A BBS was a computer system ran by someone with a spare computer running BBS software and a modem on the traditional phone system. The system would wait for users to call via their modem, answer them, and establish a connection. The interface was a simple text terminal, though a few colors and ANSI characters were supported. Using one looked something like this:
The user would log in and could type commands to interact with the system. Most BBSs offered forums on various topics, had a file download section, and a few door games. The user base of a BBS was very local, since most BBSs had only a single modem (meaning only one user could connect at a time), and long distance calls were prohibitively expensive. This meant at most a few hundred users. Some popular BBSs with generous SysOps would have multiple lines, allowing several people to use the system simultaneously, opening chat as a possibility. However, these were the exception rather than the rule. To connect to a popular BBS, you had to set your terminal software on redial mode, which would dial every 30 seconds or so until it successfully connected. You had to stick around during this process, because most BBSs would disconnect after about a minute if you hadn't logged in.
My friends and I chose Stonehenge, a San Rafael, CA BBS, as our principal haunt. This was my first taste of an online community. The users ranged in age from early teens (I was 13 or 14 at the time) to something like 70, which is how old the SysOp was. I learned how quickly politeness and common decency evaporate when you're simply a user with an alias (mine was sonik). I spent most of my time participating in discussions, and judging by material I can find on USENET archives authored by myself over the next few years, it was probably a lot of inane prattle.
I also spent a lot of time downloading files. Before the Internet really took off, BBSs were the primary way for small software developers to distribute their projects, often as shareware. Unlike the web, BBS systems could support only one thing happening at a time, so downloading files meant you couldn't do anything else while downloading. The most popular protocol was called ZMODEM, which allowed you to restart downloads if they were interrupted. Something as simple as someone calling you while you were online, thus activating call waiting, could cause a disconnect, so this was important.
Through some contacts at Stonehenge I learned of another BBS called Access Denied! This was a shadier scene. Access Denied! specialized in what was known as warez, which mainly means pirated software and small programs called cracks, which remove copy protection from software or upgrade a demo version to a full version. BBSs like Access Denied! were free but worked on a system of "download ratio." In order to download you had to first upload something, and the amount you could download was proportional to how much you upload, usually measured by megabytes and typically could could download about 5 times as much as you upload. Downloading warez was of course illegal, and unlike using bittorrent today, much easier for the FBI to track since you are using the phone system. I'll leave it to the reader to guess my level of participation in Access Denied!
Sometime in 1994, before starting freshmen year in high school, a friend and I started a BBS of our own, Terminal Velocity. I don't remember a whole lot about it, other than that it was fairly derivative and copied much of Stonehenge. We did have a much more extensive download section (from CDROM) and had discussion forums that were networked with other BBSs. We didn't host any warez.
My interest in BBSs waned dramatically towards the end of 1994 after I joined CRL Networks, a San Francisco-based Internet Service Provider. More to come in Part 2: The Text-based Internet Era...
This brings back memories - slowwww downloads, busy signals, upgrading to 4800 then 9600 baud, getting grief from my parents for making our home phone line busy all the time.
ReplyDeleteLooking back on it now, most of the information on the BBSs usually wasn't particularly interesting. But it was cool to be using the computer for more than just playing games & as a word processor. And it was definitely a transition to the internet. Sort of like the internet-lite.
And I remember prank calling the sysop of Stonehenge. I haven't thought of that in years!
Let's not forget that BBSs also served as a beta version of internet porn. Very, very slow internet porn.
ReplyDeleteIt's things like this that serve to remind me that even if my students are only 8-10 years younger than I am, they've never lived in a world without the internet, and I have.