Time to tell how old you are

TPerry

TPerry

Well-known member
Who all got their start in this wacky stuff with running a BBS?

I started with QuickBBS v1.02 (written by Adam Hudson when he was the ripe age of 14) back in 1988. I ran it (was called Code 3 BBS - I was a patrol officer at the time) for several years (upgrading into the 2.7x series - which I paired with FrontDoor for FidoNet). It started on an old Vendex Headstart XT as a single node using a 1200 baud Packard Bell external modem. I then upgraded to a 286/12Mhz and Hayes 2400 baud external (boy was I flying high). I installed DESQview and ran 1 local node and 1 remote node. Got tired of the MS-DOS/DV scene and purchased a 386/33 and installed OS/2 on it and converted my BBS over to a Binkley2/Maximus setup and ended up running 3 remote nodes on it. These were originally U.S. Robotics 14.4k Courier HST modems. I then upgraded them to the Courier HST/V.32 dual standards (thank goodness for SysOp prices).

Was in FidoNet and after about 3 months was offered sub-hub position which I took. Clay Tinsley was my HUB6000 co-ordinator and when he stepped down I assumed his duties for HUB6000. I was also "elected" as the NET124 NEC, which I held until the time I moved back to my home-town.

After moving away from DFW I set my site up again (only a single node) in Palestine but the area here was a "little" backwoods" and most people didn't know what a BBS was - much less a computer :p, so after a few months I shut it down.

I got out of it just about the time that the "internet" started taking off and people were connecting their BBS's into Usenet.
 
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My username and avatar are from one of the first modems I had, a Hayes Optima 28.8 external modem.
06c307c8-e1f7-496e-a6e7-b5659f66008d_290.jpg

Got into BBSes late in the game and setup a Renegade BBS on my computer. Only had one phone line, so that did not work out too well.

I always wanted to run a "board", so when I hopped on the Internet in 95/96, I created a site with a board using a 3rd party hosted forum. I quickly outgrew it and in 1998, I purchased a domain name and setup a site with wwwboard. A few years later I switched to VB and will be converting to XF soon.
 
Forgot to post my "high speed" modem I had upgraded to (this isn't the actual modem but same style). I remember that sucker cost me almost $400 when I bought it.
hayes-modem.webp
 
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I had experience with:

Windows 3.1 (Norton Commander!)
386DX Processor
14.4 Kbps modem
4MB RAM
US$ 100 for 100MB HDD

So, how old am I? :D
 
Wow, this thread brings back some memories!

I started a BBS in 1989 and ran it for about 7 years.

Arkham BBS started using Opus Written by Wynn Wagner and then moved to RemoteAccess, written by Andrew Milner. Once I joined FidoNet (2:254/151, I think) I used JoHo's FrontDoor front end.

Started off using a 2400 baud modem and was using a US Robotics Courier by the time I called it a day.

Just like @Tracy Perry, I migrated through Desqview and OS/2 as my operating systems. The hardware went from a Wyse PC+ (8086 4.77MHz, 20MB hard drive) to a 486 with multiple hard drives and a CD-ROM jukebox. I used to run PimpWars as a door, and also wrote my own multi-player text adventure/MUD which ran on a connected Atari ST, again accessed through a door.

Fun times - we had "eyeball" meets with users and I'm still in touch with people who I met through the BBS scene.
 
Ahhhh... Bring back the flame wars! Those were ALWAYS fun.
I played with RA for a while but really didn't like it that well (basically considered it a rip-off of the QuickBBS style personally). There weren't that many out that would run native on OS/2 - but if you wanted stability (and processing echomail/netmail for 40 downlinks was a BUNCH at the time) you didn't want to be on a DOS based system, OS/2 was here it was at.
I remember all the hoop jumping you had to do to get a DOS door to work in OS/2 with the fossil drivers... but it WAS fun. :LOL:
 
TheBigK said:
Where were you all when I was punching holes in the cards? :coffee:
Click to expand...
Talk about punch cards... we still had some at Palestine PD in dispatch when I went to work down there. Can't remember exactly what they were used for though to tell you the truth - and like a good rooky cop I didn't want to be assigned to dispatch any more than I had to when the dispatcher was out.
 
lazy llama said:
Wow, this thread brings back some memories!

