What were some interesting experiences you guys had on BBSs back in the day? reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- auric0m · 2020-06-07 23:11 i plead the fifth. man, those were the fucking days... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jecxjo · 2020-06-07 23:38 Nothing too crazy on the BBS itself. This was when I was 10 or so. On the weekends I would wake up in the middle of the night, sneak out the window and ride my bike a mile down the road to my grandfather's construction company. I'd pry open the back door with a screwdriver, cross the machine shop, grab a soda (so much better in those old glass bottles) and head to the office. Dialed into a BBS that was in a town 20 mi away but was long distance from home, my grandpa's construction company had county wide local calling. The guy who ran the BBS knew my dad but apparently never told on me being logged in from midnight to 3AM. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- germdisco · 2020-06-07 23:41 A friend of mine ran a single-line BBS that was popular among our group of friends. He said that he could look at the modem lights while someone was connecting, and identify one person in particular from our local community that he didn’t get along with. Apparently that person had some atypical modem settings. So if my friend recognized that pattern of lights after the connection was established, he might disconnect the line so one of his friends could dial in instead. Supposedly the guy was creating additional accounts under false identities (and probably masking caller ID) to avoid detection, and probably didn’t realize his connection had a recognizable fingerprint. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Goldin · 2020-06-07 23:57 Getting the 80-column display going on my Commodore 128 and discovering the BBS Door games and some of the ongoing competitions with other players. One was a Risk-style game called Global War. You had to dial in once a day to make your move. Another was a medieval trade game where you had to buy/sell stuff and take care of your citizens, but I can't recall the name. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- denikar · 2020-06-08 00:12 On a multi-player BBS playing Kyrandia, couldn't get past the jump chasm level. I was whining to the Sysop about it and while I was in the game, he typed in a command that bumped me to the next level. Was something like "nae her 14 ue", where 14 was the level I was bumped to. After he left I tried it myself and was able to change to any level I wanted. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- beecushman · 2020-06-08 01:04 My memory isn’t very good anymore, but I distinctly remember calling new users to my BBS to verify them. I was eleven or twelve years old at the time, so I’d often get people asking how old I was. I guess calling to verify the user sign up was a thing back in the day? Anyway, it must have seemed normal to me at the time, but in hindsight does seem kind of weird. I definitely wouldn’t do that today and I’m an old man. Oh, to have 12 year old confidence again. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- resmungomandinga · 2020-06-08 01:31 I war dialed till free numbers and discovered a legit art and water distro that had somehow gotten the number by phreaking. I felt so cool when I got an account. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ScalarWeapon · 2020-06-08 01:47 Was on some two-line board with real-time chat. I would have been 14 or 15 at the time, and one time chatted for a while with some guy who was in his 20s (we definitely told each other our ages). We had a friendly enough chat, talked about our lives and hobbies and what not. At one point he randomly says he's gay, I'm like, OK I'm straight, but I got no problem with that. As the chat goes on, he's pushing more and more to talk on the phone instead, and how he doesn't talking on the computer, etc. Me, and my friend who was also in the room, just thought it was an odd request but didn't think much of it, we were oblivious- I didn't take him up on it and eventually logged off. Only recollecting it many years later did I realize what had actually been going on there. Yikes! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ThisEffinGuyz · 2020-06-08 01:56 We used to have GT's(get togethers) at random public places around town. My friend and I played primarily majormud on WG and lived for the pvp aspect of it. Being older teens driven by testosterone we also talked a lot of trash in gossips. Anyway, my best friend made some comments about banging some guys wife in game and at this GT he was chased down by a group of 30yr old dudes. Needless to say he ran fast enough but that was the last one we attended. We did make amends with those guys in game and smoked bowls with them later. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PotentialDeadbeat · 2020-06-08 03:00 I ran a few BBSes, my final iteration was mostly a freeware/shareware free multi-node board and I monetized it by selling access to a "members only" section that had porn. C'mon, PornHub didnt exist, the internet was created for the express purpose of distributing files so it only makes sense, right? I had a multi-disk external CD player that I rotated a bunch of image disks of women model photoshoots, I listed some tame thumbnails so you would see who was up next. There were doors created just for this purpose, it was the most popular spot on the board. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CopperThumb · 2020-06-08 05:12 I ran a DOS-based based TriBBS single-node on a 486/DX with 25 or more game doors. I would watch the callers play their turns in their favorite doors at night while I listened to analog cellular phone calls. I had a Realistic Pro-43 scanner and learned that removing or cutting one end of a diode enabled a blocked section of frequencies I think were around the 840-860MHz range. The diode was accessible through the battery compartment without having to remove any screws. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DarthToothbrush · 2020-06-08 15:49 I went on my first date at age 13 or so with the daughter of the guy who ran one of the local BBS's I used. She was the same age as me and we had been talking a little bit and it seemed like a great idea. My mom drove me down and picked her up and took us to a pizza buffet where we sat awkwardly for a while eating pizza and then we took her home. We did not click in person at all, plus we were both super awkward nerdy 13 year olds, and my mom was sitting with us trying to make conversation, so it was probably the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to me up to that point. I think I never logged on again after that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PraiseBobSlackOff · 2020-06-08 22:10 There was a local board that had several nodes that people chatted on in a variety of different rooms. They mentioned they had a user group meeting at a pool hall once a month. So a couple friends and I went and it turns out these people were a bunch of swingers and transsexuals. Whatever tickles your pink, I say. However, that wasn’t really my scene. Wasn’t a horrible time, though. Was pretty high and it was definitely fkn weird. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnPolka · 2020-06-09 19:27 I ran a BBS as a teenager in the 80s and also went through the painstaking process of voice validating callers. My step dad also ran a BBS. One day I saw him validate a user without calling them. I asked him why he didn't voice validate them. He said, as long as the phone number looked right, he didn't bother....so, I started doing the same... :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- beecushman · 2020-06-09 19:31 Lol. I don’t even know the reason behind voice validation. I don’t remember bots or anything being a problem. I must have done it because other people did it? I should have just done like you and assumed that if someone took the time to register then assume it’s fine. I mean, I recall watching them type each thing out as they filled out the forms. Oh the memories :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wndrbr3d · 2020-06-09 20:13 Just going to the meetups was always a hoot. I probably "hung out" with these people digitally more than my IRL friends -- but I only ever interacted with them in person during the meetups. It was always such an interesting cross section of personalities. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- JohnPolka · 2020-06-09 23:22 I think there was less chance of someone trolling your BBS if they provided you with truthful information. I think that's why I voice validated them. But yeah, in retrospect, it might have been overkill. :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- netderper · 2020-06-09 23:59 Let's see. This was back in the 90's. I was between probably 14 and 18 at the time. 1) I "hacked" call back verifiers, allowing me to create tons of fake accounts. For some BBSes, you could just pick up your phone right before the BBS was going to hang up . The call would stay connected, so you'd simulate a dial tone (pressing # was often enough), the BBS would think it "called" you, and you'd enter ATA to have your modem answer. This didn't work with all systems, but it worked with 2 of the local PC Board systems that I hated. 2) I temporarily took over the local Fidonet network by setting up my computer to act as the hub. Almost none of the local nodes were using passwords at the time. You just needed to configure things right, have your system call theirs, and it would start happily exchanging messages. That changed pretty quick after me and couple of buddies did this. I sent ton of forged messages causing all sorts of havoc. 3) Many, many flame wars! A sysop came to my house one night to yell at my parents about my behavior. Most of his complaints were actually about a friend of mine. Anyway, my dad was pretty mad! 4) Ran my own BBS for a while. I wrote it myself in C, when I was 15! It was one of the more popular local H/P/A whatever boards. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zapper49 · 2020-06-11 05:12 I ran Southern Fried BBS from 1990 until 1995 in Naples fl. The system was a custom Intel 286/12, 16 meg ram on a Maxtor XT1140 MFM, formatted out in RLL to 205 megs. I had two lines. Started with Windows 95 running OPUS BBS software but shortly switched to OS/2 running Maximus BBS software. The system ran throughout Hurricane Andrew. I hosted for several years. My nodelist address was 18:3630/20. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- n0fqy · 2020-06-14 02:12 Met a BUNCH of cool people to party with back in the mid to late 80’s. We called ourselves the “modemers from hell”. I REALLY miss those days back in Kansas City. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2020-06-18 08:50 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ShoelessHodor · 2020-06-18 15:30 Waiting in the queue for isca back in the day was worth it for the ascii art, jokes, and x-messages