Teenager new to BBS questions reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dagamenerd 路 2022-07-18 12:29 1. What vintage computers work best for BBS (I have a c64 and zx spectrum if those work) 2. What kind of modem setup do I need to make them work, I live in mainland Europe if that would affect anything 3. Are there any Warez BBS's that are still around and kicking? 4 (side question). in the 80s how did people store the games they downloaded? Did they transfer it directly to a floppy? Also how long would it have taken to download Ultima V for example. This whole BBS culture is fascinating to me but aspects continue to puzzle me, thank you in advance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Practical_Cartoonist 路 2022-07-18 13:09 1. It depends on what BBS you want to connect to. In my experience, most BBSes around these days are ANSI (PC) BBSes, which means any PC (from the original IBM PC to modern-day) is fine. C64 also has ANSI terminal emulators available for it. Not sure about the ZX. If you want to connect to a PETSCII BBS (and there are a few around), C64 is a good choice. 2. Are you connecting over the Internet (which is the more usual way these days)? If so, you will need a WiFi modem for your C64. If using a PC, just any Internet connection will do. If you are actually dialing in (not sure if there are any BBSes local to you), then things are a bit different. 3. Not for modern warez, that I've found. A lot of BBSes still have old school warez, though (C64 programs, DOS programs, etc.). For computers without a hard drive, yes, you would download directly to floppy. But even by the mid 1980s, it was common to have (small) hard drives. Downloading a game like Ultima V might take about 1~6 hours, depending on how fast your modem was. You probably wouldn't be able to download it all in one go (especially as the BBS would have you on a daily time limit), so you might do it over the course of several days. Really large files (like full games) were a bit awkward to do over BBSes (though some did), so they maybe weren't quite as common as you might imagine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cognitivegear 路 2022-07-18 13:41 >1. What vintage computers work best for BBS (I have a c64 and zx spectrum if those work) There isn't really a right answer here. I used to use an old 8088 primarily, but plenty of people used c64 or zx spectrums, or tandy color computers, apple machines etc. Just about anything from the 8 bit and 16 bit eras has been used to get onto a BBS at one time or another 馃檪 Some of them formed a bit of separate BBS communities. For example, with your c64 many of the terminal programs supported "PETSCII" graphics - which was different from the CP-437 used by the IBM compatibles (and often emulated on other platforms as well.) They have a little bit of a different feel to them, so maybe explore multiple, wherever your fancy takes you. >2. What kind of modem setup do I need to make them work, I live in mainland Europe if that would affect anything You might want to do some research, as this is a complicated topic these days. The easiest answer is to get a hardware device that will let you use "modern" telnet. There are some systems that will act like a modem but actually do a telnet - these are quite good in my experience. Some of them even just connect to wifi. Try a search for "commodore telnet WiFi modem" etc. You can also try real phone line stuff. If you do I wouldn't try too fast if you are going over a VOIP provider, because these types of lines were not designed to work with modems and so support can be spotty. I'd suggest trying first at a lower speed like 2400 and go from there. For the actual hardware, it depends on what type of computer you are using just start with Google (i.e Commodore 64 modem). Maybe someone from Europe can help better with what types of VOIP solutions might exist... >3. Are there any Warez BBS's that are still around and kicking? 4 (side question). in the 80s how did people store the games they downloaded? Did they transfer it directly to a floppy? Also how long would it have taken to download Ultima V for example. Surely there are, though honestly the Internet Archive etc is generally more convenient. Probably some people downloaded to a floppy, I never did any of that until I had a small hard drive honestly. The drive speed wasn't the limiting factor - that would be modem speed. Looks like Ultima 5 is about 640k compressed. On the fastest modem I owned back then - a 14.4k that would probably be maybe 10 minutes in the best case, probably longer though. For most of the time I used a 2400 bps modem though. That would likely take about an hour if something didn't happen first to interrupt it. (A download calculator says 35 minutes, but that doesn't take into account handshaking, error correction, inefficiencies on both sides etc.