From 1988 to 1992, I operated the Eagle’s Nest , a BBS dedicated to supporting Scouting. It was a single line Wildcat! System running on a generic PC XT clone. During the last couple of years, we were on RelayNet for email and message boards. By the time we shutdown, we were running 75% + off hook time. The end came when Indiana Bell decided I should be paying business rates even to run a free access BBS. Fun while it lasted!
Lon, thank you again for another great video. The first time I was on a BBS was 1985 (yes, 30 years ago) which was geared toward a home super computer at the time called the "Commodore 64." Unfortunately the SYSOP for that board was a total fascist. Subsequently I don't think that board lasted very long. In 1989 I was a solid member of the local Atari BBS where I made my first online purchase.in September of that year. It was a local purchase for a 5 1/4 inch floppy disc with a modified version of Atari DOS for the mega price of $2.00. After buying the disc I remember sitting in my car in the seller's driveway thinking to myself, "This online purchasing is the future of retail, and this is my first purchase." My next online purchase would not be for another 6 1/2 years, and since then it has been the main way I purchase items. I remember the first time I had internet in my house in 1995 (20 years ago) with my then "hi speed" dial-up modem which clocked in at 28.8 kbs. The first time pictures and graphics flashed on my monitor screen I couldn't believe I could see real time images in my house. I also found myself quickly becoming nostalgic for the BBS. We lost something -- an element of awkwardness and humanity in computing. For me it has never come back -- and I don't think it ever will. The BBS was the last vestige of a nightly meeting at your local community center or town square. BBSs were very local in flavor and atmosphere. Sure, they brought us the world, but it was presented in such a way which was more easily digestible. I don't know if you have time to look into this, and I'm not very sure of how it works, but there is a type of BBS technology which was developed near the end of MS-DOS that allowed shortwave operators to communicate with each other through a BBS type environment. Essentially the shortwave operator, through the shortwave transmitter connected to his computer would scan frequencies looking for an opening to communicate with an operator running the same program over shortwave. The two would generally chat and exchange files. The thing about this technology is it is still pretty undetectable by governments when compared to cell phone and internet technologies. I have written too much. Thank you too all who have stayed with me this long. A belated "Happy Kwanzaa" to Lon and all his subscribers. A better job for myself in 2016 means Lon will be getting at least $5 a month Pantheon support as this is my favorite You Tube Channel. The $5 monthly amount will also mean that Lon will figure out a way to play "Minecraft" on a Chromebook through the Chrome OS (not a Chromebook running Ubuntu).
Thanks! It was what got me into all of what I do now. I have a special affinity for that era! Definitely check out the BBS documentary it's really well done.
Outstanding video Lon. Thanks for the walk down memory lane. My first modem was a used 300 baud model. I remember how excited I was when I purchased a new 1200 baud. I had to drive 80 miles to the nearest electronics store to buy it. I was amazed at the Increase in speed. I wonder how many of us have be in the middle of a long download only to have it interrupted when someone called. No resume download back then either. You had to start the download all over again. The BBS I belonged to was run by a local (St. Louis, MO) TV store owner. Free basic membership but for $20 per month you got unlimited downloads with no upload ratio. A respectable sum of money in the early 90's.
My BBS in 1982 used a 300 baud modem. When the 1200 baud modems came out I had people tell me I needed to get a 1200 baud modem. I told them that 300 baud was "reading speed." Of course, I had to get a 1200 baud and then every time a new speed came out I had to get one.
OMG! What a nice Christmas gift. Brought back so many memories. I made the mistake of introducing my son to BBS early on and I remember discovering $200 a month phone bills when $200 was a lot of money. We both still love computing today. Thank you again for fond memories. Merry Christmas!
"Get off the phone!" My mum used to shout at me from downstairs ;-) I also used to run F6FBB software which used HAM Radio to connect to the outside world, that was fun and frustrating!
Great presentation and you really covered this topic so well. This brings back a lot of happy memories as I was very active in BBSing back then. I learned so much about computers and "PC Telecommunications" and I couldn't get enough of it. I tried so many BBS programs and eventually settled on Synchronet. It took a bit to wrap my wits around FidoNet technology but eventually I did and loved it. There's something special about this whole era. Thank you!
You made me go back to my youth in 1996 when I got my first Commodore Amiga 600 HD and met a lot of people in AmiCueva and other BBSs in Mexico. At last my boy got to learned how it looked like. Thank you! 💜
One of the most gratifying experiences of my life must've been being about 12 or 13 years old, FINALLY getting the Front Door mailer to work, and staying up late in the summer time, watching my computer poll FidoNet hubs and watching the message counters go up. I miss the days when it took more than a pulse to use computers/technology! It was more fun, and we weren't bombarded with as much stupidity (usually in the form of "memes") as we are these days. Great video!
@@LonSeidman Magic, indeed, especially at the age I was and having been into electronics and computers my entire childhood, which was not the norm back then as you know. I think I'm about to reopen a BBS with an old 486 or Pentium I have sitting in my retro collection ;) With a machine from that era, I could probably go the route of telnet as well as dial up. Even with these modern VoIP-style landlines, I have still been able to have fairly reliable 9600 baud connections.
Posted same reply above, and I know this video is yrs old, but I just HAVE to reply to your comment as well. You don't know how many people I've brought up BBS in conversation, over the yrs, and most have no idea what I'm talking about. Loving being able to share my excitement & love for that time in my life. Was for real an amazing time! I'm 47, born in '76. My stepfather, who's effing awesome, is a journalist, and also the smartest guy I know. Legit walking Britannica! Lol Anyhow, bc of him, we were among the 1st 'regular folk' w/ a pers comp, let alone, CompuServe & Prodigy. I remember when we first got the Internet, I easily spent hundreds of hours 'chatting'(?) on bulletin boards til the sun came up. Was effing awesome. Needles to say, by the time actual chat rooms became a 'thing', I had zero interest in them...due to complete burnout from countless hrs on bulletin boards! And still, to this day, I've never online 'chatted'. But damn, 13yo me was obsessed w/ bulletin boards! ❤❤❤
+Lon Seidman it only was minimalist out of the box, it looked like Opus by default and because it was simple to have a fully functional system that way few changed it. Later versions even had a scripting language for customization!
It also had a special message database, superior to both *.msg and Hudson, in later versions. The author actually understood how to make a reliable database format for messages using best practices in CS, a rarity in the BBS programming world.
The scripting language was called MEX and I had damned near reprogrammed my BBS from the ground up - you would never know it was even a Maximus BBS by the time I was done. I have a page dedicated to some of my MEX utils - www.tornelements.com/maximus/ StarBar for the file areas was the most popular...
I ran a BBS for quite a few years around 92-96. Wildcat BBS software. I had two Nodes or an additional phone line so two users could be online along with myself. The phone bill was crazy high back then 3 phone lines total coming into the house. Started off with 2400 baud modem and at the end I believe 33k, was not up to 56k yet. I had all the hot game makers demo games and of course at 16 years old a huge XXX Porn file area. I still got the hard drives with all the data from the day I finally shut it down. Tradewars was excellent. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah I don't even remember anything asking for your age back then. I got most of it off the very early pre-web internet accessed through local college library system.
