BBS's The original "internet"

[Compumater]

Man, I've been having a bunch of nastolgic moments lately. First I dusted off my old TRS-80 Model 4 and used it for a month and a half straight to see how it would work for my modern computing needs (see my other post here about that.)

 

 

And that led me to Telneting some old but still alive BBS's with it. What a walk down memory lane....

 

 

 

WWIV, RENEGADE, WILDCAT, RBBS, COLOR 64, and others. They are all there in Telnet land, some 300 or so still sitting there mostly empty except a few posts a year, and 30 or so folks that log in to play online games. The message boards sit there with conversations dating back to the peak of BBS coolness, and diwindle down to 10 or so posts a year and then to 3 or 4.

 

Its the same story for the transfer section with most sites last upload happening in 1996 or early 97 but still loaded with tons of legacy apps, games, and raytraced 3d Gifs from the 90's and before.

 

 

 

I browsed these old giants with names like "The Cave" "Colossus" and "Skull and Cossbones" and felt the memories of logging on at 2am to check my messsages come rushing back. I played a few games of "pimp wars" and "the pit" and loved what could be done at the time.

 

 

 

 

Its a shame that these great vintage forms of communications go so unsued in todays "connected" world. With the vintage gaming, vintage computing, and other retro comebacks already here, I can't help but wonder how The Great BBS era has been all but forgotten.

 

 

 

 

What about you? Any good BBS stories?

[HuckleCat]

Not really any stories, but I did spend more than a few late nights downloading stuffs from Apple Magic in Philadelphia.

[doctorclu]

Got many stories of BBSs, but why not enjoy the BBSs that still exist? Make some new memories? I highly suggest the Boot Factory and Dark Forces BBS.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/174831-atari-8-bit-related-bbss/

 

A conversation about all the current Atari BBSs, and I believe a TI/99 BBS is listed too. As for the TRS-80 Model 4.. is that the portable one? I used one of those in the high school lab. Reall cool. I think we had Spy Hunter on it.

[Retro Rogue]

Man, I've been having a bunch of nastolgic moments lately. First I dusted off my old TRS-80 Model 4 and used it for a month and a half straight to see how it would work for my modern computing needs (see my other post here about that.)

 

 

And that led me to Telneting some old but still alive BBS's with it. What a walk down memory lane....

 

 

 

WWIV, RENEGADE, WILDCAT, RBBS, COLOR 64, and others. They are all there in Telnet land, some 300 or so still sitting there mostly empty except a few posts a year, and 30 or so folks that log in to play online games. The message boards sit there with conversations dating back to the peak of BBS coolness, and diwindle down to 10 or so posts a year and then to 3 or 4.

 

Its the same story for the transfer section with most sites last upload happening in 1996 or early 97 but still loaded with tons of legacy apps, games, and raytraced 3d Gifs from the 90's and before.

 

 

 

I browsed these old giants with names like "The Cave" "Colossus" and "Skull and Cossbones" and felt the memories of logging on at 2am to check my messsages come rushing back. I played a few games of "pimp wars" and "the pit" and loved what could be done at the time.

 

 

 

 

Its a shame that these great vintage forms of communications go so unsued in todays "connected" world. With the vintage gaming, vintage computing, and other retro comebacks already here, I can't help but wonder how The Great BBS era has been all but forgotten.

 

 

 

 

What about you? Any good BBS stories?

 

I just picked up a Model III. What did you use to connect your IV to the net to be able to telnet?

[+Random Terrain]

Its a shame that these great vintage forms of communications go so unsued in todays "connected" world. With the vintage gaming, vintage computing, and other retro comebacks already here, I can't help but wonder how The Great BBS era has been all but forgotten.

I read about that stuff in magazines and saw many related ads in those same magazines, but could never afford to do it. I was given a PC near the end of 1999 and thanks to all of those free dial-up companies, I was finally able to get online.

 

The only memories I have of the good old days are drool-covered articles and print ads in computer magazines.

[the-topdog]

For years Wife v1.0 and I ran Crystal Caverns BBS off of the Searchlight software then upgraded to WWIV and finally migrated it to the awesome but short lived graphical interface of the Excalibur BBS software.

 

Nothing like playing Tradewars on those old BBS systems. We had quite a community of BBSers in the Spokane area. When I finally graduated to the Excalibur system and developed a few games on it with the basic vector based graphics and web-like interface, it was already too late for most BBS' as the world wide web was emerging strongly on the Internet.

 

I am also the author of Pocket BBS. A BBS system built entirely with old DOS batch files that resided on a single 3-1/2" floppy disk... with plenty of room for plugins like Tradewars. I built it on a bet... a guy told me it was impossible to build the system entirely with batch files... turns out he was wrong. I supported my Pocket BBS software and about 100 installations across America until 1996... when people just seemed to lose interest in BBS' in favor of the magical universe of the WWW.

Edited September 26, 2011 by the-topdog

[Compumater]

Its really not hard at all to hook up "vintage" computers to the net. You need a few things to get it up and running.

 

First your computer must have a serial or RS232 port.

 

Next go to your local radio shack or computer store, or E-bay, and buy a Null modem cable. It looks just like a regular serial cable, but there are some internal changes that make it work. Make sure that one end with fit the vintage computer and the other end your modern computer.

 

Step three is to buy a USB to Serial adaptor for your modern computer if you need one.

 

Now you will need to have a terminal program for your vintage setup. I'm using Fast-Term-II for my model IV, and I hope to get a copy of AnsiTerm working soon. I'd set your baud speeds to 1200-2400 to start to see if your setup can handle it.

 

Now hook all that stuff together and turn on both computers.

 

 

This is what you need to get it on the net. Get a Free copy of "Telnet BBS Server v1.4" it was made to hook old C64/128 computers to the web, but it works for all oldies.

 

Thats it. you fiddle around with the config of both terminal programs and bam. you'll be surfing in no time!

 

 

Be aware that the Model 3 has a nonstandard 64 letter screen instead of the more recent 80, so some bbs's may look funny, and unless you find a terminal program that works with VT100 or ANSI, make it text only on the bbs's you sign upto!

 

 

Goodluck, and look for my posts on DOVENET and other BBS fourms as North*Star

 

/s

[doctorclu]

I posted a video about a cheat I made to enjoy controlling a full color ANSI screen from any retro computer: (In the video I use a Atari 400, but computer does not matter.)

 

 

I had to do this trick when I got on a BBS more recently with my TRS-80 Model 100.

[carmel_andrews]

anyone know what happened to all the content from the likes of GPP (games people play) and the source as well as other US based online services (from the bbs days), also not forgetting compuserve and CiX (which i think were mostly commodore)

 

Only remembering from the articles i read in those 'popular' american atari mag's (antic/analog)...and yes they were even available here in London (courtesy of silica shop, albeit they skipped every other month)

Edited August 16, 2012 by carmel_andrews

[S1500]

I miss the BBS days. It was truly "local" since it cost $ to call long distance. Remember my share of downloading software, meeting girls offline, etc. Ah those were fun times. I used Mass Transfer for the TI-99/4A

[NE146]

The only thing I ever used BBS's for was to perpetually download warez and pornography. And of course current internet with usenet has pretty much got that covered.

 

Funny though how I had no clue how to meet people on BBS'.. all I ever did was search through file archives. And to this very day I still have no idea wtf "door" games are/were.

[dudeslife]

a blast from the past (20 years ago)...

 

Edited August 16, 2012 by dudeslife

[S1500]

I miss the ASCII art and the alpha male handles. Online console help? Was that for just game tips/hints like some primitive GameFaqs or something?

[dudeslife]

I miss the ASCII art and the alpha male handles. Online console help? Was that for just game tips/hints like some primitive GameFaqs or something?

 

yeah, huge text library of faqs, cheats, etc and help for console copiers.. Super Wild Card, etc.

