7 Feb
2002
7 Feb
'02
9:41 a.m.
Man I miss the good old BBS days.... when very few outside the hobbyist
computer users really knew about that secret little world of on-line usage.
I ran a BBS on an Atari 800 at first with just 1 88K 810 disk drive, 850
interface and a Hayes 300 smartmodem... later on it grew to 4 Atari 800's
connected to a Corvus 10mb HD and I had some custom relay signal boards on
the joystick ports to allow users to participate on a multiuser chat room,
it was very kludgy and locked up a lot, but it was so much fun to experiment
and try things out and to console in on a user and say hi and get into a
realtime conversation. Ah the good old days! :-)
Curt
----- Original Message -----
From: "R. D. Davis" <rdd(a)rddavis.org>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 6:22 PM
Subject: Re: BBS systems on PDP-11s (was: Original Searchlight bbs...)
animals:
Quothe Dave McGuire, from writings of Thu, Feb 07,
2002 at
04:40:03PM -0500:
On February 7,
R. D. Davis wrote:
Me too. If everyone could have their own class C network, there would
probably still be many active BBS's accessible via telnet; web sites
just aren't the same. BBS's provided a degree of autonomy that isn't
necessarily available over the WWW. For example, many ISPs and
mailing-list hosts impose "politically correct" rules limiting freedom
of speech. Many BBSs, on the other hand, had more of an "anything
goes" environment - at least some, like mine, did. There was no one
to regulate content on BBSs, and the telephone co. didn't go around
disconnecting people for the content on their BBSs. On my BBS, there
existed unlimited freedom of speech, although I discouraged profane
language in most situations; this was the opposite of some local BBSs
run by tyrants who'd readily kick users off-line for offending anyone
who was the least bit over-sensitive.
It might be fun to put some of our older systems back on-line as BBS
systems! All I need, if I recall correctly, to bring my old BBS to
life again is fossil driver, which I think I'm missing, but I might
have it around here on a floppy somewhere.
If anyone's intersted in putting classic systems on-line as BBS
systems, I'll gladly maintain a list of systems, telephone numbers,
hours of operation, etc. and make it available on my web site.
--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other Were most others here sysops of BBSs at one time
as well?
I ran an RCP/M BBS, the "Mercerville RCP/M", in Mercerville NJ (near
Trenton and Princeton) from about mid-1985 to 1988 or so. I enjoyed
it very much. I sorta miss the "culture" of BBSs. All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief
that we're above Nature
&
rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures,
using dogma to justify
such
http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify
much human cruelty.