My BBS (Howard's Notebook) began in 1982 at 300 baud. At first, when 1200 baud came out, I told users that 300 baud was fast enough and that it was "reading speed." But I had to upgrade 1200 and then by the end it was 56K. I was never into games. Also not into porn. So, I had the best users. No problems with them. I miss those days. I do not miss 300 baud. Smile I do miss my old 300 baud Hayes modem. It was built like a battle ship.
Lon. I ran a BBS back in the 80 on the Atari St computer. I have the computer set up and running on telnel. It works perfect to this day. All need to do is turn on the computer and everyone can log on. I bought a new home and getting ready to move so when I get moved in I will put it back on line. It was called The St Guild BBS.
I'm 47, born in '76. My stepfather, who's effing awesome, is a journalist, and also the smartest guy I know. Legit walking Britannica! Lol Anyhow, bc of him, we were among the 1st 'regular folk' w/ a pers comp, let alone, CompuServe & Prodigy. I remember when we first got the Internet, I easily spent hundreds of hours 'chatting'(?) on bulletin boards til the sun came up. Was effing awesome. Needles to say, by the time actual chat rooms became a 'thing', I had zero interest in them...due to complete burnout from countless hrs on bulletin boards! And still, to this day, I've never online 'chatted'. But damn, 13yo me was obsessed w/ bulletin boards! ❤❤❤
My dad ran a BBS in the 80s and up to the mid 90s. For the last few years of running it, he had the cool upgrade of a 6 CD multichanger for the file library. Consequently I had the awesome privilege of having direct local access to all the latest shareware software and games!
I think the last time I logged into a BBS was about 1985. There was also a local computer users group that met once/month. We always had a guest speaker from some software company with a black and white LCD projector that you could hardly see with the lights off. I still have my 300 baud Radio Shack modem. The good old days.
I started The Silicon Sysop on a single line with RBBS on Long Island in 1988. Down the road I had put in DoubleDos, bought PC Board and activated a second line. Eventually I was running 3 lines on a 486. I tried to do it with Windows 386 but there were too many issues. I ended up with Desqview doing the multitasking chores. It's still amazing to me that DV was so fast and stable for the time. A few years in I moved upstate and while I tried to keep the BBS alive, the telephone service upstate was horrendous at that time. Eventually I just shut the whole thing down. :(
Wooow! A blast from the past! I ran a Wildcat! BBS up here in Maine (Check Six! BBS) from 1991 until I closed down the server in 2003. I had 4 lines and the big draw to my system was the file areas, having that satellite downlink service (can't recall the name) that pushed lot's of great shareware daily. I had to have a pal help me setup a Novell Network for multiple PCs and internal modems (free from Zoom telephonics!) so we could offer multi-line and manage server space (no Windows 95 back then for multitasking!). Door games were hugely popular on my system and I had about 100 users per day, depending on how much time they used. I was mocked for "charging" $1 a month, how dare I! But most understood the value and amount of equipment being utilized, plus phone lines. The Internet pretty much wiped us all out but I evolved into Wildcat 5 (WINS), using the DHTML, telnet and their custom navigator program (client/server). I certainly enjoyed it and really miss that small sense of community we had then.
I ran a PCBoard BBS to here in my town just with one node, my own line, after midnight... my mom just said "shut it down' heehe.. and the phone bills? hahh
Bonus Fact: Some BBSes started setting up dedicated internet lines, thus allowing its users to buy internet time with credits to browse the web with PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) or pay a subscription for an email address on the BBSes domain that was on the internet. This also started the death of FiDO Net.
A magazine to support bulletin board systems came out, "Board Watch" I think it was called. I loved that magazine. After a few issues, the entire push in the magazine was that a bulletin board system should make money. That was the beginning of the end of BBS hobby. I did attend the magazine event "One BBSCON" in Colorado Springs in August of 1993.
yes I recall buying games via post services. It took some weeks round trip to receive the game, but interestingly I never got scammed back in the days.
Fun Fact: Around the internet boom era, some BBS software started supporting Remote Imaging Protocol (RIP) graphics and trying to act along the lines of an AOL type rich interface with cretin supporting clients. Sadly, It never gained popularity.
Dark Citadel BBS in Albany, OR. Had ten phone lines and a $400/mo phone bill. A couple of years before going dark we co-located to an ISP and went telnet-only. Anyone who's used BBS's in the 80's and 90's will see tons of similarities between them and Facebook, Twitter and some of the other things we use now. Nothing is new, just re-imagined. Don't tell me the new Call of Duty sucks when we had Combat! on the Atari 2600. And the snow....the snow......all over the hills that were everywhere......all going UP for as far as the eye could see.
Thanks for the retrospective. I remember writing my own BBS back in 1986-ish, in GW-BASIC. I didn't know how to do Fido, but hey, kinetic string art while you waiting for an incoming call. Found out the hard way that "}" actually cleared the screen on Atari terminals. We coded one of those "everyone contributes two lines to the story" features. I have two of those complete stories printed out somewhere in a box :) +1 for liking Tradewars :) There was a unique BBS around these parts at the time called Mount Colossus (or similar). You got a certain amount of mana a day, which could be used to send messages (that was a spell) or challenge the mountain - simple trivia questions that let you climb up the 1000 levels of the mountain. Past a certain point, you could start using your points to do things to other members. Really imaginative. I'd love to experience that danged BBS again :)
I ran a two line (56Kbps on each) C-Net BBS (Amiga) way back when in upstate NY. (93-95 ish). Had fidoNet boards, local forums, provided internet email for users, and usenet subscriptions along with games (Tradewars!) and what not.
This video and comment section is more fulfilling than the BBSMates website which has been a ghost town for years. I was surprised at the lack of ongoing nostalgia for this, I've never seen online communities quite like we had then.
I used to run a BBS in the Hartford area and was also a member of Fidonet. Who knows maybe we messaged each other in the 90s. I ran my BBS using Mustang Software's Wildcat BBS software with 2 modems. I ran my BBS on a 386 machine that had a 300MB hard drive and that was huge in the 90s. I used to run all the shareware stuff and I used to be just as excited to see new games coming out. One thing that running a BBS did for me was to give me jedi level skills in writing complex batch software and running doors on the BBS. Brought back some great memories. I used to love doing ANSI graphics. Pretty cool stuff with very little graphics.
I still run a BBS today running PCBoard, Have also used RA, Wildcat, Sync but PCBoard was my primary software for Entropy. Been up since the early 90s and done a rehash after the taipan virus in the mid to late 90s.
I wrote my first BBS program in 1982 in BASIC. After that I run different BBS programs. I was alway trying different BBS software. I ran PCBoard for a short time. The last BBS program I ran was Wildcat. I loved that software.
i ran pcboard 3 node bbs system in ohio 1992. is your bbs on the internet now? a few years ago i ran into one accessable on the internet. Not sure right off hand how one could accomplish this feat. I still have my bbs on an old ide hard drive. LOL
Interesting episode. I logged into DoveNET using an old Terminal for the first time ever yesterday in 2020 on an ancient 1984 Macintosh compact computer just to obtain the authentic experience. I had such excitement navigating the text only messaging boards of this bygone era.
Long stories aside about living in the 90's, I remember downloading the original shareware version of Doom from a BBS using a 14.4K modem, and we thought that was just the greatest thing ever.
