How did you discover the world of Bulletin Board Systems? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LegoMaster2149 · 2019-02-20 16:42 Hey, this is my first post on the subreddit, and I'll be honest with you guys, I never actually experienced the BBS days, as I was born way too late after that era. Yeah, I'm a post-millenial, how exciting... However, I have a massive amount of anemoia (nostalgia for an era which I haven't experienced) for this topic, and I'm curious to hear about your experiences with it. So, how did you find out about the world of BBSs'? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- oldman_survivor · 2019-02-20 17:14 I got my first computer in the early 90's. The guy who sold it to us (at Radio Shack) taught me a lot about what it could do, including about this thing called a modem. Then soon after I saw the movie "WarGames" for the first time. Out of curiosity and boredom, one day over summer I pulled out the phone book and looked for any entries under "computer". There were advertisements for a couple of "bulletin board systems". I remember being surprised to find something in the phone book that was actually inviting me to call it with my computer. I couldn't wait to start dialing. It changed my life forever. It started my interest (and later career) in computers and tech, and I still talk to a couple of people I met on there ~25 years ago. I was excited to recently find this sub because it is a rare day I meet someone in real life that I can talk about BBS's with. I even had a little 3-line BBS in my town while in middle school. A couple of people even sent me checks for "credits" to stay logged in. Ever since then I have driven myself to make money with computers and tech. Also thank you for teaching me a new word. I have that same feeling about other things but never really knew there was a word for it... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Qu1cks1lv3r · 2019-02-20 17:15 Buddy told me about this awesome game Legend of the Red Dragon and TW2002. We just happened to get a computer around that time with a 2400 baud modem. Once i got on to Hellraiser BBS in my home town it was easy to find a few more. My addiction to persistent online worlds began there. Damn you TW2002. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DaiTengu · 2019-02-20 17:27 Honestly, I don't remember my real introduction to them, but it would have been around 1992 or so. I didn't own a computer, I didn't really know much about them and I had gotten a "D" in my typing class the year prior because I couldn't type any faster than 12WPM. I was heavily into electronics at the time, and took an electronics class my sophomore year, which was in a brand new "Technology Center" room in my high school. It had a couple computers, one with a 14.4k modem connected to it. There were about 4-5 people in my electronics class, and I had an off period right after. I managed to convince my teacher to allow me to do a project of sorts that really wound up being me just calling up all the local BBSes and playing games. Really, this was the beginning of the end for me. By the same time the next year, I had convinced the school to launch its own BBS (of which I was the main sysop, along with a couple friends). We were the first school in the area that allowed students to check out laptops and take them home overnight (Toshiba Satellites with 14.4k modems in them!). My friend and I would race to the library at the end of the day to try and check out a particular one, which, of course, was the one we kept all the "questionable" material on for the year. (it was mostly porn. we were 15-16). I was never a great student. I rarely did homework and was lucky if I got a "C" in a class. I mostly got by on my ability to take tests. That even went downhill though after I discovered BBSing, as I would stay up all night calling BBSes and skip classes to curl up and nap somewhere, or just fall asleep in them. I even mastered the art of sleeping with my eyes open. so it looked like I was paying attention. Usually the jig was up if I got called on. My parents got me a computer during my Junior year (1994). with a brand new (they were only a week or so old) 28.8k modem. That was the final nail in the coffin. My D average quickly fell to an F average. I spent all night tinkering on the computer, calling BBSes, running my own BBS and by my senior year I'd just knock off class to go sleep in the library. The Internet started to become a thing around this point too. A local BBS was gradually transitioning into becoming an ISP, so I was fortunate enough to have access to that. BBSes in my area started to shut down since people were now using AOL to communicate rather than BBSes and FidoNet. I shut mine down as well since I was using my computer most of the time to sit on IRC. Going into my senior year, I was woefully short on credits. My school offered a "computerized learning" option which involved me going to a classroom full of computers and loging into a system that was mostly text and then some questions/answers. Completing the courses offered in this system granted me credits. Had I not discovered how insecure the system was I probably would have earned enough credits to actually graduate, but I found a hole that allowed me to connect to various "freenets" (free internet providers) which allowed me to pop onto IRC from this computerized learning system. I turned 18 in February of 1996. I knew I wasn't going to graduate so I just stopped coming to school all together. (For the record, this was no fault of my parents, they're wonderful and I was a sneaky, horrible little