunch of lines to dial in for text based internet service using the Lynx browser. I called into lots of BBS's but never really got mine off the ground before they went out of style. I "hacked" the host mode on QModem Pro and expanded it to let me do more than it was intended to. I made my own ANSI art welcome screen and all that jazz. It wasn't very good, but my friends would dial in sometimes and chat or transfer some games. Awhile back I got really nostalgic for some door games, I found an active BBS I could telnet into and played LORD until I had beaten the entire thing lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Paco_Smithereens · 2016-03-07 08:15 206-679-4532 <- this one? Curious what area code your board was in. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-07 16:59 Back then I believe it was 908 (which is 732 now). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-07 17:05 Nice. Back when I had my C-64 and 300 baud modem I used to run my war dialer while I was at school and then when I got home would see what it found. I don't think I got anything that I could actually gain access into that was useful. There also was the program called "PHONEMAN". It had things on it like a quarter tone, dime tone, nickel tone. I think the idea of it was you record the tone onto a hand held recorder, then play that into the receiver of a pay phone and you trick the phone into thinking you put money into it. Another feature of PHONEMAN was to dial any long distance # that you wanted, then enter the phone number that you want it billed to. I'm not sure this feature ever worked as advertised but it was included in the program. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Paco_Smithereens · 2016-03-07 18:51 That's why I asked. I was 908 (201 before that), Monmouth County - I vaguely remember seeing it on BBS lists. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coolaid213 · 2016-03-07 19:26 I had a friend who was into the phreaking scene and he used to play tones from a cassette tape and then make crank phone calls and record them. I still have a recording somewhere where he called some poor lady at a hardware store and asked if she had tubing for his enema bag. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-07 23:07 Nice. Yeah, the Police Academy BBS was run by a guy named Al Dompieri out of Wall, NJ. I think another one from Wall was the Uni-Que BBS ran by a guy named Dennis Carmody. There was also The Caddy Shack run by Rich Lowenburg out of Brick, NJ (that's where I'm at) and one other that stands out is The Magic Bag BBS. I forget who it's sysop was or what town it was out of. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Paco_Smithereens · 2016-03-07 23:12 > a guy named Al Dompieri I know this name. Well. I do not know why. I don't know if I spoke to him at some point (Wall was in my local calling area), or was a user on my board in turn, but I definitely remember it. > Dennis Carmody. This one too. > The Caddy Shack run by Rich Lowenburg out of Brick, NJ I remember this from BBS lists. > The Magic Bag BBS. And also; yep, same world. I was in Marlboro. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-08 01:07 Bring's back memories huh? I saw a name today that I stared at for a minute because I know I had interactions with the guy. I just couldn't remember any detail. The name was Rich Augustino and he ran a BBS in Beachwood, NJ. Nowadays he's the owner of a computer business in the same town. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-17 01:38 Right on :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Blood_And_Fire · 2016-03-17 01:38 I lived in Seattle for 12 years but that was in the late 90's (starting in 1996). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- things4thinkers · 2016-04-11 05:46 Hahaha, I love these stories. I ran my board in the early 90s until about '95 or '96. I ran mine on an Amiga computer. The first board software I used was called Trinitybbs. I didn't have a hard drive at the time, just 2 floppies. I remember being afraid someone would try to upload a file or there wouldn't be enough space to save a message. I bought a 245 meg hard drive by Maxtor and the price was good because they just dropped down to $1 per megabyte. This was back when Ram cost about $50 per 1mb. I had a 2400 baud modem by hayes, then I upgraded to a US Robotics 14.4k, then upgraded to a US Robotics 56k modem. I ended up changing the software early on over to CNet Amiga 3.05c and networked it to fidonet and UUCP. I gave my users access to email addresses in 1994 with the domain of picove.com I remember it cost $75 to register that domain with InterNic and this was before WWW was mainstream. I wish I registered coke.com, pepsi.com, mcdonalds.com like some people with forsite did back in the day.... Meeting some of the users of the board was interesting, I remember one guy that was weird and wore a sock on one hand all the time lol. Does this look familiar? ATDT 2994342