BBSes have not gone away, they just went wireless. In Amateur Radio, we uses packet radio for many things. One thing we do is run off-line BBSes over radio, mostly for local service on the 2 meter band. As you go lower in frequency, the lower the baud rate gets, so 2 meters is the largest watering hole for this activity. When run on a pi zero, these thins can be very handy with digital comms in a disaster area.
I remember using dial up to get online to bulletin boards. I remember how cool it was to be able to join an online forum that is accessible only to those with the password to access a group of like minded people...usually for games like dungeons and dragons or Might and Magic fans.
One thing led to another (talk about getting distracted!)... I needed to delete duplicate lines in a text file. That led me to re-install Kedit a PC clone of the mainframe text editor XEDIT for mainframe computers. That in turn reminded me of REXX and Kexx, which are language interpreters (think CMD, bash, powershell, etc), and then to 4DOS, DESQview, QEMM, OS/2, PCBoard, doors, Fidonet, Intelec, OS2NET, etc. etc... and my days as a sysop. Running a public BBS for 5 years 24 x 7 and not getting a single virus infection convinced me I don't really need anti-virus software assuming you know what you are doing. And I still don't use anti-virus (anti-virus software is for wimps... lol). Heavy nostalgia! Thanks for the video.
Hi Lon. First time viewer. Great video! I was an Apple II enthusiast back in the 80's but kinda drifted away during my late teens. Unfortunately, I missed out on some cool stuff - including BBS's. Your enthusiasm is infectious...I'm going to have to check out some of the BBS's still operating today. Thanks!
I ran a BBS back in the day, and still telnet to a couple systems to play L.O.R.D. I have been looking for a low power computer that can run XP to have a BBS back online. Great vid!!!
Kind of a necro post, but I ran a BBS from 91 to 95, until the internet took over. The software I used was VBBS. I had the BBS connected to FidoNET, VIrtualNET and a few others I can't remember. I still have a snapshot backup of my BBS, as it was in 1994. Every once in awhile, I break it out to log in and relive the glory. I've played around with Mystic BBS software and plan on recreating my old BBS soon.
I used Auntie back in the day. I had a 2400 baud modem to begin with and upgraded eventually to a 28k I believe. Might have been a 56k. I used all the protocols zmodem, ymodem, xmodem and bimodem. I had a 20 Meg HD on my 286 with 1 meg of memory. My wife was not very happy with my use of the telephone. I had half of my computer set up using the BBS and the other to my regular computer. Eventually I got a 40 Meg HD and had software that could compress files. I used 4dos as my operating system. All done from my basement in Juneau Alaska in the later 80s early 90s. Those were the days. Doom was a great game we had back then. Loved the ASCII system. Great times. Fred
Thanks for the video. Reminds me when I had my Commodore 128 and did this all the time. A lot has changed over the years. I might have to do this again.
+Lon Seidman I left the area in 1990 and I ran it for a couple of years. it was so hard to get support because we lived in such a small toll area. It cost so much money for someone to call out of your local area. I ran mine on an Atari ST and an 8" floppy drive but don't remember the interface.
+Lon Seidman It was primarily an Atari ST site at the time. Started as the Amiga Zone before I switched. I was poor and couldn't afford an Apple computer. hehe. Here is a link off a site that has mine listed and maybe yours also. bbslist.textfiles.com/203/oldschool.html
I was the SysOp War Games BBS and Star Fleet BBS in Costa Mesa, CA. We had games, i wrote doors and Wildcat! utilities. We ran from 88 til 97. Once the internet was readily accessible the systems got less and less use. 4 lines running on a 5 PC LAN.
Q: Why not just buy another phone line so more users can spend more time on the BBS? A: Well Jimmy, The thing is... Back then, phone lines cost an arm and a leg.. Around $40/$60 a month per line. So it was not practical, thus time limits has to be set. But some sysops had an extra line just for FiDONet to call out and allow call ins from/to other BBSes.
Me and my friends all owned DOS computers in the 1987-1994 era when were in high school, but I never knew anyone who had access to Bulletin Board Systems or even owned a modem. It seemed to be non-existent where I grew up (small-town Ontario, Canada.) So, I missed all of this stuff at the time.
takes me back to 1990/1991/1992 for a short brief while BBS systems were my life... right around the time the 386.486 started becoming affordable to most people - we used to play tradewars mostly - i used spitfire BBS first and then moved to remoteACCESS and then everyone eventually started using ROBOboard bbs software because of VGA support
I ran a 500 user RA (Remote Access) BBS and charged 5 bucks a month.....Helped pay for the T1 line......Good ole days...... Fidonet, IRC and all the turn based games on the BBS platform. Legends of the Red dragon or something like that.......LOL
I ran a Remote Access BBS for a time. I think after that I went to Wildcat software. I had three lines for a time. That cost a lot of money. I never charged money for using my BBS. My BBS was open to all. But after three months I had my system remove anyone that had not called in three months. So my user base was always right at 500 people. Some BBS operators never deleted anyone and so they had thosands of "users."
My first computer was a Radio Shack Model I. Later owned a number of C64 computers and ran the BBS on one for years. I even had an SX64 and that was their portable computer. I have owned a lot of computers over the years.
I ran Xpresit Net from 1994 to 2010. My BBS was Malkavia BBS. Fidonet inspired my own network, but it wasn't "positive inspiration". I got tired of the network politics and bickering within Fight-O-Net and so I started my own with the hopes of creating a platform that wasn't so strict and didn't revolve around people with superiority complexes participating in trivial disputes with each other. Fun times! :) I get asked all the time if my BBS is ever going to go back up -- but I left primarily due to an increasing lack of community spirit. I originally started into this stuff because of the strong community aspect. It was really cool to me that people could just get together and collaborate on things and really put imagination to work in really cool ways. Until or unless that sense of community returns, I'll not be returning.
There was a whole different side of what is being presented in this video, AppleCat modems (encrypted comms), Celerity BBS with secret keys for capturing/entering credit cards, early darknet using FidoNet, Phreaking, ect.. there was a whole dark side to all this. btw the best BBS door game was 'The Pit', not the most popular but definitely the most fun. I wonder if anyone remembers 'Tree BBS' written in assembly, very fast, next gen stuff in those days and very much phreaking, hacking friendy, a foundation of the early DarkNet
What killed the BBS scene was failure to adapt. Too many people where to obsessed with the method of connection and not that they where running multiuser hobby system. If everyone had done what "The Well" or "MindVox" did with their boards and make them telnet accessible back in the mid-90s then there would be a lot more out there. All the tech for running them would not have been all that hard to change the method of transit to telnet, and lines like ISDN internet connections where not any more expensive then having a couple extra phone lines.