Edited August 16, 2012 by dudeslife

[TMR]

anyone know what happened to all the content from the likes of GPP (games people play) and the source as well as other US based online services (from the bbs days), also not forgetting compuserve and CiX (which i think were mostly commodore)

 

Quite a bit of it was just lost as boards went offline and drives were wiped or stored away. Some of the artifacts like adverts for scene-related boards are held by the various scene archives like Pouet and a few bits and pieces of the BBS file stores are preserved by Textfiles.

 

i'm not sure what happened to the file archives of early online services like Compuserve, QLink or the UK equivalents such as Micronet 800 or Compunet, but i suspect a lot of it disappeared when the servers were shut down. Bit sad really...

[JamesD]

I think ARPANET beat BBSs by a few years as the original internet.

[Rex Dart]

Man, I still remember the phone numbers for the local BBSs. 265-5958, 265-3828, 297-5466, and 297-9515. Fun times. Played my first ROMs and listened to my first MP3s from those, once ROMs and MP3s started springing up in the mid-to-late 90s. Played a bunch of LORD, Usurper, Tradewars, and some Risk-like world domination game that I can't remember the name of. Got a few laughs by impersonating people in LORD (invisible control characters = different name!) and leaving nutty sayings under their names.

Edited August 16, 2012 by Rex Dart

[carmel_andrews]

anyone know what happened to all the content from the likes of GPP (games people play) and the source as well as other US based online services (from the bbs days), also not forgetting compuserve and CiX (which i think were mostly commodore)

 

Quite a bit of it was just lost as boards went offline and drives were wiped or stored away. Some of the artifacts like adverts for scene-related boards are held by the various scene archives like Pouet and a few bits and pieces of the BBS file stores are preserved by Textfiles.

 

i'm not sure what happened to the file archives of early online services like Compuserve, QLink or the UK equivalents such as Micronet 800 or Compunet, but i suspect a lot of it disappeared when the servers were shut down. Bit sad really...

 

 

 

 

 

Wasn't micronet the one with MUD's (multi user dungeons), which i think was a game, or was that prestel (British telecom, as it was known then, service)

 

Perhaps if people know anyone that were behind services like GPP, the source, genie etc etc (as well as the other ones i mentioned and you mentioned) then perhaps we can try recovering some or most of that content/material and perhaps make a website or at least make a section within AA that has that content/material

 

And perhaps extend that service to content/material from other old skool online services or old skool bbs's

[S1500]

There's still bbsmates.com, but I think that's as dusty as the BBSes they are talking about. Heh

[TMR]

Wasn't micronet the one with MUD's (multi user dungeons), which i think was a game, or was that prestel (British telecom, as it was known then, service)

 

If memory serves, Micronet 800 had a MUD yes, as did Compunet.

 

Perhaps if people know anyone that were behind services like GPP, the source, genie etc etc (as well as the other ones i mentioned and you mentioned) then perhaps we can try recovering some or most of that content/material and perhaps make a website or at least make a section within AA that has that content/material

 

The problem is one of scale really, these services used large machines as hosts both physically and the drives they used. These machines will probably have either been broken up or recycled to other jobs that saw them flattened, so there may not be anything to find. Like i said there's a dubious rumour that the Compunet server still exists but that's been around since not long after the service started and there's no guarantee it was true then.

 

There are, however, bits of these archives preserved through the disk collections of individuals (which is where much of what we've got of Compunet came from) and occasionally groups of individuals who crash dumped segments of larger archives on hearing of their closure (as an indirect example, there are a couple of groups who have stashed what was on Geocities after Yahoo pulled the plug) and not all of those are online yet so all we can really do is show a bit of an interest and hope for the best.

[godslabrat]

I just barely missed the BBS era. I first hit the internet in 1995, and the web was the big new thing then. I tried to explore all the different net services... I was a fan of IRC before most people had even heard of AIM. And I loved usenet! (Shout out to the RGVC refugees here!) But as for BBSes... I touched on one or two, but by the time I realized what I'd found, the mass exodus to the web was in full swing :-(

 

In a lot of ways, I wish we could go back to the net being a text-based medium. For all the awesome things we've accomplished in growing the internet, we made a huge mistake in pushing everything onto the web, and closing up a lot of the other services.

