BBS

[n2ize]

Remember that old days of Dial Up BBS's ? Where you would run a suitable protocol and actually dial in to the bulletin board to access content. They were faves of early phone phreakers and hackers and other assorted phreaks. The ready access to the Internet eventually killed off much of the BBS business. I used to know a few people who ran dial-up bbs's in the early 1980's, running them on Atari and Commodore systems. Matter of fact I even set up a dial-up bbs's but I never got many subscribers, mostly because I never publicized it to anyone except a hand full of persons I knew well and, the clunker of a modem I was using then was slow and always giving me problems. I guess you could say I was one of the "lesser cats" in the early BBS world.

later on some big players like AOL, CompuServe got into the fray and at least some of them , like AOL, grew into an ISP.

I noticed that there are a few pieces of BBS software still available, and a couple are still activly maintained. Makes me wonder, are there still dial-up BBS's in operation out there ? During the winter I established that there are indeed a few Gopher servers running out there and I even set up a crude Gopher server and that some browsers (i.e. Firefox) still include the Gopher protocol.

So, if Gopher still lives (although relatively obscure) what about the dial-up BBS.

[W4GPL]

I'm sure there are few still accessible by modem, but there are a bunch available via telnet and SSH..

Up until a few years ago, I was still actively playing TradeWars and BRE. :)

I ran a multi node BBS for years -- RemoteAccess BBS software, Fidonet & Filebone hub.. was much fun.


http://bbslist.textfiles.com/904/904.txt
904-726-6592 | Cybernetic Cafe' | JACKSONVILLE, FL (1995) SYSOP | Jeff Iddings

:lol:

[KG4CGC]

I remember the early days of CompuServe when a friend played chess with a guy in Russia. He was paying about a dollar a minute for that connection.
Later the service was cheaper and another friend was paying about 10 cents a minute. He didn't shut down the connection correctly or some such nonsense and it was up all night. He got hit with $500 over his regular fees and customer service refused to work with him so he dumped them and defaulted on his debt (he also voted republican at the time but years later he woke up).
About that time it was easy peazy to get on AOL so that's what he did even though both CS and AOL tried to keep their users corralled in their own little areas/servers/whatever.

But to answer your question directly: Yes.

[NQ6U]

I used to use FidoNet a lot. I remember the first time I got a response to one of my posts from someone in Europe and it seemed like a miracle. It took three or four days to get to me, too.

[kb2vxa]

"Remember that old days of Dial Up BBS's?"
Sure do, trouble was only two were local with a few 800 numbers so my use of them was rather limited.

"They were faves of early phone phreakers and hackers and other assorted phreaks."
You know me too well.

"Makes me wonder, are there still dial-up BBS's in operation out there?"
A ham friend in Canada still operates his.

"So, if Gopher still lives..."
Didn't Bill Murray kill them?

"I used to use FidoNet a lot."
Same VE3 still barking at the moon.

[n2ize]

I used to use FidoNet a lot. I remember the first time I got a response to one of my posts from someone in Europe and it seemed like a miracle. It took three or four days to get to me, too.

I used to log in to the SBA (Small Business Association) BBS. They even gave me my first email addy. It was a ".gov" address.

[KB3LAZ]

I remember a local run bbs in the mid 90s..o0 that was forever ago. xD Thanks for making me feel old lol.

[KC2UGV]

Lot's of BBS's are still online, however, not many are accessible via dial-up anymore. There are 2 in Buffalo right now, that I actively use :)

[W3WN]

Do I remember? Oh yes.

HamNet on (pre-AOL) CompuServe, a whole bunch of FidoNet BBS's, Kermit, Gopher... back in the good old days, when Men were Men, Women were Scarce, and Sheep were Nervous. Oh, sorry, that was the Old West (according to Quinn & Banana, at least)

[w6tmi]

I ran a few of those, one was a multi (32) line "dating", and just a general (1 line) I dunno.. computer users. general public forum.

Some of the software is still maintained, but it's internet savvy, telnet/ssh accessible although I havent looked at it in some time.