[=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=]
[<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>><<>]
[=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=]
Stardate: 20200202.0951
Location: Home Office
Input Device: AlphaSmart data.wireless connected to rpi2 via USB
Audio: Washing maschine, family waking up on a Sunday
Visual: Abundance of desk clutter
Energy: 90%
Mental: 90%
Emotional: Awake + coffee!
[=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=]
I had posted this message below in response to a new user message on
SDF's bulletin board (bboard.) I kinda went on a ramblin' so I
decided to archive it here before it gets lost in the sdf archives.
This is probably one of the posts that is TL;DR for bboard, but since
I know that the gophersphere likes to read (or at least that is what
I tell myself) I am sharing it here.
[=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=]
TACKER: xiled ()
SUBJECT: .. First BBS Post
DATE: 27-Jan-20 03:38:56
HOST: otaku
Welcome to all of the new SDF users!!!
I have decided to chime in on this post and write something.
I have only been on this system for a short while...especially in
comparison to its inception...1987 or something. But I do
remember SDF from the 90's but never had an account until my
recent frustruations with the Internet of today.
Ori, your post makes me chuckle! The timing of it reminds me
of the Xmas users of decades past. Back in the day, the
latter part of the year was when the BBS's would get an
influx of Christmas Users, basically new users who received a
modem for Christmas and were tying up the local BBS's
phone lines. Back then, most of the BBS's that I dialed in
to only had one phone line...sometimes even sharing the phone
line with their household's voice phones and only open during
certain hours.
A majority of the BBS's I called were run out of peoples
homes and ran Commodore 64s or 128s, since I had a C=64 (CNET
was the name of the commie BBS software that most people in
my area ran.). I wouldn't really dial in to the other
systems, just "commie boards." There was a pretty
decent sized commie community where I grew up. Most of them
were very amateur, handmade, unrefined...which actually
appealed to me...kinda like the geocities home pages from the
early web.
I remember I had a list of local BBS's that I would call and
especially during the Xmas season, I would get a busy signal.
My terminal program (EagleTerm or Phoneman) would dial
through the list until it connected. Sometimes it would take
a long time to connect and since the C=64 did not multitask,
all you had running was the term program dialing out. So I
would watch tv (which was also my monitor...just changed the
channel by turning the knob...no remote), play the radio, or
do something else while I waited for a connection, which I
could hear since there was a speaker in my modem and my term
program would play tones when connection was established.
My range of dialing out was only limited to my local area
code (216 4-evah!) since dialing outside of that incurred
long distance charges. Later on, there were other methods of
accessing other systems via dialing locally and telnetting to
a remote networked system without incurring charges. I
remember the first time I connected to some system in Germany
for the first time via the Cleveland Freenet (not commie), it
totally blew my mind! I'm in Germany now! I couldn't
understand the login screen, but I was in Germany! For
free!!! That concept probably seems pretty lame with the
whole global Internet and everything, but back then, it was
like, woah!
When you have only a limited time on the boards and you might
not be able to login again for a few days, you usually tried
to make the best of your time. Many boards would only allow
you limited connection time per day...like 3 logins per day
for a maximum of 60 minutes a day (or unlimited if you were
"elite" or a co-sysop...) So I had to choose what to
do...read the boards for the latest posts/flamewars/etc, play
the door games, leech public domain programs/warez/SID music
files...if I had credit...some boards had download/upload
ratios, check out the G-files (underground text files...see
textfiles.com/bbs/), etc....
Actually, you might want to check out that whole
textfiles.com site. The creator of the site also made the
BBS Documentary (bbsdocumentary.com) which even has clips of
smj talking about SDF. That documentary pretty much distills
the spirit of those days.
There was also "questionable" content, which appealed to the
pre-teen/teen in me (Anarchist's Cookbook, Poor Man's James
Bond, "Adult" games, etc.) Stuff like this is pretty
accessible in today's Internet...not so much back then. They
were mostly found on the hack/phreak boards, which you could
access to if you were "elite" and not a "rodent" or "leech."
I think that some of the content back then seemed to have
more substance...or was just created differently. I'm
talking about user content, like forum posts or text files.
Today anybody can post stuff and there is a global web of
everybody...but not everybody does and if you do, it gets
lost in the noise of everybody else's content that they
want others to see or read. Sometimes you even get to the
point of why bother? Nobody is going to see it anyways...
And now these days, the web has gone so commercial that they
get most of the eyeballs and the user generated
content...like we had in the early days of the web...is only
fodder for the harvesters (of sorrow.)
Back then, if you were dialing locally, you would get to know
other users by reading their posts or seeing their activity
on the BBS...or even getting a message from them that was
stored locally on the BBS that you could only access when you
were dialed in. There was no email for the masses yet.
Most of the users were local to that calling area (as
mentioned in the thread previously) and so you got to know
the handles of the other users not only on that board, but on
the other boards as well, since we were confined to the same
calling area if we did not want be charged for calls.
So with this local community, we would have opportunities to
meet up, sometimes individually, sometimes in a group. The
BBS sysops would sometimes hold gatherings for the users or
someone would throw a barbeque and invite the other users.
It was probably much easier to have these kinds of gatherings
since the BBS users were usually local.
Ugh...I'm dumping too much into this post. Sorry...
Ori, thanks for taking a chance and posting! It makes me
happy to see all of the new users coming out of the woodwork.
It's also nice to know there are others like me that enjoy
this type of computing.
xiled
[=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=-=x=]