Nostalgia for the Chicago area BBSes from the early to mid 90s reddit / bbs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bcklshsvn · 2022-09-20 18:50 Just curious how many of you are still out there who think about those dial-up communities. BBSmates was a good idea, but too bad it sort of flopped. There's just nothing that captures the spirit of some of those old chatlines and message boards. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mikeleemm · 2022-09-20 19:13 What area of Chicago? 312, 708, 847, 773? :) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rumdumpstr · 2022-09-20 20:20 I was all over 708. Aspen village was my home BBS. Edit: I think it was "Alpine Village". Its been a while. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- scubascratch · 2022-09-20 21:01 Yep I grew up in the north suburbs and called so many Chicagoland BBSes ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Patient-Tech · 2022-09-20 21:17 708 BBS scene represent. I had an old 286 running Renegade. Found some of my old backups and plan to try to upgrade them on my K6 box and then drop them on a headless DOSBOX in the cloud. Pretty cool seeing some of my old ansi art packs and even the log showing I uploaded Doom II and it’s 5 or so discs. Ahh, to be a kid again. Also, windows 10 still freaks out when it detects a DOS virus from 1995. Side question, does anyone know what the name of the service was that was in 630 that allowed 4 player Doom over the modem? I think it was something other than DWANGO and I remember playing people from all over the country. I was so lucky it was a “localish” call and I used my free 10 hours a week. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cyclop5 · 2022-09-20 21:49 630 BBS sysop here. used to run Ground-ZER0. Found an old backup of it a while back. Converted most of it over to Mystic. I'd post it here, but not sure I'm ready for that sort of commitment again :) maybe soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ericfresh442 · 2022-09-20 23:35 What board? I ran Faster Disco also in the 708. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- roalt219 · 2022-09-21 00:56 219 here, ran telenet, Fido, and ran my own small meet, friedcheez ---------------------------------------------------------------------- djscsi · 2022-09-21 00:57 Oh shit, Faster Disco - that brings me back. I ran a H/P type board in 708/847 in the 90s and so did a bunch of my friends. Apocalypse2000, Poisoned Pen, more whose names I forgot. Spent a lot of time on Nuclear Greenhouse and the DDials (GC) before that. Do you remember Jake and Arlo? (Don’t remember what handles everyone used back then) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- djscsi · 2022-09-21 01:05 One of the GTalk boards (Lunatic Phringe) was still online via telnet/ssh until pretty recently. There are Facebook pages for a couple of the old chat boards but not very active. Once every 6 months someone finds the group and does the whole “Hey I was NinjaCat #634 anybody remember me?” thing. It was kinda cool before Facebook became the dystopian monstrosity it is today, but only kinda Discord is probably the closest thing (with any wide acceptance) to the old chat boards but it has its own issues if you’re on like 20+ different servers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rumdumpstr · 2022-09-21 01:46 Holy shit I remember that one! They had more downloads than anyone else. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Patient-Tech · 2022-09-21 02:36 I ran a couple, until I was hacked every couple months. Demonic Toys, Angels of Death, Gangster’s Paradise, Savage Amusement, maybe a couple others I can’t remember.(used to look at the TV guide for names) I was big in the 708 Renegade Warez scene. LK’s arcade, Thrill Kill Cult, Renaissance faire (I think they were my first 31337 board) damn, been a while. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dhchunk · 2022-09-21 02:49 My family got our first computer in 97 ( I think). It came with a 33.6k modem. I had some friends with chicagonet dialup but my mom thought the internet was evil. I was a freshman in high school when a friend told me about BBSes. I dialed in to malkavia bbs in 773. I believe it was a renegade board. I met the sysop and a couple members. Then I discovered the engineshop bbs which ran wildcat and shared their isdn internet connection for 30 minutes per day or something like that. I wish I knew who ran that bbs so I could thank them personally for being so generous. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Codaroo · 2022-09-21 14:11 Just want to give a shout out to the old 815/708 area code BBSes that I can remember: I.C.I.X., Far Side of the Sun, Great White North, Bob Saget Hate Club, Byrd's Nest, and Nightline. I still think about those days with fondness. They were all great boards and the sysops were helpful and friendly. Great times! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IAmRootAtDBZ · 2022-10-09 16:50 I was on battlegrounds BBS at the time it was 708 when it first started but the it became 630. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IAmRootAtDBZ · 2022-10-09 16:51 Sirdoom? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- skidadil · 2023-11-08 19:21 \+1 for Lunatic Phringe. Good times. It's it sad that I still have the number memorized? (630-232-0565) u/djscsi What FB group are you referring to? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- skidadil · 2023-11-08 19:23 I ran a 630 Renegade BBS - Social Goats Realm. I learned so much running that thing - so much fun!