[TMR]

I just barely missed the BBS era. I first hit the internet in 1995, and the web was the big new thing then. I tried to explore all the different net services... I was a fan of IRC before most people had even heard of AIM. And I loved usenet! (Shout out to the RGVC refugees here!) But as for BBSes... I touched on one or two, but by the time I realized what I'd found, the mass exodus to the web was in full swing :-(

 

This is fairly similar to how things went for me, i first dabbled a little with boards late 1995 and discovered the internet shortly afterwards and signed up. Still a big fan of IRC and used to be a fairly regular poster to rec.arts.drwho, alt.fan.pratchett and comp.sys.cbm

[doctorclu]

Happy to say was a part of the BBS era from like 1982 onwards.

 

1983-1991 Primarily Dallas Atari BBSs (Ice Palace, Bucket of Cheese, Equalizer, Dal-ACE (Dallas Atari Computer Enthusiasts), NCC-1701, JYBOLAC (Just Another Basic OnLine Atari Computer), Flash BBS. There was the occasional C=64 BBSs like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and the best of all, the Unknown BBS (creative, had stories, etc).

 

1992-1998 I was in college, but was introduced to E-mail, IRC, Telnet, and other early internet aspects through the multi-lined BBS, Chrysalis.

 

1999 The year I got back into Atari. Called Atari BBSs Dark Forces and the Kingdom. Called Ft. Worth and Tarrant County BBSs.

 

2000-2005 Moved back to Dallas and enjoyed the BBSs that existed then. Primary BBS was Collin County Station. Would do a large majority of telneting, Lynx browsing, and E-mail through the Family-Net BBS. We are also graced with the first Atari telnet BBS, Closer to Home.

 

2006-2012 Primary BBS is the Prison Board BBS which has a telnet out menu of a good majority of the Atari BBSs that exist out there (primarily made for UDS-10 Lantronix users since the Prison Board has a fairly static IP address.) Along with calling Atari BBSs (Dark Forces (now telnet), Boot Factory, and Thunderbird to name a few; I also call the few remaining BBSs that dare to have a dial-up line.

[Retro Rogue]

I think ARPANET beat BBSs by a few years as the original internet.

 

Certainly, the ARPANET spawned the Internet and was around long before BBSs. I think the original poster made the common mistake of equating the Web to the Internet, which of course they are not one in the same.

[scotty]

Ahhh... Such great memories..... I had an Atari 800 and MPP 1000c modem (300 baud). That was all there was back then, 1200 baud was not out yet. Anywho.... One of the local Atari Dealers in Lakewood Ohio was called B&G Electronics. The name of their BBS was T.A.P. short for The Atari Peekers. Pretty cool, I know.... Anyways... They used Amis as their BBS software. They DID NOT HAVE A PASSWORD PROTECTED SYSTEM AT THE TIME. You could log in using any name you wanted. There were a couple of Sysops, but "Sysop Jim" was the one that mainly handled the day-to-day operation.

 

Many of us locals were in to 'phreaking' back in the day. Using a long distance carrier with a code to call other BBS'es all over the country/world without paying for them. I think you know where this is going.....

 

One night for laughs and giggles I called the board at around 2-3AM, and entered "Sysop Jim" as my username with "Sysop" being in inverse video just like he did it. I went to the main message board and posted something similar to the following....

 

"After long deliberation we have come to the conclusion that we will now be known as The Atari Phreakers instead of Peekers. Here are some codes to get you started!! XXXXX XXXXX XXXXXX"

 

Needless to say, they were NOT amused! I thought it was funny as hell, but they didn't. The next morning, and for a few days after the board did not answer. Several days later it was back, and of course, this time with password protection. I am sorry, but as a 14 year old kid, that was fun.