shit). Eventually I was given an ultimatum "Drop out or we're kicking you out". So I dropped out. I got my GED as soon as I could (that's another long story and not really relevant to this). I did try college for a short time, but I fell back into old habits and decided not to waste any more money on it. Computers and BBSes weren't all bad though. I kept learning, my desire to figure out how everything worked in this new technological landscape kept me afloat. Years later I was able to start my own business as a freelance systems administrator, and today I work from my home office as a SysAdmin/Devops Engineer/SRE for a stable company, and get paid enough to support my family and live quite comfortably. Comfortable enough that I can afford to spend money each month on various hosting services just for my silly little BBS hobby (between storage, hosting, backups, etc.) Seriously though. If you're still in school, don't do what I did. I got lucky on how things worked out, and the opportunities that fell into my lap either aren't available anymore, or are much more difficult to snap up. I both co-run a company and work for one (the company I run is on idle mode right now, but I can spin it back up should anything in my current employment status change), and I have enough experience to be fairly confident were I to go apply for another Sysadmin/Devops/SRE position elsewhere. I can be picky about what jobs I take, most people can't. So, this was probably TMI, but it's basically my BBS journey. ​ tl;dr: BBSes were fun, but stay in school. ​ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bwave1 · 2019-02-20 17:40 I had always wanted a computer, but family poor, couldn't afford one. My dad passed away when I was 12, and so I got a job to help out with finances. After the end of summer, I had saved up enough money to buy my own. I had been looking early in the year at Headstart brand computers at Montgomery Ward, they were greyscale VGA and looked really sharp, they were 286 based. By end of summer, the IBM PS/1 came out, it was a 386 and had a color VGA monitor. So that's what I got. It came with Prodigy and AOL. Prodigy was more kid-ified and limited. The possibilities with AOL were so much more. I got addicted. I realized it was $4/hour to use, but still had $300 saved up. Well I didn't track time well and first month bill was $200! I promised myself to do better the following month, and the bill was $300 for the month! So luckily I was still working part time, and only had to borrow $150 from grandparents, which I had to pay right back. But that was the end of my using AOL. The last thing I did was search for "free online service" where I found you could download communications software to access a whole list of "bulletin board services" for free! I checked it out, and within a month I was running my own. I had about 300 users at one point, I had visions of having hundreds of lines. I ended up with 3 lines max. I ran Spitfire BBS under Desqview. I started checking out RoboBBS which was awesome because it was color graphics like AOL. Eventually I saw the way was going to the Internet, and in 1996 I started my own ISP. Eventually I had about 3000 dialup customers. Of course eventually dial-up died as well. Glad to see the people interested in BBSing again, fond memories. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- HernBurford · 2019-02-20 17:46 For me it was four things: 1. I learned about modems when our family bought an Atari 400 around 1985. There was a modem in the product catalog that promised access to all the information in the world. I was mystified (but we never got a modem for the Atari.) 2. Around 1990 my school library set up an Apple II with a modem to call StarText. This was a text-only service of the Fort Worth Star- Telegram newspaper. We were taught how to look up articles, but neither I nor anyone I knew ever did. 3. Also around 1990 my best friend's parents paid for a Prodigy subscription. This was so his dad's business could do email. He and I were hooked on the idea of playing online games (at 2400 bps!). Largely we went to the game forums to get tips on Sierra games and cheats for Wing Commander (by editing the program in hex). 4. Finally, realizing that my parents were not going to pay for Prodigy, I saved up my own money for a 2400bps modem. In Dallas there was a free tabloid magazine called Computer Currents that had BBS listings in the back. As long as I stayed in my area code, it was all the services Prodigy could offer but for free! From then on out it was Fidonet and Tradewars until Usenet and MUDs came along... ​ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lrdflannel · 2019-02-20 18:27 My family got its first computer in the early 90s. While I was busy trying to convince my parents that we needed to get an internet service, a friend of mine told me about something called a BBS. And it didn't even require AOL to use! I'll never forget the first time I posted a message on a BBS, then dialing in a few hours later to see that some random person responded. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yelling to others in the house so they didn't pick up the phone while I was downloading shareware games, getting teased for having a 2400 baud modem by friends with 9600 baud modems, waiting to dial in to a BBS because you keep getting a busy signal when trying to connect... good times. Using BBS's also taught me how long distance phone calls worked, and that a BBS being free to use did not mean that the call was free. Oops. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LegoMaster2149 · 2019-02-20 18:34 Haha, no problem! I didn't find out about the term until recently, so before that I just simply coined the word "psuedo-nostalgia". Also, just like all the others in the comments, thanks for sharing your story, it was very interesting to read! *smiles happily* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LegoMaster2149 · 2019-02-20 18:41 Nah man, in depth stories are fine with me! Thanks for sharing! ;) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TheScutFarkisAffair · 2019-02-20 18:57 A couple teachers in my high school ran one, after school hours, on a IBM ps/2-25sx (i think), it was either a 386 or a 286, around the mid 90s and possibly running PcBoard. That got me connected to other local BBSs. I ran mine on VBBS for a couple years. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- travisjd2012 · 2019-02-20 20:18 It's a good question, I don't remember where I first came across one exactly. However, there is a store called MicroCenter in my city (Cincinnati, or more importantly in the BBS era, 513) that had it's own BBS. This would be advertised in the store at the time near where the modems were sold. All BBS's would have a text file (check out [textfiles.com](https://textfiles.com) for these) called a BBS List. Usually this was labeled with the 8 character filename something like 513BBS.TXT or something similar. One would download this text file from any BBS and inside would be a huge listing of all the BBS's in that area. This list still contains many from the BBS days and the sort of info that would exist if you downloaded the file. [http://bbslist.textfiles.com/513/](http://bbslist.textfiles.com/513/) ​ Once you found one BBS you essentially knew them all based on this form of propagation. Also, many BBSs contained text files for other area codes so if you were to move or find yourself with a (phone phreaked) calling card, you could go visit the online scene of other various cities. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- YserviusPalacost · 2019-02-20 20:40 I got my start at the tail end of the BBS scene, but it was plenty enough to cause me to dedicate my one and only "family" computer to hosting my own BBS. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details of it all, but I believe that my parents had left me home alone for the week. I had managed to borrow a friend's 1200 baud modem for the week as well too. I knew nothing at the time. The only free telephone jack that could be spares was in my mother's bedroom, so since she was obviously gone for the week (the only way I know that is because there was no way she would have allowed me to take up residence in her room like that) I hauled all of my computer equipment into her bedroom and set up shop. I still have no clue how I even got the phone number, but my first call was to a BBS called ISH BBS. Eventually I found the files section, and downloaded a Zip file. Having no experience to a Zip File, I was able to determined that it had combined the original files into a single file after opening it in ASCII. I found all of the file names, and attempted to manually extract each file individually. Needless to say, it ended up with me doing a chat with the SysOp and he introduced me to the two executables that I would need in my journey across the digital world; PKZIP. EXE, and PKUNZIP. EXE. There was also ARG and RAR formats, but Zip had already, at this point, become an unspoken standard... Eventually I started hosting a BBS (originally called The Mindway), and soon afterwards convinced the parents to foot the bill ($25 / mo) for my own land line. I started playing around with RoboBoard, but soon figured that the custom viewer for the RIP Graphics would be too cumbersome and started the search for a legitimate software package. I tried about every single piece of software out there, including Lora BBS, Wildcat, and a few others. I eventually settled on Synchronet (and paid the what, $199.00 that is cost?) So I'm running a BBS and I get the approval to run as a Fidonet node, and life is good. Mainly I had a pretty nonexistent number of callers (being from a small town, all the BBSers pretty much knew each other) so it was mainly my own personal conduit to Fidonet. Although I did love the doors... And then I started drinking and all of my interest, work, and potential went **poof** in a cloud of GeekMagic® smoke... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- TheyShootBeesAtYou · 2019-02-20 20:58 Still some Dayton names on that 513 list before we split off to 937. RIP Doc's Office, J&Js, Trader's Cove, Dragon's Keep, Coleman's...many good times were had. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- punknubbins · 2019-02-20 21:53 My dad went to work for a company called Elec and Eltek back in the very early 90s. At the time they made modems 110-1200 baud. and when they released their first 2400baud modem he brought home a pallet load of 110s, with the idea that maybe he could resell the surplus they were about to throw away. It took me a couple weeks to figure out and acquire the cable I needed to get one connected to my commodore 64, and another week before I realized that several bbses advertised in the community section of the daily want ads. After that I was hooked, LoRD and trade wars at 110baud, and chatting/mail with other people in the area was a great way to socialize for me. It wasn't long before I was giving 110s to my school friends and getting them online as well. It was just a black hole from there. Found my first few jobs on BBses, and eventually met my wife on a dial up chat board (10 lines very little waiting). I can honestly say that I wouldn't have the life I have now if I hadn't decided to find something to do with those crappy little modems. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2019-02-20 22:05 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- myself248 · 2019-02-20 22:27 High school classmates. We moved and I went to a new school in 9th grade, and quickly discovered that my classmates were a bunch of phreaks. [1] One was running a BBS out of the computer lab, which for no apparent reason, had a phone line. He made me a login at the console[2], and talked me through the basics. Said if I got a modem, I could do all that from home, too. Needless to say, I asked for a modem for Christmas! 9600's were out, which made 2400's cheap, and under the tree that year was a 2400 baud ISA modem, no-brand in the extreme. Didn't matter; it worked! I dove into BBSs and didn't come up for air for months. Actually, I think I next saw the sun when I got onto a multiline BBS that had a really, really active social community. Members had picnics at the park, members threw parties at their houses, and I was invited! Nobody cared that I was 14, hey, they were 14 once too and social isolation sucks. C'mon, it'll be fun! BBSs and the communities that formed around them were my social life for years. When I finally gave up and got on the internet, yeah it was bigger and better for some stuff, but that element of locality just wasn't there -- the assumption that if you were talking to someone on this system, you were probably within bicycling range of getting lunch together. Note 1: [Yeah, phreaks.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking). For senior prank one year, one of the seniors picked the lock on the wiring closet and swapped the pairs that served the payphone and the secretary's desk phone. So now the payphone made free calls, and the secretary's phone asked you to insert a coin. And being the school it was, a nontrivial number of kids would just whip a redbox out of their pocket... Note 2: The login prompt was something along the lines of **WHAT DOST THOU CALL THYSELF???**, to which I meekly, cheekily responded "me". **THERE IS NOONE IN THIS REALM BY THE NAME OF** me **. DOST THOU DESIRE TO CREATE AN ACCOUNT?** And so I was me for a good while, until I got onto that multiline board which ran Excelsior!, which for some reason had a minimum username length, so I became myself instead. Been myself ever since! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sunkzero · 2019-02-20 23:47 Used to have a BBC Micro computer in the 80's and British Telecom in the UK used to run what was effectively a commercial BBS called Prestel, using ANSI Viewdata graphics over 1200/75 baud. From there I found out about MUDs and from there, BBS's. However, it was a difficult scene to get into as a minor during that period in the UK because we used to pay a small fortune for phone calls, even local ones, so to avoid parental wrath over the phone bill I didn't get much online time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2019-02-21 03:27 Some guy on the bus in middle school. I was talking about how I borrowed this modem from this Irish guy who was staying with his relatives (in the US where I lived). He got it for Christmas but had no idea what to do with it. He said his dad was into stuff and would give me some numbers (this would have been after Christmas 1984). I wasn't familiar with what a "BBS" was. I just wanted something - anything - I could call with my modem. Well, the Irish kid's modem. Giving it back eventually sucked. I think that's like Biblical coveting. I should confess that. Anyway so, he gave me a printout of some BBS list his dad got. The first board I called - I knew it was local because it was in Freehold, NJ (you post-millennials are lucky to grow up in the post- local/long distance era. Long distance sucked) - was something called The Backroom II - "The hot cruisy spot on the Jersey Shore." The first board I ever dialed was a gay BBS. I was 12 and confused (gay culture was more of a closed thing then than it is now and while I knew what being gay was, I wasn't aware you could DIAL IT FROM YOUR PHONE.) I was not given access. The sysop, however, pointed me to a general interest board (and its phone number) also locally, with a kind message that "This system really isn't for minors but I think you're going to love modems!" That got me started. My first daily-call board was a board that ran on an Apple //e running GBBS Pro. That board was full of Metrophone code hackers, which would let you dial long distance for free (via toll fraud). I still have a printout from this BBS (from the era, on a Commodore MPS-802 printer - this printout is probably 34 years old): https://i.imgur.com/FFJm2cY.jpg https://i.imgur.com/akPJpBZ.jpg Note the 40 columns :) Also, become one with the term [r0dent](http://textfiles.com/bbs/r0dent.txt). (Spoiler: the board picked up in speed a lot after this post.) As for the plague of long distance toll calling, "There are ways around that," said David Lightman. If I could resurrect one thing from that time, it is the term r0dent. It is so much more expansive than the pedestrian "troll." Honestly for me a lot of it had to do with the movie Wargames although I really wanted to try Compuserve, but at that age I had no income and could not afford it. I mean, I am sure there are a whole lot of people into BBSes you can trace back to Wargames. This idea that there were free systems you could call led to something approaching obsession, hence the borrowed modem. (I hope you have seen Wargames. If not, you want to see Wargames.) > I was born way too late after that era. Yeah, I'm a post-millenial, how exciting I think it is cool as hell that any of this interests you. That you dig it, makes you part of the subculture regardless of when you were born. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LegoMaster2149 · 2019-02-21 03:44 I watched WarGames as well, it was great movie back when it was released in 1983, and still is a great movie now. Thanks! I find this interesting due to the fact I'm a nerd when it comes to history; it doesn't matter what category, it can be military, economic, technological, cultural, whatever, I'll eat that shit up and at the same time also respect it's significance it had on the world. (I apologize if I'm having any sort of ego xD) Anyway, like all the others who have commented, thanks for sharing your story! It was very interesting to read, and I'm glad to be with you on the subreddit ;) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2019-02-21 03:52 It honestly never occurred to me that people who weren't even born when a lot of this stuff was current would ever be interested in it (I knew middle aged people - my age - would have some kind of nostalgia trip for it someday, but it never occurred to me that people with iPhones and the Internet would give a damn.) Not just BBSing but retrocomputing generally. I love to see people interested in it and learning about it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LegoMaster2149 · 2019-02-21 04:21 I don't blame you for thinking that way, believe it or not, I feel the same thing. I know people who experienced using a BBS would obviously be interested in talking about their own journey with it if they felt comfortable, but it's (unsurprisingly) difficult trying to talk about this with other people my age, since most of them wouldn't even know what the hell a BBS even is, or why they should even care about it. I know this is gonna be a cliché thing to say, but yes, there are still young people who are interested in learning about things that came before their own time, so don't lose hope. P.S. Forgot to mention, nice printouts! Very cool! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2019-02-21 04:34 If you have a circle of friends, demo it for them at some point. Telnet in. The net is vast and infinite. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 13_0_0_0_0 · 2019-02-22 20:51 My father worked for the phone company and brought home a 300 baud modem a customer was throwing out. It was weird in that it plugged into the handset jack of a standard phone (no autodial or autoanswer), and my Atari 400 required a serial interface to connect to it. At the time (early 80s) I think there was maybe 1 BBS within my calling area (New Haven CT). A year or two later there were a dozen. For what it's worth, some later hilights: I ended up co-sysoping a few boards. Around 85 my parents gave me a phone line for my birthday (probably so they could use their line again), so I set up my own on an Apple IIc, I think running GBBS. Whatever it was, you could modify the board with its own language, modifying menus with things like spinning cursors. Many years later I ran a Virtual Advanced BBS (VBBS) on a PC, with its VirtuaNet network. None of the BBSs I ran were all that popular, mostly just for myself and friends. I was really into [RIP graphics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Imaging_Protocol) and the (Mac BBS Client/Server Hotline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications). I was obsessed with multiuser though, which eventually led to Unix, in some ways the ultimate multiuser BBS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EamonnMR · 2019-02-25 13:11 Somehow I ended up on http://textfiles.com... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Haggebanke · 2019-02-25 20:58 I do not remember a date that I started, but I got my first c64 in the mid 1980s. Started my first BBS when the 486 was new and exiting, whenever that was. It was glorious. I remember upgrading from 2400 to 14k4, felt like I got a firehose of data to my computer. Now I have gb fiber at home. Atm struggling with getting doors working on a mystic bbs I run over ssh on a raspberry pi living under my desk... You got to have a hobby. I also have to get it to show my sweet ansi I made for it... And that Raspberry Pi is a tiny chip with much more horsepower compared to my original bbs. We are living in the future! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DunksCDN · 2019-02-26 18:09 Got my first computer in 91/92, with a 2400 baud modem. Had a friend that was really into BBS and also my dad had a colleague that ran his own board. Started with the few #'s that they gave me, and discovered other boards local boards through advertisements. The 2400 eventually got upgraded to a 14400, to a 28800. Ended up spending an hour or 2 a night logging in to all the boards to play LORD and Lunatic, and socializing. Was interesting to see all the different areas within the board. I am forgetting so much, I've been out of it for so long. Once the internet came, that was pretty much it. Still pretty pretty cool how the BBS scene developed some of the worlds first ISP's like AOL Other things like Zip vs ARJ as part of the whole BBS scene. There is a BBS Doc that covers a lot of this stuff. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ultra-royalist · 2019-03-26 02:18 Neighborhood sneakernet looking for zeraw for the AII. Found out all about PBH and compression, then realized that there was a source for all these cool warez and text files, and that some were coming from overseas. Got a 7/16" wrench and started saving for a modem.