"I downloaded a free copy of A.M.I.S. software (for the Atari) in 1982 as a 10k download that very basically allowed incoming phone calls. When I was finished with the software itself it was over 200k (minus the games), yes, we dealt in K back then and I had to split the software and loaded it (and the games) in as modules. As my programming abilities grew so had the BBS grown into probably the first (or at least one of the few) Multiplexed Bbs's that was Multi-line with Multi-Chat and online games through three Atari 130 SE's computers, with three 9600bd USRobotics HST's and several phone lines. I never told anyone how I accomplished to load such a large program on a 64k basic memory, with only 64K extended machine so quickly, but at the time I created a 1 meg ramdisk on all three Atari 130 SE's by piggybacking (8) 128K memory chips onto the built-in 128K memory chip, and that's where everything resided. Constantly in memory. 'Course I had to use a driver created by someone else to access those ramdisks. Who knows. Maybe others were doing that too. But Sysops usually kept their Software secrets to themselves. The hard storage was a 20 meg Seagate SCSI HD w/Western Digital controller, and a 5 disc CD changer all loaded with TONS downloads. God only knows how many downloads I had. All legal. 3 Other friends ran my system as well. Big Al at The Locker Room, Don at The Boiler Room, and Dale at Rambo's HQ. I think Dale was only 12 at the time. Good for him. V.o.i.c.e. Bbs was the of the longest running Bbs's in Michigan (as far as I know). Running for 14 years from '83 through '97. And at least I'm listed in the 313 area Bbs List. bbslist.textfiles.com/313/oldschool.html Ahhh The good old days" when HACKING was a *good* thing. And I gotta tell you. I, like many of the other Sysops, were like Dogs on bones learning Basic and Assembler and increasing our Programming skills. God, I can tell you how many 2 and 3 day all nighters (72 hour all nighters) I went through just because I couldn't let it go. Once you got on a roll and the programming CLICKED in your head, you just could NOT stop. It just seemed to flow right off your fingers as if you were not even controlling them any more. - Jim Samples Lately I've been running a Chat Forum since '07 called "AesopsRetreat." And have a YT channel of the same name.
Wow, a real flashback to good old 90's, where one had to disconnect for other to login, text-based but even more fun RPG's, a lot of beep-boops and Mom! hang up the parallel I'm connected here!
Interesting to hear you say that the BBSs were dead in your area by 1995... My BBS actually was its most popular in 1995 to 1996, and it was not until 1997 that it was obvious the writing was on the wall. Also funny because I had been using the internet since 1992, and still did not entirely see what the fuss was all about (though IRC was cool) until I started playing Ultima Online in 1997 and that was pretty much the end of me thinking the BBS had a future.
saw a huge decline around 95ish, i guess some stayed around a bit longer but it was just one of those things where nobody shed any tears seeing them disappear.
Yeah, same here, 1997 the downfall began. Offered Telnet access from '98 onwards, closed my BBS aka switched to glFTPd in 2001 - still miss the BBS days though. IRC and FTP just didn't do it.
Wow! I used to have a 300-1200 baud external modem to connect to BBSes here in Montreal later I got a 2400 Baud modem to join a BBS back then I remember being voice validated by a Sysop sometimes I'd answer a trivia or math quiz for some BBSes I sent a small donation by post to join. I use to play door games like trade wars and chat with the college students at Vanier BBS fun times :)
It was my life back then. My wife left me and took the four kids. I worked every day but all the rest of my time was the bulletin board system. I got my kids a computer and modem and they could keep in touch with me. Then later in life, my kids ran a BBS.
I know this is a really old video, but I'm the guy who runs the Telnet BBS Guide, plus I also run two BBSes via Telnet. I also have dial in modem lines via VOIP.
Dialed in briefly in 1990. It took a lot of redialing. Downloaded some DOS games & discovered pkzip for the 1st time. It showed up on the phone bills of those days. All the BBSes were in 408 while all the people lived in 415, so it was a long distance call. None of this unlimited roaming nonsense, but a typical phone bill was $10. Didn't want to spend time downloading pkzip, so just searched for the rare .com & .exe files.
I used a C64 for my BBS for a few years. One day I even used the VIC20 to see if it would work. It did work but it would answer the phone and type login so slow and then people would enter their login and it would have to process that and people would, of course, hang up.
***** That is even more impressive. Pity I don't have my C64 anymore, that got stolen almost a decade ago. I remember the good times downloading newly cracked C64 games during those days in the late 1980's (I don't do that stuff anymore btw).
lost of hardcore Linux users are considering themself as pros and living in the terminal. yet they are using HTML5 for their boards or even discord. Time for modern BBS' as well as Gemini :D
We started our first BBS in 1982, the BBS or QBBS was put to rest in 1998. But I still have the QBBS files on floppydisk.. Hmm, soo were is my floppydrive?? :-)
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From 1988 to 1992, I operated the Eagle’s Nest , a BBS dedicated to supporting Scouting. It was a single line Wildcat! System running on a generic PC XT clone. During the last couple of years, we were on RelayNet for email and message boards. By the time we shutdown, we were running 75% + off hook time. The end came when Indiana Bell decided I should be paying business rates even to run a free access BBS. Fun while it lasted!
How crazy. Some 20+ years later @ 2:25 I see the Matrix Login plugin I wrote when I was a kid on TH-cam.
Good review on an era of computer history.
Lon, thank you again for another great video.
The first time I was on a BBS was 1985 (yes, 30 years ago) which was geared toward a home super computer at the time called the "Commodore 64." Unfortunately the SYSOP for that board was a total fascist. Subsequently I don't think that board lasted very long. In 1989 I was a solid member of the local Atari BBS where I made my first online purchase.in September of that year. It was a local purchase for a 5 1/4 inch floppy disc with a modified version of Atari DOS for the mega price of $2.00. After buying the disc I remember sitting in my car in the seller's driveway thinking to myself, "This online purchasing is the future of retail, and this is my first purchase." My next online purchase would not be for another 6 1/2 years, and since then it has been the main way I purchase items.
I remember the first time I had internet in my house in 1995 (20 years ago) with my then "hi speed" dial-up modem which clocked in at 28.8 kbs. The first time pictures and graphics flashed on my monitor screen I couldn't believe I could see real time images in my house. I also found myself quickly becoming nostalgic for the BBS. We lost something -- an element of awkwardness and humanity in computing. For me it has never come back -- and I don't think it ever will. The BBS was the last vestige of a nightly meeting at your local community center or town square. BBSs were very local in flavor and atmosphere. Sure, they brought us the world, but it was presented in such a way which was more easily digestible.
I don't know if you have time to look into this, and I'm not very sure of how it works, but there is a type of BBS technology which was developed near the end of MS-DOS that allowed shortwave operators to communicate with each other through a BBS type environment. Essentially the shortwave operator, through the shortwave transmitter connected to his computer would scan frequencies looking for an opening to communicate with an operator running the same program over shortwave. The two would generally chat and exchange files. The thing about this technology is it is still pretty undetectable by governments when compared to cell phone and internet technologies.
I have written too much. Thank you too all who have stayed with me this long. A belated "Happy Kwanzaa" to Lon and all his subscribers. A better job for myself in 2016 means Lon will be getting at least $5 a month Pantheon support as this is my favorite You Tube Channel. The $5 monthly amount will also mean that Lon will figure out a way to play "Minecraft" on a Chromebook through the Chrome OS (not a Chromebook running Ubuntu).
Sysop... hahaha democracy rules
I know this is an old video, but you really did a great job of summarizing everything that made the BBS era so special!
Thanks! It was what got me into all of what I do now. I have a special affinity for that era! Definitely check out the BBS documentary it's really well done.
Outstanding video Lon. Thanks for the walk down memory lane. My first modem was a used 300 baud model. I remember how excited I was when I purchased a new 1200 baud. I had to drive 80 miles to the nearest electronics store to buy it. I was amazed at the Increase in speed. I wonder how many of us have be in the middle of a long download only to have it interrupted when someone called. No resume download back then either. You had to start the download all over again. The BBS I belonged to was run by a local (St. Louis, MO) TV store owner. Free basic membership but for $20 per month you got unlimited downloads with no upload ratio. A respectable sum of money in the early 90's.
My BBS in 1982 used a 300 baud modem. When the 1200 baud modems came out I had people tell me I needed to get a 1200 baud modem. I told them that 300 baud was "reading speed." Of course, I had to get a 1200 baud and then every time a new speed came out I had to get one.
OMG! What a nice Christmas gift. Brought back so many memories. I made the mistake of introducing my son to BBS early on and I remember discovering $200 a month phone bills when $200 was a lot of money. We both still love computing today. Thank you again for fond memories. Merry Christmas!
"Get off the phone!" My mum used to shout at me from downstairs ;-)
I also used to run F6FBB software which used HAM Radio to connect to the outside world, that was fun and frustrating!
Yeah, think it was a KPC4 transmitting on 2m and 70cm.
I was older when I started my BBS. I was born in 1941. I started doing a BBS in 1982. So, I did not hear "Get off the phone" from my mother or father.
I wanna try an experiment where some one connects their phone to a walkie talkie and then made dial up internet through a walkie talkie
Great presentation and you really covered this topic so well. This brings back a lot of happy memories as I was very active in BBSing back then. I learned so much about computers and "PC Telecommunications" and I couldn't get enough of it. I tried so many BBS programs and eventually settled on Synchronet. It took a bit to wrap my wits around FidoNet technology but eventually I did and loved it. There's something special about this whole era. Thank you!
You made me go back to my youth in 1996 when I got my first Commodore Amiga 600 HD and met a lot of people in AmiCueva and other BBSs in Mexico. At last my boy got to learned how it looked like. Thank you! 💜
One of the most gratifying experiences of my life must've been being about 12 or 13 years old, FINALLY getting the Front Door mailer to work, and staying up late in the summer time, watching my computer poll FidoNet hubs and watching the message counters go up. I miss the days when it took more than a pulse to use computers/technology! It was more fun, and we weren't bombarded with as much stupidity (usually in the form of "memes") as we are these days. Great video!
I had a very similar experience getting my binkleyterm front end to connect to my hub! It was magic !
@@LonSeidman Magic, indeed, especially at the age I was and having been into electronics and computers my entire childhood, which was not the norm back then as you know. I think I'm about to reopen a BBS with an old 486 or Pentium I have sitting in my retro collection ;) With a machine from that era, I could probably go the route of telnet as well as dial up. Even with these modern VoIP-style landlines, I have still been able to have fairly reliable 9600 baud connections.
Posted same reply above, and I know this video is yrs old, but I just HAVE to reply to your comment as well. You don't know how many people I've brought up BBS in conversation, over the yrs, and most have no idea what I'm talking about. Loving being able to share my excitement & love for that time in my life. Was for real an amazing time!
I'm 47, born in '76. My stepfather, who's effing awesome, is a journalist, and also the smartest guy I know. Legit walking Britannica! Lol Anyhow, bc of him, we were among the 1st 'regular folk' w/ a pers comp, let alone, CompuServe & Prodigy. I remember when we first got the Internet, I easily spent hundreds of hours 'chatting'(?) on bulletin boards til the sun came up. Was effing awesome. Needles to say, by the time actual chat rooms became a 'thing', I had zero interest in them...due to complete burnout from countless hrs on bulletin boards! And still, to this day, I've never online 'chatted'. But damn, 13yo me was obsessed w/ bulletin boards! ❤❤❤
I was a FidoNet Sysop, running Maximus, back in the day. Multitasking it on a 386 running Desqview-386. :)
+Lon Seidman it only was minimalist out of the box, it looked like Opus by default and because it was simple to have a fully functional system that way few changed it. Later versions even had a scripting language for customization!
It also had a special message database, superior to both *.msg and Hudson, in later versions. The author actually understood how to make a reliable database format for messages using best practices in CS, a rarity in the BBS programming world.
The scripting language was called MEX and I had damned near reprogrammed my BBS from the ground up - you would never know it was even a Maximus BBS by the time I was done. I have a page dedicated to some of my MEX utils - www.tornelements.com/maximus/ StarBar for the file areas was the most popular...
I bet you ran OS/2 also. I loved OS/2.
I ran a BBS for quite a few years around 92-96. Wildcat BBS software. I had two Nodes or an additional phone line so two users could be online along with myself. The phone bill was crazy high back then 3 phone lines total coming into the house. Started off with 2400 baud modem and at the end I believe 33k, was not up to 56k yet. I had all the hot game makers demo games and of course at 16 years old a huge XXX Porn file area. I still got the hard drives with all the data from the day I finally shut it down. Tradewars was excellent. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah I don't even remember anything asking for your age back then. I got most of it off the very early pre-web internet accessed through local college library system.
My BBS (Howard's Notebook) began in 1982 at 300 baud. At first, when 1200 baud came out, I told users that 300 baud was fast enough and that it was "reading speed." But I had to upgrade 1200 and then by the end it was 56K.
I was never into games. Also not into porn. So, I had the best users. No problems with them. I miss those days. I do not miss 300 baud. Smile
I do miss my old 300 baud Hayes modem. It was built like a battle ship.
Lon. I ran a BBS back in the 80 on the Atari St computer. I have the computer set up and running on telnel. It works perfect to this day. All need to do is turn on the computer and everyone can log on. I bought a new home and getting ready to move so when I get moved in I will put it back on line. It was called The St Guild BBS.
BBS Systems was the Social Network before it was a thing. I myself *ALWAYS* went to the File Library when joining a BBS for the first time..
hhahah... they wouldn't know....how many nodes does your bbs had? and it was awesome
I'm 47, born in '76. My stepfather, who's effing awesome, is a journalist, and also the smartest guy I know. Legit walking Britannica! Lol Anyhow, bc of him, we were among the 1st 'regular folk' w/ a pers comp, let alone, CompuServe & Prodigy. I remember when we first got the Internet, I easily spent hundreds of hours 'chatting'(?) on bulletin boards til the sun came up. Was effing awesome. Needles to say, by the time actual chat rooms became a 'thing', I had zero interest in them...due to complete burnout from countless hrs on bulletin boards! And still, to this day, I've never online 'chatted'. But damn, 13yo me was obsessed w/ bulletin boards! ❤❤❤
I used to dial into my local BBS and play this game called "The Pit". It was all ascii wizards and knights.
Zeke, ever dial up a DDIAL?
My dad ran a BBS in the 80s and up to the mid 90s. For the last few years of running it, he had the cool upgrade of a 6 CD multichanger for the file library. Consequently I had the awesome privilege of having direct local access to all the latest shareware software and games!
Thanks Lon! I was a Co-Sysop of 2 BBS's back in the day. I often miss the old gang so to speak. You Nailed it on local community networking.
I think the last time I logged into a BBS was about 1985. There was also a local computer users group that met once/month. We always had a guest speaker from some software company with a black and white LCD projector that you could hardly see with the lights off. I still have my 300 baud Radio Shack modem. The good old days.
