What's the best/easiest way to call phone line-based BBS?
reddit / bbs

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Cjbrick910 · 2018-07-06 14:48

I have been connecting to many BBS' through telnet and tcp/ip, but I
am wondering the best way to dial into phoneline-based BBS'. I am
hoping to not spend any money on hardware, and I do have a laptop with
a modem inside of it, but I can spend some money if need be.

Thanks!

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recourse7 · 2018-07-06 15:47

Use a sip account.

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nevets01 · 2018-07-06 16:42

...well, connect to a phone line. If'n you've got copper phone lines
in your house, you can just jack in with an RJ11 phone cable. Get a
terminal software on your computer meant for use with modems (such as
QModem if it's DOS) and get dialing!
If your phone lines are the newer VoIP kind, you might have to do some
finagling, but it CAN be done, depending on the VoIP tech used.

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PhotoJim99 · 2018-07-06 17:06

There's really only one way to call phone-line-based BBSes (it pains
me to even type that because I was a BBS user back in the day, and
they were all phone-line-based :) ).

You need:

 - a computer with a serial port; a few modems will work in USB ports.
As you mentioned, some computers have built-in modems but few of these
modems are very good - most of them are "winmodems" that need special
Windows drivers to work, and won't work with other operating systems.
(It is possible to put a serial port on a computer using a USB serial
port adapter, if you want a real serial port but lack one.)
 - a modem.  The best modems are external ones - it's hard to beat the
US Robotics v.Everythings that can be had with power supply for under
$50 US now on eBay.  They are, however, quite large and require a
serial port.  US Robotics' v.92 USB modem is also very good - you
probably want the white one, which is more expensive; the black one is
a Windows-only winmodem that isn't as good, but the white one is a
true hardware modem that will work under any operating system.
 - a phone line.  A real copper POTS phone line is best.  Professional
VoIP as provided by telephone companies over fibre or by cable
television companies is pretty much as good in most cases.  Internet-
based VoIP can be anywhere from excellent to terrible, depending on
how traffic shaping is done, how busy your local network is, and how
good the VoIP provider is.  You can also roll your own solution by
using a SIP provider (I tinker with les.net and voip.ms), but you'll
need an analog telephone adapter (e.g. the Linksys PAP2T) to interface
between an RJ11 phone jack (and your modem or a normal phone) and the
SIP network.

Have fun!

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timbernutz · 2018-07-06 22:55

Check your phone plan. Sadly most phone companies charge extra for a
data phone line (That's right they expect you to pay more for a line
for a modem or fax machine) but really I don't think anyone ever
checks that kind of thing since 1988.

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maxvideodrome · 2018-09-07 20:20

I recently purchased an analog telephone line for the house so I could
eventually put my old DOS RemoteAccess BBS back online.  Using VoIP
and cable provider based digital telephone lines do not work well. So
sad to see the Bell/AT&T/etc voice networks discontinue building out
copper based telephone networks.  These networks were purpose built
and always seemed to “just work”.