Nostalgia! Ran a BBS from around 1982 (late-night, single line only) to late-1995 (24-hours, multiline ring-down), until I had to shut it down due to life circumstances, the last year or two of my BBS' life even had an internet gateway. Started up a new BBS (internet only) back in 2009 that chugs away quietly in the background and runs on a Raspberry Pi in the corner of my office.
Yes, my experience with BBSes was in the early 1980s -- I had no idea until reading this article that some lasted into the late 1990s still as dialup, although I had heard of the BBS-over-telnet phenomenon in the 2000s. But I had net access via my university (mostly ftp and Usenet as the Web wasn't yet a thing) since the late 1980s and so left the BBS world early.
I have fond memories of those days.. Zmodem and xmodem protocols.. Vision/2 and Oblivion BBS software.. Acid and Ice were the stars in the ansi world. Scanning 950's for long distance calls.. and realizing that call waiting was not your friend when downloading big files..
I didn't run a BBS that young but I was definitely an 11-year old modem user... hung out on the local DDial (an early Apple II-based chat system) and used to talk to some unsavoury (but mostly savoury) very fun people!
My parents were understandably a bit cautious and my Dad went to a few meets with me to check these people out but they weren't any worse than our neighbours so... good times
The advantage was I had friends of all ages which as an autistic child was good for developing a well-grounded worldview and empathy, particularly since I was bullied a lot in school for being autistic
This was a really fun read and an even better trip down memory lane. I have fond memories of dialing into our local BBS (running MajorBBS by Galacticomm) to play hours and hours of Galactic Empire. The teleconference was often active with users and many offline parties & adventures happened. I met some of my first girlfriends in the United States on that very same BBS and a couple other folks that I am still friends with today.
Good times. Thanks for sharing this one.
Oh, my. I still have my old BBS setup in totes in my barn. This brings me back to being 14, persuading the phone company to run an extra line to my grandparents hours using a "note" from them that said I could. I'm not saying I wrote the note, but they didn't know they had a second line :-)
