Long before the Internet....

[Onkel Neal]

This sure brings back some memories!! :shucks:


BBS: The Documentary (2005) (http://www.archive.org/details/BBS.The.Documentary)

Long before the Internet escaped from the lab, connected the planet and redefined what it meant to use a computer there was a brave and pioneering band of computer users who spent their time, money and sanity setting up their home computers and phone lines to welcome anyone who called. By using a modem, anyone else who knew the phone number of these computers could connect to them, leave messages, send and recieve files.... and millions did.

They called these places "Bulletin Board Systems", or BBSes. And their collections of messages, rants, thoughts and dreams became the way that an entire generation learned about being online.

When the Internet grew in popularity in the early 1990s, the world of the BBS faded, changed, and became a part of the present networked world.. but it wasn't the same.

[A Very Super Market]

2005! That's sooooo long ago...

[UnderseaLcpl]

What an intersting look into the history behind communities like this one. I must confess, I didn't really know any of that before.

Two cool things I learned from that video; I should buy my next computer from Crazy Eddie's, and now that I know a little about the substance material, I can post like I'm an expert and call people names. It's part of our heritage.:DL


Thanks for the vid, Neal:up:

[Letum]

Before internet?
Doesnotcompute.

[Overboard]

Internet ?

[bookworm_020]

I remember the joy of the old 28kb/s dial modem that seemed so modern back in the late 1990's

[TarJak]

Aaah the good old days of 1200/75bps modems, handset coupling and the BBS. A mate and I used to run one which aside from a forum and real time chat room included online MP games! 1990 we started and shut it down in 1996.

All this suposedly Web 2.0 stuff is really just the same things that were around then rehashed and dressed in prettier graphics. The principles of communicating in a community have not really changed much from cave man days, just the technology being used.

[Platapus]

I remember reading on the tech magazines where people were advised not to invest in the "new" 2400 baud modems as the phone lines would not be able to support the data rate.

In the early 80's, I remember, very fondly, with my little 300 baud modem, hooked up to my blazing fast 286, trying to hook up with another BBS.

I guess the current generation just does not have anything to compare with the joy and amazement of:

>can you read this?

>Yes, can you read this?

>this is so cool!

> Yes it is

And it was totally cool to be able to "talk" to another computer. :yeah:

[longam]

I had to mail in a 5.25 disk for a printer driver once. Then I discovered a huge magazine (more like a phone book) that had all of the listed BBS numbers in it.

I Dl'ed my drivers from that day...

[kiwi_2005]

I remember the joy of the old 28kb/s dial modem that seemed so modern back in the late 1990's

The joy of a 14kb/s modem running on work server with internet sharing to 12 PC's with show all folders enabled & no firewall :har: I remember the day when Zone alarm came out and i installed it on the server thinking this is rubbish it wont last 12months.

[August]

I remember BBS's.

Here's another oldie but moldy term: DECnet. :yeah:

[Digital_Trucker]

I'm having flashbacks, stop it:har: Now, where is my Amiga? I know I left it around here somewhere.

[Letum]

I remember when all this was just fields... (http://mushroom.nosox.org/fields.html)

[Carotio]

It reminds me that a guy I used to study with made his essays, translations and reports on his commodore64, while the rest of us laughed at him, because we had fast 486 pc's..... :D

Also, I found a couple of years ago while running win98 a commodore64 simulation program and some of the games I used to play in the 80'ies. Talk about nostalgy mode...

I think this guy once told me that it at some point was possible to connect to the internet with a c64. I'm not sure if it was true or just wishthinking. :hmmm:

Just for the record: he does use pc today...;)

[SteamWake]

2005! That's sooooo long ago...

I believe that is the date the documentry was made. The technology they are referring to is from circa 1970. I know because I'm one of those aincent relics whom ran / used BBSes with dial up modems and awsome Baud rates of up to 300 :rotfl:

Makes me feel like an anitique to see this discussed in this manner.

[Onkel Neal]

It's cool that some of you guys have that old school legacy in your background. :yeah: I wish I had been more tech involved from the beginning. My best bud bought a TRS-80 in 1979, he worked at Radio Shack. We used to load the programs on it with a cassette player--the volume had to be set just right to work--and after 6 or 7 minutes, we could play Pharoh or Bedlam. I learned a bit of Basic to write a program that worked like a database, if you typed the name of a song, it would tell you the artist and album, etc. Eventually I bought a Timex Sinclair, but most of my computer experience up until DOS was on his TRS-80 and CoCo.

But we didn't get into BBSs until the early '90s. I worked with an old guy who had green teeth and smoked dope like a fiend. He had four or five caseless computers in his living room, his whole house looked like a techie's dream. He ran a BBS and I remember dialing in to it. It had door games of all kinds, and chat, very cool.

A couple years later I logged into this thing they called the World Wide Web and slowly left BBSs behind.

Check out video 2, the one about SysOps, really cool.

Neal

[August]

I remember when all this was just fields... (http://mushroom.nosox.org/fields.html)

:DL

[XabbaRus]

1990 that was when I first dialled into a BBS.

Those were the days. I remember my first nude picture I downloaded was a VGA resolution picture of Miriam D'Abo....

It wasn't till 1994 when I started uni that I had constant access to the web. Those were the days when there were normal people in chatrooms, there wasn't all this myspace nonsense and mainly students and professionals on the net.

[SteamWake]

Another blast from the past

MUD's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

I have to admit I participated in these too :timeout:

[Platapus]

My first computer was a Radio Shack PC-1. That was in 1980

It had 1.9 kb of memory and I could program in basic.

And I was the big kid on the block :yeah:

[nikimcbee]

Now that's back when jimbuna only had < 300 posts.:har:

I remember when my dad brought home a 300 baud modem:haha: , and you had to wait for the tone, then plug the phone in.:haha:

[nikimcbee]

oh and a clarification; it that internet or internetz?:haha:

[UnderseaLcpl]

oh and a clarification; it that internet or internetz?:haha:

The current terminology is; teh inernets

[CaptainHaplo]

I remember the old trash 80's. Heck - one of my companies oldest legacy systems is built on a modified tandy - and we have people that still use them! They hate being told they have to upgrade!

The first dialing on my own pc was to a friend's computer - to play the original Command and Conquer multiplayer! That was what - 95? Everything before that was old token ring networks that were local to themselves only. *For the record - I still have nightmares about IPX/SPX*

Then came dial up to the www. Then high speed. Then it was the FTP&IRC scene. At one point you finally had to make a decision - white or black hat. Nowadays its easier - you can wear em both with good cause and legality.

[rubenandthejets]

OMG!
My first PC was a kit from Dick Smith Electronics. We upgraded the RAM to 32K and then we could play "snake". We used to drool at the TSR80.

I was so happy to play "M1A1 Tank Platoon" in CGA graphics (two 5 1/4 inch drives chugging away) when I upgraded to a super hot new machine.

[SteamWake]

oh and a clarification; it that internet or internetz?:haha:

The current terminology is; teh inernets

Interwebs... sheese :rotfl:

[sonar732]

Oh the early days of CompuServ and playing Zork.

[SteamWake]

Oh the early days of CompuServ and playing Zork.

Compuserver.... 8 lines by 40 charecters of text.

File 'librarys' were limited to 4 sections..

Baud rates up to 300bps..

Awsome technology :rock: