Who ran a BBS back in the day?

For some reason today while waiting in the doctor's office, I flashed back to my days of running a local BBS. I used Wildcat! (like pretty much everyone else did) and it was some of the most fun I ever had. Since I only had one phone line, I remember I could only run it late at night after everyone had gone to bed.

Mine was called the SLUG BBS. SLUG stood for Salinas vaLley User's Group. Kinda lame, but SVUG just didn't have the same catch. I think that is one thing I miss about living in California in the 90's, computer stores on every corner and lots of BBS's to talk shop with people. Of course I had to call other BBS' and the first time we got a $600 phone bill from calling all those up in San Jose, the wife threatened to throw it out the window. Can't hardly blame her for that.

Mine was simple, just some messaging and a few BBS games like Trade Wars.

Anyone else jump on that bandwagon?

Never ran one but used plenty. There's a frontier feel, an intimacy I guess, that's hard to find on websites. I called local places playing Trade Wars and Legend of Red Dragon. Then I called places like &TOTSE and a place around DC that was awash in conspiracy-theorist material.

There's nothing like it today. The closest, I guess, is IRC or the one MUSH I still visit occasionally.

Bully to you for running one. It's a shame these days Wildcat! would have to be an iOS/Android app to run a BBS on your phone line.

I ran Hackerz Heaven out of Durham NC, and later Raleigh. It started out on GT-Power thanks to a donated license by SysOp Steve @Moonbase Alpha, and later moved to its own codebase after I got some more programming experience.

Don't answer this question! They're trying to catch us old people.

Yeah never ran but I used a bunch. I think that is why I LOVE the flashing cursor look in games and movies. Like the Ingress UI makes me squeal!

It's long seemed to me that the first person to make a Facebook version of Trade Wars wins a lot. But I don't think anyone has.

Never owned one but I was senior admin on one out of Philly called Traveler BBS. I miss those days! Started on a 300 baud modem on the C64 and ended with 56k on a 486 before the internet came along.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

It's long seemed to me that the first person to make a Facebook version of Trade Wars wins a lot. But I don't think anyone has.

Please, no. I've successfully extracted myself from Facebook for the most part. Trade Wars might take me back. I...I don't want to go back.

Ivory Joe BBS on a C64 with 4 1541 disk drives attached.

Ahh the memories. I used to run a BBS called Victory Mansions in Branford, CT. I ran Renegade software at the time and also ran a group called TRiC (The Renegade Information Crew). We basically hacked the Renegade.ovr file to do things you normally couldn't. If I recall correctly my BBS was the first Renegade board to have arrow keys for menu options. It consisted of a lot of ANSI files but looked awesome The board got so big that I made it private, renamed it to pHOBIA, and had ACiD and iCE making all of my advertisements and menus.

Those days rocked. It was awesome to run a BBS and wish it was something I could do again. Getting callers from other states at the time was amazing to me. I do recall Trade Wars, Legend of the Red Dragon, and The Pit. I don't believe I ran any other games besides those 3. I do remember setting up TRiCNet as well as I wanted my own and didn't want to network through FidoNet. I really don't remember why we didn't just use Fido *Shrug*

I do have a 20mb Hard Drive around here somewhere that still has my BBS on it. I should really check out what is on there, it would be good for a laugh

SpacePPoliceman wrote:

It's long seemed to me that the first person to make a Facebook version of Trade Wars wins a lot. But I don't think anyone has.

http://www.tradewarsrising.com/ ?

I ran a little WWIV BBS in California. The interesting bit was that I was running it on an XT Bridgeboard inside an Amiga 2000. The Bridgeboard was basically a complete XT in card format, a very long single card. It 'bridged' between the Amiga slots, in the front of the case, and the special ISA slots in the BACK of the case. The front right of the machine was for Amiga cards, the back left was for PC cards, and the Bridgeboard plugged into the one common slot between the two, bridging the two environments. I had two separate hard drives on the machine, one for the Amiga, and one for the XT, including an MFM hard drive controller card that plugged into an ISA slot in PC Country.

