Anyone remember BBS's?

**StarLab** · 05-04-2008, 06:09 AM

So, who here is old enough to remember BBS's? (Yes, I am old enough to be a Grandfather... but I'm not! lol)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system

My first online experience was in 1984 when I dialed into my first BBS with a 300Baud modem. (you could actually read faster than characters being displayed.) The world was my oyster! lol

In 1985 I launched my own BBS using 2 Commodore 64's wired up to a 40Meg hard drive. This was considered mass storage in those days. It was the largest C64 BBS in Canada and saw callers from across the country and some from the US.

In 1995, I launched the PC DOS version of my BBS called StarLab. (A little history on where I got my nickname) It was a FIDONET hub which distributed shareware software and echomail messages from around the world. Echomail was the stone age equivalent of the newsgroups you see on the internet today.

As much as I like the Internet of today, I kind of miss the old days where "Google" was just a sound babies made while blowing spit bubbles.

Anyway, now that I've bored you all, you can go back to reading real posts. lol

**3ncryptabl3_lick** · 05-04-2008, 09:17 AM

Oh yeah... Those were the days alright. I didn't start until much later, probably around 94-95...

smb · 05-10-2008, 08:56 AM

OK, I confess, I remember them, even remember dialing in to some of these to get a free copy of "scan.exe" to scan my computer for viruses and games like "duke nukem" and others.

TechSup · 05-10-2008, 09:08 AM

Used it in 98, ran a warez forum and also a post to host forum. Wasn't bad but VB has given me much insight of the true life of a forum.

m42 · 05-10-2008, 11:57 AM

Of course! My brother and I used to dial into BBS's on an Apple II+ w/300 baud modem.

That was when we weren't completely enthralled by the hack for strip poker or wasting the weekends playing Karateka.

ScriptMan · 05-10-2008, 12:55 PM

I do recall those days.

Waiting for 7PM so that the price for Comp-u-serve dropped from $18.00 per hour to a more reasonable $6.00 per hour.

I spent most of my time on several of the local bbs boards.

And then that upgrade from 300 to 1200 baud. That was like a Yugo to a BMW. I don't think any modem upgrade every seemed like that much improvement at one time until I went to DSL.

**StarLab** · 05-10-2008, 02:26 PM

How about the line noise back then? I remember trying to send a bootstrap file to a buddy 25km away... At 300 baud, it took over 2hrs and several dozen attempts to send a 56 byte file. Delivering the disk by hand would've been quicker!

And yes, 300 to 1200 baud was an incredible upgrade. I actually remember saying, "Wow! Look at it go!"