I started The Silicon Sysop on a single line with RBBS on Long Island in 1988. Down the road I had put in DoubleDos, bought PC Board and activated a second line. Eventually I was running 3 lines on a 486. I tried to do it with Windows 386 but there were too many issues. I ended up with Desqview doing the multitasking chores. It's still amazing to me that DV was so fast and stable for the time. A few years in I moved upstate and while I tried to keep the BBS alive, the telephone service upstate was horrendous at that time. Eventually I just shut the whole thing down. :(
I was obsessed with BBSing back in the day and I always had a new modem on my christmas or birthday wishlist.
Wooow! A blast from the past! I ran a Wildcat! BBS up here in Maine (Check Six! BBS) from 1991 until I closed down the server in 2003. I had 4 lines and the big draw to my system was the file areas, having that satellite downlink service (can't recall the name) that pushed lot's of great shareware daily. I had to have a pal help me setup a Novell Network for multiple PCs and internal modems (free from Zoom telephonics!) so we could offer multi-line and manage server space (no Windows 95 back then for multitasking!). Door games were hugely popular on my system and I had about 100 users per day, depending on how much time they used. I was mocked for "charging" $1 a month, how dare I! But most understood the value and amount of equipment being utilized, plus phone lines. The Internet pretty much wiped us all out but I evolved into Wildcat 5 (WINS), using the DHTML, telnet and their custom navigator program (client/server). I certainly enjoyed it and really miss that small sense of community we had then.
I ran a PCBoard BBS to here in my town just with one node, my own line, after midnight... my mom just said "shut it down' heehe.. and the phone bills? hahh
i was born in 1981 im 34 but i dont remember this BBS stuff at all thank you for sharing its very interesting stuff
Bonus Fact: Some BBSes started setting up dedicated internet lines, thus allowing its users to buy internet time with credits to browse the web with PPP (Point-to-Point Protocol) or pay a subscription for an email address on the BBSes domain that was on the internet. This also started the death of FiDO Net.
A magazine to support bulletin board systems came out, "Board Watch" I think it was called. I loved that magazine. After a few issues, the entire push in the magazine was that a bulletin board system should make money.
That was the beginning of the end of BBS hobby.
I did attend the magazine event "One BBSCON" in Colorado Springs in August of 1993.
I liked that BBSes were so decentralized. They were like little villages dotting the countryside.
yes I recall buying games via post services. It took some weeks round trip to receive the game, but interestingly I never got scammed back in the days.
Fun Fact: Around the internet boom era, some BBS software started supporting Remote Imaging Protocol (RIP) graphics and trying to act along the lines of an AOL type rich interface with cretin supporting clients. Sadly, It never gained popularity.
Dark Citadel BBS in Albany, OR. Had ten phone lines and a $400/mo phone bill. A couple of years before going dark we co-located to an ISP and went telnet-only. Anyone who's used BBS's in the 80's and 90's will see tons of similarities between them and Facebook, Twitter and some of the other things we use now. Nothing is new, just re-imagined. Don't tell me the new Call of Duty sucks when we had Combat! on the Atari 2600. And the snow....the snow......all over the hills that were everywhere......all going UP for as far as the eye could see.
I was a sysop in the early 90s. Great nostalgia here.
This video is a breath of fresh air in 2021
Thanks for the retrospective. I remember writing my own BBS back in 1986-ish, in GW-BASIC. I didn't know how to do Fido, but hey, kinetic string art while you waiting for an incoming call. Found out the hard way that "}" actually cleared the screen on Atari terminals. We coded one of those "everyone contributes two lines to the story" features. I have two of those complete stories printed out somewhere in a box :)
+1 for liking Tradewars :)
There was a unique BBS around these parts at the time called Mount Colossus (or similar). You got a certain amount of mana a day, which could be used to send messages (that was a spell) or challenge the mountain - simple trivia questions that let you climb up the 1000 levels of the mountain. Past a certain point, you could start using your points to do things to other members. Really imaginative. I'd love to experience that danged BBS again :)
I ran a two line (56Kbps on each) C-Net BBS (Amiga) way back when in upstate NY. (93-95 ish). Had fidoNet boards, local forums, provided internet email for users, and usenet subscriptions along with games (Tradewars!) and what not.
@Video Forensics Obviously YOU do.
This video and comment section is more fulfilling than the BBSMates website which has been a ghost town for years. I was surprised at the lack of ongoing nostalgia for this, I've never seen online communities quite like we had then.
I used to run a BBS in the Hartford area and was also a member of Fidonet. Who knows maybe we messaged each other in the 90s. I ran my BBS using Mustang Software's Wildcat BBS software with 2 modems. I ran my BBS on a 386 machine that had a 300MB hard drive and that was huge in the 90s. I used to run all the shareware stuff and I used to be just as excited to see new games coming out. One thing that running a BBS did for me was to give me jedi level skills in writing complex batch software and running doors on the BBS. Brought back some great memories. I used to love doing ANSI graphics. Pretty cool stuff with very little graphics.
I still run a BBS today running PCBoard, Have also used RA, Wildcat, Sync but PCBoard was my primary software for Entropy. Been up since the early 90s and done a rehash after the taipan virus in the mid to late 90s.
I wrote my first BBS program in 1982 in BASIC. After that I run different BBS programs. I was alway trying different BBS software. I ran PCBoard for a short time. The last BBS program I ran was Wildcat. I loved that software.
So it run without internet or not ?
Renegade was so awesome.
i ran pcboard 3 node bbs system in ohio 1992. is your bbs on the internet now? a few years ago i ran into one accessable on the internet. Not sure right off hand how one could accomplish this feat. I still have my bbs on an old ide hard drive. LOL
I use to LOVE BBS'ing. I ran one in the 90s too. :)
BBSes of the '80s and '90s were glorious.
Happy holidays to you, your family and viewers, Lon! Thanks for the video. Good old times!
Interesting episode. I logged into DoveNET using an old Terminal for the first time ever yesterday in 2020 on an ancient 1984 Macintosh compact computer just to obtain the authentic experience. I had such excitement navigating the text only messaging boards of this bygone era.
Long stories aside about living in the 90's, I remember downloading the original shareware version of Doom from a BBS using a 14.4K modem, and we thought that was just the greatest thing ever.
Ahh the days of Wildcat and d'bridge. I ran a bbs for about 8 years and it was a fun time.
excellent piece, brought back a lot of memories. very informative and entertaining
BBSes have not gone away, they just went wireless. In Amateur Radio, we uses packet radio for many things. One thing we do is run off-line BBSes over radio, mostly for local service on the 2 meter band. As you go lower in frequency, the lower the baud rate gets, so 2 meters is the largest watering hole for this activity. When run on a pi zero, these thins can be very handy with digital comms in a disaster area.
I'm too young for BBS and DOS, but just old enough to remember dial-up. This is a really interesting video!
I remember using dial up to get online to bulletin boards. I remember how cool it was to be able to join an online forum that is accessible only to those with the password to access a group of like minded people...usually for games like dungeons and dragons or Might and Magic fans.
I ran a BBS called Vitcom in East Kilbride, Scotland, Uk around 1988. Great video and I am thinking to revive my bbs, loved it..