The XT displayed through a special windowing program on the Amiga. Amiga graphics were planar, where XT graphics were 'chunky', so it had special hardware to tear apart the XT screen and re-assemble it in a format that the Amiga could handle fairly quickly. I'd run a special terminal program to pull the video data, display it, and send keystrokes back. It was really pretty slick, although not fast enough for PC gaming. Even as weak as PC games were at the time, they usually didn't work well with a screen that updated four or five times a second. (The PC games, of course, had no idea; it looked like a standard video card to them.) This was fine for text use, but terrible for almost all games.

By simply closing the PC display window, I had full use of the Amiga side of the computer, and could play games that could run under Workbench. Unfortunately, I couldn't play self-booting games, because the XT board needed a special program to run on the Amiga side to tell it to start running. (The AT Bridgeboard could self-start, but it was impossibly expensive, as much as a whole separate computer.) So, I had to stick with things that were compatible with the OS, but that was still a pretty wide variety. It was mostly the super fast-action games that needed the bare hardware, and I didn't like those that well anyway.

I also had a separate modem and phone line for the Amiga, so I could be calling out while receiving calls on the PC side. In fact, I could even call myself, and see myself typing in two windows at once. This was mostly useless, but man, it was so cool to show it off. For some reason, I typically used my own board that way, calling myself from the Amiga side, but I don't remember why anymore. Maybe it was because the Amiga terminal emulator was better than the WWIV console? I'm just not sure, after so long.

And, of course, the Amiga multitasked, so I could be downloading something (a long process at 2400 baud!), unzipping another download (also a very, very long process on a 7.1Mhz processor), reading something else I'd already downloaded, be listening to four-channel music (this was where MOD music originally came from), AND be running an entire BBS. All at the same time, on the same machine.

In many ways, it was like using a machine from about the year, hmm, probably 2000 or so, but ten or twelve years sooner. You may remember the Amiga zealots of yore; they were zealous because they were right. The way you're using your computer now? We were doing something a lot like that in the late 1980s. That's why we were so relentlessly evangelistic.

So, anyway, that's my BBS story. Ran it for, hmm, maybe two years.

Coolbeans wrote:

Mine was called the SLUG BBS. SLUG stood for Salinas vaLley User's Group.

Were there lots of hardcore BBS users living in Gonzales?

Malor wrote:

In many ways, it was like using a machine from about the year, hmm, probably 2000 or so, but ten or twelve years sooner. You may remember the Amiga zealots of yore; they were zealous because they were right. The way you're using your computer now? We were doing something a lot like that in the late 1980s. That's why we were so relentlessly evangelistic.

Still have and love my A500, although I admit I haven't turned it on for a few yeas now.

Used to run a part time (meaning at night) BBS when I was in college on the machine. Never got many logins, but it was a fun to play around with.

*Legion* wrote:
Coolbeans wrote:

Mine was called the SLUG BBS. SLUG stood for Salinas vaLley User's Group.

Were there lots of hardcore BBS users living in Gonzales?

Well, I don't know what you mean by hardcore. But we had a few members that would come up from there to the meetings. We actually had a bit of scandal from Gonzales actually. Two members, both married, actually met at our first meeting which was in my living room. They started having an affair and each left their spouses and they got married themselves. That was just weird.

MacBrave wrote:
Malor wrote:

In many ways, it was like using a machine from about the year, hmm, probably 2000 or so, but ten or twelve years sooner. You may remember the Amiga zealots of yore; they were zealous because they were right. The way you're using your computer now? We were doing something a lot like that in the late 1980s. That's why we were so relentlessly evangelistic.

Still have and love my A500, although I admit I haven't turned it on for a few yeas now.

Used to run a part time (meaning at night) BBS when I was in college on the machine. Never got many logins, but it was a fun to play around with.

I've thought of selling my A500 to someone who might use it or put it in a museum, but never have. I hadn't booted it up for over a decade but a few months ago booted it up with my 1084S monitor. The kids loved Eye of the Beholder. If I had space, I'd keep it set up.