I started a BBS in 1989 and ran it for about 7 years.

Arkham BBS started using Opus Written by Wynn Wagner and then moved to RemoteAccess, written by Andrew Milner. Once I joined FidoNet (2:254/151, I think) I used JoHo's FrontDoor front end.

Started off using a 2400 baud modem and was using a US Robotics Courier by the time I called it a day.

Just like @Tracy Perry, I migrated through Desqview and OS/2 as my operating systems. The hardware went from a Wyse PC+ (8086 4.77MHz, 20MB hard drive) to a 486 with multiple hard drives and a CD-ROM jukebox. I used to run PimpWars as a door, and also wrote my own multi-player text adventure/MUD which ran on a connected Atari ST, again accessed through a door.

Fun times - we had "eyeball" meets with users and I'm still in touch with people who I met through the BBS scene.
Click to expand...
Now there is a blast from the past - Wyse computers.

One of my best friends is a person who signed up on my bbs and became one of my co-sysops.

That was a fun thing for our bbs members are the eyeball meets. We grief to do one every month and they generally were well attended.

Probably better attended over eyeball keys now because the user base was more local than now.
 
Also started off with Opus and Fidonet way back but first modem was an external 300bps, I could read the text faster than it could download lol
 
Tracy Perry said:
Who all got their start in this wacky stuff with running a BBS?
Was in FidoNet and after about 3 months was offered sub-hub position which I took. Clay Tinsley was my HUB6000 co-ordinator and when he stepped down I assumed his duties for HUB6000. I was also "elected" as the NET124 Co-Ordinator, which I held until the time I moved back to my home-town.
Click to expand...
Ah, good old FidoNet days. Was there for a couple of years in the 90's, even though I already had internet access since 1993 or so. But running a BBS was definitely cooler than running a website in early-mid 90's.

I never touched the DOS stuff, my setup was always OS/2, beginning with OS/2 2.0 (first BinkleyTerm EE, then Xenia mailer), Maximus as BBS, squish (later FastEcho/2) for message handling and other things (GoldEd, of course).

Was also involved in the development of some FidoNet software, most notably the first really working mailer for Win32 (BinkleyTerm 2.60XE) that ran on Windows NT 4 and offered all the features of the OS/2 version, including Hydra (bidirectional) file transfers. I still have my last compiled executable from late 1999, which still runs on Windows 8 (if it can find a COM port).
 
First computer was a Commodore 64 with a 300 baud modem. It was later upgraded to a Commodore 128 with a 1200 baud modem. At some point we joined Quatrum Link (Q-Link) which was the first commercial large-scale online service. Q-Link later became America Online. It had "People Connection" which was just basic chat broken up into chatrooms by topic. It had "email" but it wasn't yet called email, it was just called mail.

The username could be a max of 10 characters and BirdOfPrey was already taken by the time we signed up, hence BirdOPrey5 was born.
 
I don't recall the exact model of my 1st computer. I remember it being big and I remember it using what looked like an old turn dial tv for a monitor. I remember the whole thing only had a few kb for memory and mostly ran on large 8' floppies (not the 5' or 3'). I recall my 1st 2 computers had different screen colors, one was green and "white" (technically the text was a lighter green than the background, but everyone called it white) and the other was simply just black and white (although I don't recall which was which now).

We did have an Apple Lisa at some point. I wish we had known what they would be worth today, because I don't think we would have trashed it over time. I also remember an x86, 386, and a 486DX Overdrive (100mhz).

I recall the first 'sites' I visited each had their own phone number. There was no IP address and no www or .com anything. I later then I recall finally dialing out a single number and typing in IP addresses. I do recall a short brief period of time when you did not need to pay an IPS (Internet Service Provider). You were only billed long distance if the number you used was not local. I guess you could "argue" the phone company was the ISP (Bell). You navigated back then using keystrokes and command prompt codes.

I remember the first "sites" had no photos or color, just simple text and links to click on. I later recall how people loved the idea of .com domain names. And I recall my first ISP that I paid for was CompuServe (was an hourly rate fee).

A lot has changed (obviously).
 
You had an Apple Lisa in your house? It was sold to business customers for about 10 grand a pop. Somebody MUST have taken some pics of that.

Luckily, I've never seen a 8foot, 5foot, or 3foot floppy disk.
 

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