One thing led to another (talk about getting distracted!)... I needed to delete duplicate lines in a text file. That led me to re-install Kedit a PC clone of the mainframe text editor XEDIT for mainframe computers. That in turn reminded me of REXX and Kexx, which are language interpreters (think CMD, bash, powershell, etc), and then to 4DOS, DESQview, QEMM, OS/2, PCBoard, doors, Fidonet, Intelec, OS2NET, etc. etc... and my days as a sysop.
Running a public BBS for 5 years 24 x 7 and not getting a single virus infection convinced me I don't really need anti-virus software assuming you know what you are doing. And I still don't use anti-virus (anti-virus software is for wimps... lol). Heavy nostalgia! Thanks for the video.
Hi Lon. First time viewer. Great video! I was an Apple II enthusiast back in the 80's but kinda drifted away during my late teens. Unfortunately, I missed out on some cool stuff - including BBS's. Your enthusiasm is infectious...I'm going to have to check out some of the BBS's still operating today. Thanks!
You should join the Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook! Lots of us there!
I ran a BBS back in the day, and still telnet to a couple systems to play L.O.R.D.
I have been looking for a low power computer that can run XP to have a BBS back online.
Great vid!!!
Aim for Windows 98 SE :)
XP is NT based. Win98 is MS-DOS.
Kind of a necro post, but I ran a BBS from 91 to 95, until the internet took over. The software I used was VBBS. I had the BBS connected to FidoNET, VIrtualNET and a few others I can't remember. I still have a snapshot backup of my BBS, as it was in 1994. Every once in awhile, I break it out to log in and relive the glory. I've played around with Mystic BBS software and plan on recreating my old BBS soon.
Might be fun to resurrect it on telnet and reset it back to the original '94 snapshot every couple of weeks!
I used Auntie back in the day. I had a 2400 baud modem to begin with and upgraded eventually to a 28k I believe. Might have been a 56k. I used all the protocols zmodem, ymodem, xmodem and bimodem. I had a 20 Meg HD on my 286 with 1 meg of memory. My wife was not very happy with my use of the telephone. I had half of my computer set up using the BBS and the other to my regular computer. Eventually I got a 40 Meg HD and had software that could compress files. I used 4dos as my operating system. All done from my basement in Juneau Alaska in the later 80s early 90s. Those were the days. Doom was a great game we had back then. Loved the ASCII system. Great times.
Fred
Thanks for the video. Reminds me when I had my Commodore 128 and did this all the time. A lot has changed over the years. I might have to do this again.
I love this. I ran the Top Gun BBS out of Clinton,CT. in the late 80's. Things sure have changed.
+Lon Seidman I left the area in 1990 and I ran it for a couple of years. it was so hard to get support because we lived in such a small toll area. It cost so much money for someone to call out of your local area. I ran mine on an Atari ST and an 8" floppy drive but don't remember the interface.
+Lon Seidman It was primarily an Atari ST site at the time. Started as the Amiga Zone before I switched. I was poor and couldn't afford an Apple computer. hehe. Here is a link off a site that has mine listed and maybe yours also. bbslist.textfiles.com/203/oldschool.html
I was the SysOp War Games BBS and Star Fleet BBS in Costa Mesa, CA.
We had games,
i wrote doors and Wildcat! utilities.
We ran from 88 til 97. Once the internet was readily accessible the systems got less and less use. 4 lines running on a 5 PC LAN.
Q: Why not just buy another phone line so more users can spend more time on the BBS?
A: Well Jimmy, The thing is... Back then, phone lines cost an arm and a leg.. Around $40/$60 a month per line. So it was not practical, thus time limits has to be set. But some sysops had an extra line just for FiDONet to call out and allow call ins from/to other BBSes.
You are really good at explaining technical things!
Me and my friends all owned DOS computers in the 1987-1994 era when were in high school, but I never knew anyone who had access to Bulletin Board Systems or even owned a modem. It seemed to be non-existent where I grew up (small-town Ontario, Canada.) So, I missed all of this stuff at the time.
takes me back to 1990/1991/1992 for a short brief while BBS systems were my life... right around the time the 386.486 started becoming affordable to most people - we used to play tradewars mostly - i used spitfire BBS first and then moved to remoteACCESS and then everyone eventually started using ROBOboard bbs software because of VGA support
I ran a 500 user RA (Remote Access) BBS and charged 5 bucks a month.....Helped pay for the T1 line......Good ole days...... Fidonet, IRC and all the turn based games on the BBS platform. Legends of the Red dragon or something like that.......LOL
+Lon Seidman from 95 til 98-99 when I had to deploy again "desert thunder". I see my site is still listed on bbsmates lol
I ran a Remote Access BBS for a time. I think after that I went to Wildcat software.
I had three lines for a time. That cost a lot of money. I never charged money for using my BBS. My BBS was open to all. But after three months I had my system remove anyone that had not called in three months. So my user base was always right at 500 people. Some BBS operators never deleted anyone and so they had thosands of "users."
Very good tour of the old pre internet days. Was a simpler time In some ways but you also had to know something about computers first
I get my Commodore 64 online about two to three times a month. Lots of fun.
My first computer was a Radio Shack Model I. Later owned a number of C64 computers and ran the BBS on one for years. I even had an SX64 and that was their portable computer. I have owned a lot of computers over the years.
I ran a bbs. I used several different software. Tribbs, grapevine, and a few others. I called it "section C".... Fun times
I ran Xpresit Net from 1994 to 2010. My BBS was Malkavia BBS. Fidonet inspired my own network, but it wasn't "positive inspiration". I got tired of the network politics and bickering within Fight-O-Net and so I started my own with the hopes of creating a platform that wasn't so strict and didn't revolve around people with superiority complexes participating in trivial disputes with each other. Fun times! :) I get asked all the time if my BBS is ever going to go back up -- but I left primarily due to an increasing lack of community spirit. I originally started into this stuff because of the strong community aspect. It was really cool to me that people could just get together and collaborate on things and really put imagination to work in really cool ways. Until or unless that sense of community returns, I'll not be returning.
***** Not surprising. lol. How many nodes are left in it these days? I'd guess about 500. How close am I?
Pirates Cove BBS back in the day. Somewhere around 1989.
There was a whole different side of what is being presented in this video, AppleCat modems (encrypted comms), Celerity BBS with secret keys for capturing/entering credit cards, early darknet using FidoNet, Phreaking, ect.. there was a whole dark side to all this. btw the best BBS door game was 'The Pit', not the most popular but definitely the most fun. I wonder if anyone remembers 'Tree BBS' written in assembly, very fast, next gen stuff in those days and very much phreaking, hacking friendy, a foundation of the early DarkNet
;)
What killed the BBS scene was failure to adapt. Too many people where to obsessed with the method of connection and not that they where running multiuser hobby system. If everyone had done what "The Well" or "MindVox" did with their boards and make them telnet accessible back in the mid-90s then there would be a lot more out there. All the tech for running them would not have been all that hard to change the method of transit to telnet, and lines like ISDN internet connections where not any more expensive then having a couple extra phone lines.