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dagamenerd 路 2022-07-18 13:46 Thank you for the response! So basically there are alot of things to consider for the c64, all part of the fun I guess. I'm surprised the downloads were that fast, I assumed we would be talking days of continuous downloading for the 1 game but guess I was wrong. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dagamenerd 路 2022-07-18 13:47 Thanks for the response, where about's would I find those specific BBS's for the warez please? I have checked around a few places and nothing in particular came up, maybe some anti piracy firewall restricting the searches. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cognitivegear 路 2022-07-18 15:18 I was actually surprised when I did the calculations too, and checked a couple of online calculators just to confirm 馃檪 I remember it being pretty hopelessly slow. We did download things, but it felt painfully slow. A couple of factors here: 1) I tried to factor in some overhead for protocol exchanges (checksums etc) but may have been too little depending on the protocol. Back in the day we used xmodem, ymodem, or zmodem to download files (some people used Kermit too but I never did.) Of those, zmodem was the newest and fastest, but you had to use whichever one was supported by the client and BBS (so if either didn't support zmodem then you were stuck with a slower protocol.) 2) Line noise was a big factor. Those transmission rates were pretty much assuming optimal conditions, which often wasn't the case. That file could take 3 or 4 times the length I put before if either end had a noisy line. We called the Telco out several times to our house to try to get as good of a connection as we could, something that they didn't really care about at the time. And past your house it was luck of the draw about how good of a trunk you were on. Some of the big multiline BBS systems had ISDN lines that helped with that, but for small BBSes that wasn't an option. 3) For modem speed you used the fastest supported by both the client and BBS. And back then fast modems were *expensive*. We only had a 14.4k modem because we got it on a "sysop deal" - companies would sell modems cheaper to sysops as a type of advertising. But when most of the people connected to the BBS, it was rare to see a 14.4k connection. Even 9600 baud was fairly rare for most of the BBS era. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Trader-One 路 2022-07-18 15:20 http://textfiles.com/bbs/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- auric0m 路 2022-07-18 18:31 just about anything that can use a modem can call a bbs. best bang for your buck is an old PC running windows or DOS, or a commodore 64 maybe but there are a lot of options. idk modems these days, and YMMV. to be 100% percent honest, the best way to connect to a BBS is with an internet connection and telnet client. but if you insist on dialing things, check out [2600.network](https://2600.network) for an interesting dial service - you'll find me at holdfast/holdfast for retro warez give 20forbeers bbs a try, and fading black has a cool retro style warez feed in their SCENE section, though i'm not quite sure how to use it. you won't really find real zero day type warez on a bbs anymore these days.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Scoth42 路 2022-07-18 19:26 At the time we were downloading things at slow speeds, software was also significantly smaller. I spent a long time at 9600 baud, which averaged out to about 1 kilobyte a second real-world. So we're looking at about 17-18 minutes for a megabyte. Most games came on a single floppy 1.44MB max, maybe two at that time, and any warez rips would typically be compressed. So maaaybe an hour for a particularly large floppy based game. Shareware, of which there was tons, was usually sized for reasonable downloading as well and would typically aim for reasonable download size. Stuff would come in multiple chunks too that would help with dangers of disconnection as well as let you get them in chunks, but it could take longer. Downloads typically felt longer though, because on BBSes they couldn't typically run in the background. So you'd have nothing to do but sit and stare at the progress bar and hope for the best. Things like zmodem really helped though, as it was well-tuned for higher speeds and also supported things like resuming downloads. Older protocols like X-Modem and X-Modem CRC tended to be tuned for smaller window sizes and thus the overhead was higher. Folks who were still stuck with 1200 or 2400 baud modems might be stuck downloading for a very long time, but I'd say the majority of users of remotely then-modern systems had moved up to at least 9600 baud. Even on the 286 we had circa 1991 we had one, and 14.4k and 