Whats your favourite BBS days memory ? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gstandard00 · 2018-05-09 14:14 My favourite memory, was going to my mates house almost every Friday night, ordered pizza and attack dialled BBS's (which were always engaged) to download the latest games/apps/demos on a 2400bps (50 mins I think to download 1 880k floppy) before I actually had a modem. Then my friend upgraded to 14.4k and I got my own which took 12 to 14 mins to download 1 floppy. I think the highest number of redials for a single system we reached was around 392 dial attempts. Once connected, the mad dash to check all new files, tag them and start downloading to avoid wasting time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-09 15:40 One day in the mid '90s (well into AOL era; BBSs were already becoming a vestigial thing), I was setting up my third or fourth new user account on an unfamiliar BBS, to skirt its upload:download ratio limits... I did this pretty regularly, going down a long list of BBSs to call by long-distance & downloading as many files as I could before the ratio limit, which I'd then upload to local systems in return for more login time to play my favorite Door games. I had a few slightly phreaky tools & tricks to get around the long-distance fees, so I seldom if ever leeched the same BBS more than once. On this particular day I'd found some (by today's standards, appallingly low res) porn images available without account verification. Porn was one of the most desired things I could upload because the BBSs I frequented already had a lot of the other files I might find, whereas there seemed no end to the varieties of smut available. The largish file sizes really helped pump my UL-to-DL ratio... Well this time, the System Operator of this out-of-state BBS pulled me into chat & demanded to know why I'd made multiple accounts. I apologized & pledged to upload in return, but they pinned the phone line open (presumably with a battery) so my desperate ATH0 commands to my modem couldn't drop the connection. Within seconds they'd run a script that got past the QModem client app's primitive security, & executed a dreaded "format" command on my C: drive. I pulled the power cord from the wall. Now this was well into the days of Windows (95 in fact), but I was using some seriously old hardware. I popped in a barebones boot floppy, connected a parallel port crossover cable from my trusty old 8088XT clone to the 286 I'd been using (remember this is in 486/Pentium days), & copied a compressed backup image of my system, from the upgraded 30mb HDD on my 8088 to the puny 20mb HDD on my 286. Restoring the whole C: drive took less than two minutes. I booted the 286 back into DOS & dialed the same BBS again, this time using a stripped down client with attack scripts at the ready. _I_ pinned the line open this time, & set my old Kaypro II to tie up their secondary line by rapidly dialing & hanging up before their system answered. I met no resistance connecting & found my previous accounts removed. Typing in garbage to get past the sign-up fields I made it to the main menu & promptly dropped into a shell whence I could access all his files. The SysOp managed to derail my script & pulled me back into chat to ask: "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU RUNNING?" '286 DOS 6.22' "TRIED TO FDISK YOU ~" 'YOU DID, ~' "LIKE A MINUTE AGO. YOU ARE ALREADY BACK?" '12MB GHOST DISK RESTORES QUICK.' "F#@&ING DOS. WINDOWS TAKES FOREVER" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-09 15:41 (Replying to own comment, for commentary purposes) Indeed, with a Pentium processor & cavernous 800MB HDD, my Mom's exponentially "faster" Windows machine took over a minute to boot up, & copying the system files was an arduous process suitable for taking a long coffee break. Even back then, being able to restore your system drive in less than two minutes was a forgotten phenomena. Never again have I had a PC that could go from unformatted drive to fully loaded & ready to work, so quickly. I lost count how many hours the last fresh Win10 install took, _not counting updates_. Even Linux is a major undertaking, without a preinstalled image handy. As storage, memory, cache, CPU throughput, & remote bandwidth all continue to increase, I still find myself waiting more than I ever did under DOS. Bloatware drives the industry. Now people carry always- connected supercomputers with a 1mi radio in their pocket, & barely use them as anything but a dumb-terminal for streaming. Truly, we have been led astray. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nevets01 · 2018-05-09 16:39 > Bloatware drives the industry. This. We've supposedly come so far, but until you look closely at the numbers, you'd never be able to tell. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-09 18:04 In most ways (particularly freedom of communication) I feel like we've moved backward since 1996. The sheer quantity of energy consumed by an average internet user is insane. If usage is the metric, well I guess we've come a long way because we consume resources like crazy now; if material productivity per watt is the metric, just quit now. The quantity of coal burned between SEARCH~ relays~result~(relays)~DNS~(relays)~webserver~(relays)~rendering~CONTE NT is absolutely staggering, & that's assuming people are able to go straight to what they're looking for. More unnecessary data than ever, between a search & the relevant content. Even discovery hasn't _really_ improved since Shoutcast. It's enough to make me miss using Lynx. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ebojager · 2018-05-09 18:31 Logging into my local BBS and playing Operation Overkill II on my IBM PS/1 386mhz PC. Those were the days. Had to wait hours before playing again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13_0_0_0_0 · 2018-05-09 19:42 VBBS's VirtualNET. VirtualNET was the first inter-BBS network I ever linked into on my own board. At the time it was heavily populated, reliable, and fast. At least that's how I remember it. Speaking of which, it's not exactly BBS, but I loved CompuServe's Special Interest Groups. It hurts that none have survived (that I know of anyway). edit: just remembered another one. A few friends and I ran a hack/phreak BBS on a Commodore 64. The fond memory was staying up all night on too many caffeine pills soldering an RS-232 interface together for it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- greyfade · 2018-05-09 19:48 I used to be a regular on a BBS called Indigo Base. I wasn't particularly social, but I was badly addicted to TradeWars 2002 and a few other door games that got rotated through. I remember there was a 1 hour 30 minute time limit on dial-ins, and there always seemed to be something interesting in the files area. But all I had was a 2400-baud modem. So, when I logged on at my regular time in the late evenings, I'd routinely queue up about 1.3 to 1.4MB of downloads, play Trade Wars and a few other doors for an hour and a half, and then start the downloads. I felt like such a criminal, tying up a line for 3 hours every night. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2018-05-09 19:57 The module which ran VirtualNET was also one of the first "create your own network in minutes" modules which anyone could use to do that. I'm sure others existed but I doubt they were as simple as that networking module. Speaking of which, there are several VirtualAdvanced boards out there - but does anyone run the old VBBS in emulation? I'd really like to telnet to one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- blakespot · 2018-05-09 22:33 It was 1993 and I had an Amiga 1200 and frequented this Amiga-run BBS that was local called The Board (in Virginia). I remember it ran software called Atredes BBS by, I think, Incognito. At that time JPEG images were new and very rare — hardly found anywhere online. They were particularly good formats to show off the Amiga gfx using HAM mode image viewers. Took well over a minute to decode a 640x480 image on that 68020-based Amiga. Well, I decided I was going to make The Board the number one source for JPEG images in the area, and would download (non-porn) I ages when I was on a long distance BBS and upload them to The Board. I did achieve what I set out to do, for a while anyway, but I don’t think anyone else cared, really. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I wrote this blog post about user groups and BBS of my past a few years ago: https://www.bytecellar.com/2014/02/11/computer-users- groups-of-my-past/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LimbRetrieval-Bot · 2018-05-09 22:33 You dropped this \ *** ^^ To prevent anymore lost limbs throughout 2;Reddit, correctly escape the arms and should ers by typing the shrug as `¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯` o r `¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯` [^^Click here to see why this is necessar y](https://np.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/3fbrg3/is_there_a_rea son_why_the_arm_is_always_missing/ctn5gbf/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xianoth · 2018-05-09 22:56 My very first setup was back in 1985, Commodore 64, 1541 floppy drive and a 300 baud modem. Which took me months to convince my parents to buy me. I lived in Southeastern Massachusetts, and back in the 80s we had the calling limitations of being able to call locally plus whatever town was touching your town as a local call as well. No extra charges. I lucked out that the next town over also had the same phone exchange as my two, so I got a huge boost in reach. I managed to get circle calling added to our phone which gave us a 25 mile radius of calling for free. My favorite BBS at the time was King's Castle over in Attleboro Massachusetts. For awhile, it was THE hub for all the local BBS nerds. We even had meetups from time to time. Other BBS' I would visit were Apogee, Boggs, Bloom County, and at least a couple more that I can't pull from the fog. My favorite door game was Hack and Slash and I will be damned if I can find a copy of it anywhere,. C-Net was the popular software in my time. I ran a BBS on C-Net for a bit, then moved to DMBBS until my move to the internet. The BBS bug is starting to nibble again... I may set up a new one it's been too long. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnPolka · 2018-05-10 01:30 In the mid-80s, there was a BBS in the Cleveland area called "Nuclear Hell". It was an Atari 8 bit only BBS. That's because it was a custom program that made heavy use of Atari's graphical ATASCII character set. It had amazing screen graphics. It was the first BBS that I called that had spinning cursors, scrolling random quotes, random encounters with some of the "BBS characters", etc. It was also the first BBS that I called which had a "credit" system where you earned credits (they were called "credz" -- which was the "leet" way to say it back then) through random encounters, posting messages, uploading files, etc. You could turn around and use the credits to "terrorize" other users. The "terrorism" feature was simply a way to play pranks on other users like disconnect them on their next call, change their handle, etc. You would purchase these pranks with your credits. The bigger the prank, the more it cost in credits. The BBS wasn't around very long but certainly left its mark. When I ran a BBS, I incorporated some of the ideas that Nuclear Hell had including the terrorism. Some of the pranks included changing another user's handle, disconnecting them on their next call, forcing them to login at 300 baud for a day, get them drunk, send them 100 bells when they logon (recall the control G key can send a bell), etc. The drunk prank would rearrange the command keys so that 'q', for example, would not quick scan the message bases. It might take you to the file section instead. :) I had to remove the "changing of the handle" prank because, as you can guess, it was overly abused. I also had to tone down some of the random encounters. For example, there was a BBS character named "Spaz Man J" that would show up and chew on the BBS' RS232C cable and disconnect the user. Again, as you can guess, some of the users weren't amused by it...But overall I have fond memories of Nuclear Hell which inspired the customization on my BBS in the 80s and 90s. -JP ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phineas1134 · 2018-05-10 01:31 Hack n slash! Great memories, so many fun hours. I believe it was an Amiga only door game. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TensionMask · 2018-05-10 03:11 My favorite memories are probably anytime I across a BBS list and found new numbers to call. I loved exploring new boards so much, even the shitty ones! Another good one: before I had a PC of my own, my friend (who clued me into the existence of BBSes, thanks bro) would download QWK packets and give them to me. I would read those messages for hours and be transfixed. It seemed so incredible at the time. First time getting access to an 'elite' board was pretty mind-blowing. I was like a kid in a candy shop. Well, I actually was a kid, so, it was like I was in a candy shop! First time calling a national board was eye-opening too. How about queueing up a huge overnight upload or download, and rushing to the computer in the morning to confirm that the modem managed to do the whole thing without disconnecting! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- xianoth · 2018-05-10 03:28 Yeah, I think he was runniing an A4000 without the toaster. I would love to find a port for that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jim420 · 2018-05-10 07:02 At the same time I was two towns over in Plainville, MA with a Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 4 and a 300 baud modem. I was so glad Attleboro was in our local calling area. It provided a lot of interesting things to connect to. There wasn't too much going on in PLAINville. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- braxbrax · 2018-05-10 08:37 I loved Hack n Slash. The old amiga version as well a Linux version are available at the authors [site](https://robert.hurst- ri.us/downloads/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m_bishop · 2018-05-10 14:43 I'm trying to figure out some technical details about your story here. I used to run a BBS around this time, and had most of the hardware you're suggesting. > they pinned the phone line open \(presumably with a battery\) so my desperate ATH0 commands to my modem couldn't drop the connection. I don't understand. The internals of modems at the time would just disconnect from the line on their side to 'hang up'. So, once that happened, there would be a 'physical' disconnect, and also, sending a hang up typically stops your software from listening anyway. > Within seconds they'd run a script that got past the QModem client app's primitive security QModem didn't have 'security' to speak of, it just run on DOS. There was no direct way to get a 'prompt', because there was nothing sending the DOS Shell directly through the system. It wasn't like Unix, if you were running QMODEM on DOS, the 'DOS Shell' wasn't really there anymore. > I pulled the power cord from the wall. Why not just the Modem? Why not do that when you saw he was 'running a script', but once you realized he was formatting your HD, you could only do more damage by unplugging. >I popped in a barebones boot floppy, Which, honestly, could have had QModem on it. There's no real reason for the HD in your story at all. > connected a parallel port crossover cable There's no such thing. A Parallel port runs directly, the 'crossover' is for serial ports. > copied a compressed backup image of my system, from the upgraded 30mb HDD on my 8088 to the puny 20mb HDD on my 286. Restoring the whole C: drive took less than two minutes. Let's assume your crossover cable was serial. That's the only thing that really makes sense here. Now, you're creating a connection to your other computer to this computer, through a serial connection. First, this is entirely possible, but not at all unlike just using a modem. You're skipping the modem, but making the same kind of connection with a null modem. The means you're already running the software you're trying to 'restore' from the other computer from your floppy. >Restoring the whole C: drive took less than two minutes. So, here we run into the transfer speed issue. Again, you're just making a 'null modem' connection, to an 8088. I think the UART limits you to 57.6k at most. Now, let's assume your harddrive wasn't full, but you won't have approached nearly 50% compression. We'll just go ahead and say you probably had 10mb total to transfer. 10mb at 57.6k/sec = 24:57 minutes. Again, the crux of your story is that you're 'restoring' a DOS system, so you can reconnect to a BBS using the software you're already running to restore your DOS system. This brings up the obvious issue that, if you're transferring a zip file, by a direct connection, from an older system, to a newly formatted C:\\ ... how did you unzip it? You wouldn't have had the room. This is one reason you needed tape or floppy backups, even if you had a backup compressed on another system, you need transfer media as a middle\-man, because the compressed image is too big to store on the HD while decompressing. >I booted the 286 back into DOS & dialed the same BBS again, this time using a stripped down client with attack scripts at the ready. So, you're using a 'stripped down' client, presumably stripped down from QModem? What does that even mean? What was more stripped down that QModem? What are these 'attack scripts'? How are you planning to run them from a 'stripped down' client that, presumably, wouldn't support scripting? > *I* pinned the line open this time How? I made a few boxes in my time, and I never saw one that would force a connection to stay open AND the software on the other side to keep listening. >& set my old Kaypro II to tie up their secondary line by rapidly dialing & hanging up before their system answered. First, you had two phone lines in your home, connected to different computers? Why not just use the OTHER computer in this story? Second, what good is calling AND HANGING UP. If anything, this allows a window for someone else to call, which, for some unknown reason, seems to be your goal. > I made it to the main menu & promptly dropped into a shell I'd love to know what BBS server he was running that you had immediate access to the shell in the 90's. I know it was possible, but fairly rare. More than being entirely mathematically impossible, it just begs the question: If you could drop to 'shell' in such a trivial manner, why were you bothering to create a series of users get around UL/DL quotas in the first place!? >The SysOp managed to derail my script So, you're running a script on your machine, sending it directly to his machine, where the BBS would have probably just crashed entirely, if you exploited it to get to a prompt. I guess you could have used a poisoned BBS door, which would have allowed the system to keep running, but I hate to give you ideas ... Still, so you're somehow at a prompt on his system, and running a script, which will run as fast as your computer can send it. You're suggesting he saw this happening, and interrupted A RUNNING PROGRAM in time to stop