"I downloaded a free copy of A.M.I.S. software (for the Atari) in 1982 as a 10k download that very basically allowed incoming phone calls. When I was finished with the software itself it was over 200k (minus the games), yes, we dealt in K back then and I had to split the software and loaded it (and the games) in as modules. As my programming abilities grew so had the BBS grown into probably the first (or at least one of the few) Multiplexed Bbs's that was Multi-line with Multi-Chat and online games through three Atari 130 SE's computers, with three 9600bd USRobotics HST's and several phone lines.
I never told anyone how I accomplished to load such a large program on a 64k basic memory, with only 64K extended machine so quickly, but at the time I created a 1 meg ramdisk on all three Atari 130 SE's by piggybacking (8) 128K memory chips onto the built-in 128K memory chip, and that's where everything resided. Constantly in memory. 'Course I had to use a driver created by someone else to access those ramdisks. Who knows. Maybe others were doing that too. But Sysops usually kept their Software secrets to themselves.
The hard storage was a 20 meg Seagate SCSI HD w/Western Digital controller, and a 5 disc CD changer all loaded with TONS downloads. God only knows how many downloads I had. All legal.
3 Other friends ran my system as well. Big Al at The Locker Room, Don at The Boiler Room, and Dale at Rambo's HQ. I think Dale was only 12 at the time. Good for him.
V.o.i.c.e. Bbs was the of the longest running Bbs's in Michigan (as far as I know). Running for 14 years from '83 through '97.
And at least I'm listed in the 313 area Bbs List. bbslist.textfiles.com/313/oldschool.html
Ahhh The good old days" when HACKING was a *good* thing.
And I gotta tell you. I, like many of the other Sysops, were like Dogs on bones learning Basic and Assembler and increasing our Programming skills. God, I can tell you how many 2 and 3 day all nighters (72 hour all nighters) I went through just because I couldn't let it go. Once you got on a roll and the programming CLICKED in your head, you just could NOT stop. It just seemed to flow right off your fingers as if you were not even controlling them any more. - Jim Samples
Lately I've been running a Chat Forum since '07 called "AesopsRetreat." And have a YT channel of the same name.
Thanks for well done video, this is really useful for a younger person as myself.
Great overview man! Brought back the memories.
Wow, a real flashback to good old 90's, where one had to disconnect for other to login, text-based but even more fun RPG's, a lot of beep-boops and Mom! hang up the parallel I'm connected here!
Interesting to hear you say that the BBSs were dead in your area by 1995... My BBS actually was its most popular in 1995 to 1996, and it was not until 1997 that it was obvious the writing was on the wall. Also funny because I had been using the internet since 1992, and still did not entirely see what the fuss was all about (though IRC was cool) until I started playing Ultima Online in 1997 and that was pretty much the end of me thinking the BBS had a future.
Ultima Online was the best MMO of all time in terms of gameplay
saw a huge decline around 95ish, i guess some stayed around a bit longer but it was just one of those things where nobody shed any tears seeing them disappear.
Yeah, same here, 1997 the downfall began. Offered Telnet access from '98 onwards, closed my BBS aka switched to glFTPd in 2001 - still miss the BBS days though. IRC and FTP just didn't do it.
"Land of Devastation" was my favorite Doorgame......
I’m surprised FIDONET is still active. It makes me wonder how many BBS’s are running and what kind of traffic they get in 2020.
Fidonet exists as well as other FTN networks such as FSXNet. Boards still get traffic, but sadly not as much as in the heyday.
Hall of Fame BBS fidonet 2216 coordinator 1992-2001
Merry Christmas Lon, Hope you have a good holidays!
God bless BBS
I think nowadays Discord is the closest thing to a modern BBS
Wow! I used to have a 300-1200 baud external modem to connect to BBSes here in Montreal later I got a 2400 Baud modem to join a BBS back then I remember being voice validated by a Sysop sometimes I'd answer a trivia or math quiz for some BBSes I sent a small donation by post to join.
I use to play door games like trade wars and chat with the college students at Vanier BBS fun times :)
how do people remember all this stuff in such detail?
It was my life back then. My wife left me and took the four kids.
I worked every day but all the rest of my time was the bulletin board system. I got my kids a computer and modem and they could keep in touch with me.
Then later in life, my kids ran a BBS.
Reminds me of the CA BBS I used 1990
I know this is a really old video, but I'm the guy who runs the Telnet BBS Guide, plus I also run two BBSes via Telnet. I also have dial in modem lines via VOIP.
Really? Cool! I’ve been setting my own up for awhile
Diamond Dave? The diamond mine?
That’s one of my favorites!
@@kelpermoon23 Indeed! :)
Wow man, I love this video. A lot of good memories.
+Lon Seidman Thanks Lon, excellent documentary. Once again, thanks for your amazing video and suggestions. Keep up the good work.
Dialed in briefly in 1990. It took a lot of redialing. Downloaded some DOS games & discovered pkzip for the 1st time. It showed up on the phone bills of those days. All the BBSes were in 408 while all the people lived in 415, so it was a long distance call. None of this unlimited roaming nonsense, but a typical phone bill was $10. Didn't want to spend time downloading pkzip, so just searched for the rare .com & .exe files.
I been thinking of setting up a BBS on an old machine.. I wan one years ago. the internet is cool but most of social media is trash.
A BBS was the training grounds for the soon to come future internet.
what is the difference between SyncTERM and plain TelNet?
I had a C64 BBS in the 80s for about 3 months, when ineptness about welfare system led to returning home. that was 1988.
I used a C64 for my BBS for a few years. One day I even used the VIC20 to see if it would work. It did work but it would answer the phone and type login so slow and then people would enter their login and it would have to process that and people would, of course, hang up.
Wow, I didn't know some BBS systems were still running.
Oh the good times I spent on Quantam Link with my Commodore 64. Good times.
*****
That is even more impressive. Pity I don't have my C64 anymore, that got stolen almost a decade ago. I remember the good times downloading newly cracked C64 games during those days in the late 1980's (I don't do that stuff anymore btw).
no there is also Mystic being ran today and sbbs. i run mystic and used to be a Renegade BBS Alpha board
Renegade was THE best.
@@joshuagibson2520 When Cott and Patrick had it.
@@abovethefirehouse yessss. Cott Lang. A name I've not thought about since about 95!
@@abovethefirehouse I used Terminate! 1.4 to call a lot of Renegade boards back then.
Trade wars reminds me of a more modern game called Edgeworld. It uses the same defense/offense tactics.
THE UNDERWORLD...
I loved this video. Ohhh the memories
I still have MajorBBS v6.25
lost of hardcore Linux users are considering themself as pros and living in the terminal. yet they are using HTML5 for their boards or even discord. Time for modern BBS' as well as Gemini :D
LON! Please check out the Asus Zenpad 10. I want it but i always watch reviews first. I respect your opinion above other reviewers
We started our first BBS in 1982, the BBS or QBBS was put to rest in 1998. But I still have the QBBS files on floppydisk.. Hmm, soo were is my floppydrive?? :-)
Great video Lon!!
BBS is now a Vinesauce territory
Ahhh.. I miss L.O.R.D. Those were the days.
Telnet to lord.stabs.org and play :D
There’s also Mystic. Lots of boards run Mystic.
I ran a bbs for several years using 2 lines running ezycomm bbs
Really interesting. I am so grateful for the old school technologists. Thank you!