I wonder if there is BBS software available for it still. I was thinking of getting a landline the other day, and now I wonder what it would be like to have a BBS.

muraii wrote:

I've thought of selling my A500 to someone who might use it or put it in a museum, but never have. I hadn't booted it up for over a decade but a few months ago booted it up with my 1084S monitor. The kids loved Eye of the Beholder. If I had space, I'd keep it set up.

I wonder if there is BBS software available for it still. I was thinking of getting a landline the other day, and now I wonder what it would be like to have a BBS.

Still have a 1084S, along with a SupraDrive (50meg scsci hard drive + 1 meg RAM!) that plugged into the left hand side of the A500.

I think the BBS software I used was C-net, but I'm not sure.

I co-ran a BBS called The Happy Monkey out of my bedroom when I was a teenager. I can't remember what software we used to host the thing, but it ran on my x286. We mostly existed for the games: LORD, Trade Wars, Falcon's Eye, and stuff like that.

Eezy_Bordone wrote:

Ivory Joe BBS on a C64 with 4 1541 disk drives attached.

4?! That is hard core!

I actually tried to start up a BBS but never ended up opening it for callers. The PC we bought to put it on kept having problems and when I finally got it sorted and got everything configured, the BBS scene was starting to wind down and only the really popular boards still got users. I used a ton of them though. In Ottawa, the big software in use was Maximus (made only a couple hours away in Kingston, now open source), Remote Access, Telegard and Renegade (a Telegard clone that was buggy but more featured.) Maximus was incredibly flexible but everything for it had to be managed through text files, whereas most of the other options were menu driven. I have much fond nostalgia for my BBS days. So much fun! Trade Wars, Kannons & Katapults, Solar Realms, Barren Realms, Interstellar Annihilation, so much time spent on those. Put a bunch of those up through a browser somewhere and I will put many hours into them.

Ah the old BBS days. How I first discovered porn and online games.

Anyone remember the space game where you'd fly around and attack other people? You could get battleship class ships. I don't seem to recall that it was Trade Wars, but it might have been. There was also a post-apocalyptic version I think, where you wandered the wastes, Fallout-style.

It seems to me that today's young people lose a lot of experience trying to figure things out the way we had to, back in the day. Of course they also don't have to deal with explaining crazy-expensive phone bills to their parents.

I had access to the Arpanet from 1980 on, so I didn't really feel the need to hit BBSs very often. Mostly it was to get files from the Apple Pi user's group in DC, or some gaming site I found on rec.games.strategic or something. I got my newsfeed and email through UMD (I knew some admins) and home email through Digex, once that became available in the late 80's. So somehow I missed the BBS world and remained ensconced in the edu scene for nearly ten years. After all, no BBS could compare to the info firehose that was Usenet.

ah, netnews.alt.tasteless. I remember it well.

This thread is reviving my interest in making a hacking game that makes heavy use of Usenet and BBSs to convey the story and pick up information. Of course, I missed the heyday of both as a primary medium, so it's partially nostalgia for an era I never really experienced.

MacBrave wrote:
muraii wrote:

I've thought of selling my A500 to someone who might use it or put it in a museum, but never have. I hadn't booted it up for over a decade but a few months ago booted it up with my 1084S monitor. The kids loved Eye of the Beholder. If I had space, I'd keep it set up.

I wonder if there is BBS software available for it still. I was thinking of getting a landline the other day, and now I wonder what it would be like to have a BBS.

Still have a 1084S, along with a SupraDrive (50meg scsci hard drive + 1 meg RAM!) that plugged into the left hand side of the A500.

I think the BBS software I used was C-net, but I'm not sure.

I have the same drive (A590 in my case) with a 20MB drive and 1MB RAM. Also have a 900-baud modem.

I'll look into C-Net. Danke.

ran TKL BBS and co ran a couple others...

I certainly used several BBSs back in high school. Back then, long distance was more common in the Portland area, so calling one or two towns over could be a long distance call. My Dad was not happy the first month I called a particular BBS and racked up the long distance.