it? > & pulled me back into chat So, if your exploit didn't also crash the entire BBS, we'll assume it's running, but how does he 'pull you into chat', if you're not 'on the system', but at a prompt? Again, I'm not familiar with EVERY BBS server from the early to mid 90s, but this is a function I'm not familiar with. >"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU RUNNING?"'286 DOS 6.22'"TRIED TO FDISK YOU \~"'YOU DID, \~'"LIKE A MINUTE AGO. YOU ARE ALREADY BACK?"'12MB GHOST DISK RESTORES QUICK.'"F#@&ING DOS. WINDOWS TAKES FOREVER" Okay, so after all THAT, he's impressed with you having been able to restore a backup in two minutes? Granted, even with a second hard drive in the machine, actually decompressing 12mb would have taken longer than that ... But why wouldn't he just assume you had another computer, or a boot disk with QModem or something already on it, which according to your story, you did have, in order to even do the thing he's unreasonably impressed with? This story makes no sense at all. The technical details are highly questionable, but even the story taken at face value has more plot holes than Infinity War. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-05-11 03:19 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-05-11 03:27 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GoldenArmada · 2018-05-11 03:34 God Bless. You sir, are a critical thinker. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- azille · 2018-05-11 04:26 your response was so much more entertaining than that guy's fake story. thanks! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 9600bps · 2018-05-12 22:25 Were you using a RAINBOW BOX to pin that line open? One time my friend's cordless phone caught on fire when he was trying to download a pre-release copy of Descent using an optimized implementation of Kermit over SLIP! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gstandard00 · 2018-05-13 15:10 Yep I too loved discovering new boards. Having multiscreen flowing ANSI when logging on was super K-rad! Warez, took me sometime to get into that scene. How about spending time downloading a release to realise it was a fake.. ha that was hard at 2400 bps. all that wasted time. . These days I wake up early to check if my 3d print worked out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-14 07:08 I will be back when I'm more awake to respond to these & other questions. I may be remembering wrong about the parallel cable, but as I recall, I'd had to seek out a specific cable for the ~~drive~~ direct PC to PC connection to work by parallel port. I don't know the method the SysOp used to hold the line open, but I've been told it ~~can~~ could be done with elevated line voltage (hanging up on your end can ignore the connection, but it doesn't drop the call). ~ I dialed a service call. LOTS of systems didn't stop interpreting commands when an ATH0 came through; if your modem didn't keep the hook down, you'd end up still connected as long as the call didn't drop, as I did. ~edit To this day I have no idea what he did to get to my DOS prompt so fast, but I could see the .BATs I'd been editing in my root folder just before he sent Format C:. I unplugged the PC because I was panicking, not thinking clearly. (Though disconnecting the modem at that point would have been a bit too-little too-late; also the power cord is not latching like the phone cord; also because the power outlet was right there whereas the phone cord wrapped around the corner.) Deflating a .BAK file doesn't take very long at all. I still have both machines sitting around. If I'm feeling really ambitious later maybe I'll set up a demo. I'm not going to describe in detail how easy it was to shell to DOS on most systems back then, but I will admit that I wasn't even running my own scripts & yes several common doors had trivial exploits. ~I didn't need a door, as he had a remote access shell still enabled by default using the default password (you're not out of the BBS, just being given access to a DOS shell the same way a Door program would be). Later systems like Mystic did a much better job of not leaving stuff like this wide open by default. RA & others were a hot mess & WWIV was only barely secure-ish if you used a late version. ~edit I'm pretty sure all he had to do on his end to derail the one in question was spam Ctrl-C a few times, because the script had no fallbacks. I definitely could have booted from floppy in even less time, that just wasn't useful to me because I was there to leech files. I suspect the only reason he was surprised at all was that his BBS catered to Windows users by that time; DOS was pretty thoroughly deprecated in those late days & hadn't really enjoyed much nostalgia beyond some legacy use for gaming. Even so, I did find his amusement... amusing. I was pretty lucky he was more curious than malicious, at that point, actually. I really didn't know what I was doing. Just playing with tools made by smarter people than I. Without a SW-Bell service handset I wouldn't have learned ~~have~~ half the tricks I did (like which dialing sequences would ring-back your number & let you call long distance for free). As neighborhood telephone systems started using line multiplexing, digital compression & switches, half the stuff I knew gradually quit working. I'm rambling. Did I even read your whole message? Why do I always come to Reddit when I'm half asleep? I'll be back with clearer eyes to see what I'm missing. ~edit: sleeeepzzzzz ~Edit 13hrs later: Actually, aside from being a bit jumbled sequentially, this response seems fine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-14 07:23 I used a service call to hold the main line open. The second line I just kept ringing because it was easy to do even with the simplistic softs I had on my Kaypro. Probably left a good 1.2 to 2.4 secs between calls, but given how long a handshake took, disconnecting repeatedly seemed annoying enough. In retrospect there's probably a thousand more clever ways to tie up a phone line. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-14 20:31 Except he's smart a lot of assumptions which are false. Also, curiously, he seems unaware of the practice of direct parallel port connections on those old machines, which was soooo much faster than using serial ports, & really the only convenient way to do drive mirroring or backups. Sorry you found my anecdote so unentertaining. Actually, no wait, I don't care. It was for the OP's benefit anyway, & while I'm happy to provide whatever details I can recall, my reminiscing is not contingent upon your approval. So I guess have fun believing that guy's snarky response to my comment; it has less truth in it than mine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-14 20:51 They didn't seem to read the post very well, for all that they went point by point. It's like they felt inclined to disagree & just went through making false assumptions & then expounding upon them. Most curious to me is the assumption that any logical thought at all went into my yanking the power cord; it was almost literally a knee- jerk reaction. (Also, yanking the power was 99.9% no big deal, on those machines. I could corrupt the partition tables; whoopee. Aside from the drive automatically parking the heads after a write action, there was no other shutdown sequence; just a hard power toggle.) As for the assumption that ATH0 = software stops listening, that was a *feature* which only gradually made its way into dial-up modem clients. Modem commands were usually sent blind, without even any feedback about the line state. Once running, apps like QModem continued listening to any incoming characters the modem spat out, & on top of that, unfortunately many modems would check for a dial tone after an ATH0, only to find the line is still active because the relay couldn't break a connection with too much voltage on the line. Related: Service calls could hang open, & even activate the ringer while already on the line. Old phone systems were *janky*. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-14 21:03 Oh, and is it really possible for something to have more plot holes than Infinity War? I thought that script was composed of some kind of logic anti-matter, with more holes than volume, totalling a negative mass in a weird attempt at levitation to replace our shattered suspension of disbelief? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-14 21:16 Many BBSs had time limits exclusively for Door access, so those long file transfers could take place uninterrupted, while game time was limited so as not to tie up the BBS's (arguably) more vital resources. BBSs with unlimited Door access only to those with paid subscriptions was my first unpleasant experience with Pay-to-Win gaming. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-14 21:26 20 minutes South of Austin TX, we had a 512 area-code number, but had to choose whether to get free calls into town, or free incoming calls from town. At first we chose free incoming calls; for outgoing calls we'd let it ring twice then hang up, call back, ring twice then hang up. Any friends who weren't too annoyed by this would then call us back, knowing the pattern meant we were trying to reach them. When we realized only a handful of callers actually mattered to us, we got the plan reversed & I could finally call Austin area BBSs without using dirty tricks to evade the long distance charges. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisIsALousyUsername · 2018-05-14 21:33 Someone someday will 3D print a downloaded model without checking to make sure it's not porn. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-05-16 22:43 [removed]