28.8k by the end of our 486 in 1995 or '96 or so. Once sizes of things really exploded with things like CD-ROM games by the mid-90s, you started to see the warez scene shift to the internet and Usenet where things were also broken up into lots of chunks, as well as being more heavily modified to rip out music, high-quality textures, and other things that were large that didn't contribute to minimally playing the game. This was really where it might take days of downloading to get something. Somewhere I think I still have a copy of UT99 that is missing all its music, high quality textures leaving only the low and medium quality ones, and a bunch of its sound files ripped out with a batch file to copy the handful left to appropriate filenames. This did stuff like make all the guns sound the same, all the death sounds and screams and grunts sound the same, but it worked. For the other part of your question, even our first 286 PC had a hard drive, so we typically downloaded straight to that. Though I did a lot of floppy shuffling for things as hard drive space got full. That was a perpetual problem for me. My family actually started BBSing back in the early 80s on an Atari, which was all floppy based. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ScalarWeapon 路 2022-07-18 19:49 I did a lot of downloading off BBSes back in the day. My rule of thumb was you could generally download a diskette (1.44 MB) in about 15 minutes on my 14.4k ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Pinacolada459 路 2022-07-19 00:06 Once you get the connection working, here's a list of Commodore- specific BBSes: [http://cbbsoutpost.servebbs.com/](http://cbbsoutpost.servebbs.com/) A lot do have "warez." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- anras2 路 2022-07-19 01:53 To answer part of your question #3, I spent most of my BBS days in the early-to-mid 90s, not the 80s. In the earlier end of that range, I used a 2400 kbps modem, but I spent the majority of my BBS years using a 14.4 kbps. In either case, typically if I were downloading any substantial game of the respective era, it would take a few to several hours. I'd have to leave it downloading overnight, with "auto- disconnect when finished" enabled. The phone bill was a concern back then, so I'd have to call just the most local BBSs, basically only in my town and surrounding ones. If I called outside my zone, it was a per-minute charge that added up to waaaay too much. But phone plans varied. All in all It was a really cool way to wake up to a new present. Sometimes, the download would fail however and I'd have to retry the following night. Keep in mind that most households only had one phone line to share between voice and data. In a typical family household, typically the person using the data was the weirdo/nerd - it wasn't like today where *everyone* is connected - it was more of a specialized hobbyist thing. And if said nerd overused the line, everyone else in the house would be repeatedly frustrated by being unable to make/receive phone calls. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- foobrew 路 2022-07-19 05:22 I'll second this as the best site for finding C64/128 active BBS's. I'll also mention that a big part of BBS'ing was the Door games. At least it was for me. I'd be very curious if someone your age and just getting into BBS's would find them interesting or just a boring aspect of the whole scene. I still enjoy them but I think it's just nostalgia clouding my perception. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Pinacolada459 路 2022-07-19 08:01 Same with me, I enjoy the games. I need to finish some for Image BBS. Too much on my plate right now. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chamfered_corner 路 2022-07-19 11:16 While I don't know the particulars (I haven't connected to new BBSs), I wouldn't expect to find the answer via Google. Log in to a few of the most popular BBSs and ask around there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KGBebop 路 2022-07-19 11:28 How glorious that is! No googling, you just have to be there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lucidphreak 路 2022-08-08 13:51 Though I am not on any, I would be willing to bet that there are still BBS's out there that trade modern warez. Especially when you consider the fact that there are a few BBS software programs that also function as FTP servers. FTP is the way modern apps are traded (FTP/IRC/Rapidshare at least) so it would make perfect sense for a group who also wanted to have tightly integrated messagebase/etc access tied into the same user system as the file library to use one of said BBS apps.... But again, I have not been first hand witness to that. I was always more of a hacker/phreak (moreso phreak) than a pirate. Though I certainly downloaded plenty of "warezed" utilities.