Malor wrote:

I ran a little WWIV BBS in California. The interesting bit was that I was running it on an XT Bridgeboard inside an Amiga 2000. The Bridgeboard was basically a complete XT in card format, a very long single card. It 'bridged' between the Amiga slots, in the front of the case, and the special ISA slots in the BACK of the case. The front right of the machine was for Amiga cards, the back left was for PC cards, and the Bridgeboard plugged into the one common slot between the two, bridging the two environments. I had two separate hard drives on the machine, one for the Amiga, and one for the XT, including an MFM hard drive controller card that plugged into an ISA slot in PC Country.

The XT displayed through a special windowing program on the Amiga. Amiga graphics were planar, where XT graphics were 'chunky', so it had special hardware to tear apart the XT screen and re-assemble it in a format that the Amiga could handle fairly quickly. I'd run a special terminal program to pull the video data, display it, and send keystrokes back. It was really pretty slick, although not fast enough for PC gaming. Even as weak as PC games were at the time, they usually didn't work well with a screen that updated four or five times a second. (The PC games, of course, had no idea; it looked like a standard video card to them.) This was fine for text use, but terrible for almost all games.

By simply closing the PC display window, I had full use of the Amiga side of the computer, and could play games that could run under Workbench. Unfortunately, I couldn't play self-booting games, because the XT board needed a special program to run on the Amiga side to tell it to start running. (The AT Bridgeboard could self-start, but it was impossibly expensive, as much as a whole separate computer.) So, I had to stick with things that were compatible with the OS, but that was still a pretty wide variety. It was mostly the super fast-action games that needed the bare hardware, and I didn't like those that well anyway.

I also had a separate modem and phone line for the Amiga, so I could be calling out while receiving calls on the PC side. In fact, I could even call myself, and see myself typing in two windows at once. This was mostly useless, but man, it was so cool to show it off. For some reason, I typically used my own board that way, calling myself from the Amiga side, but I don't remember why anymore. Maybe it was because the Amiga terminal emulator was better than the WWIV console? I'm just not sure, after so long.

And, of course, the Amiga multitasked, so I could be downloading something (a long process at 2400 baud!), unzipping another download (also a very, very long process on a 7.1Mhz processor), reading something else I'd already downloaded, be listening to four-channel music (this was where MOD music originally came from), AND be running an entire BBS. All at the same time, on the same machine.

In many ways, it was like using a machine from about the year, hmm, probably 2000 or so, but ten or twelve years sooner. You may remember the Amiga zealots of yore; they were zealous because they were right. The way you're using your computer now? We were doing something a lot like that in the late 1980s. That's why we were so relentlessly evangelistic.

So, anyway, that's my BBS story. Ran it for, hmm, maybe two years.

I also had an Amiga 2000 with an XT bridgeboard, but rarely used it. I was foolish in buying it thinking I could play PC compatible games as well as my Amiga games. Maybe Infocom games, but nothing else. But that Amiga, that was one amazing machine. It wasn't even on my radar until a friend showed me Wings on his. Bought mine the next day. I can still hear the music and the game sounds. I can't believe that was 20 years ago. Doesn't seem possible.

I didn't, but knew several people who did.

For a while, I ran The Atari Zone, the BBS of our local Atari users group. At the end (92- or 93-ish?), it was running heavily heavily modified Carina II on an Atari 130XE (yes, 8-bit), with 40MB of hard drive and a 1MB Multi-I/O board. Good times.

When I first played Farmville, it brought back memories of BBS games with daily limits. I immediately understood the appeal.

Way to make me feel old on a Monday morning.

Robear wrote:

After all, no BBS could compare to the info firehose that was Usenet. :-)

I lived in BFE, Alaska where the really wasn't any scene. Long distance phone charges and party lines are killers. I participated in a couple, but didn't have the hardware to run my own or even really the inclination. Then I got access to the university's VAX system in 1986, and happily coasted into Usenet and floated around there until I got my first "internet" job in 1992, doing art and building webpages in Mosaic.