Why did scene BBS' in the 90s have the best names

Why did scene BBS' in the 90s have the best names.

Favorite boards?

>Boondocks
>Plastic Passion
>Pirates Den

Other urls found in this thread:

codetapper.com/amiga/random-rants/auckland-bulletin-board-systems/
youtu.be/e9zDWgeV8zY
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Why don't BBSes still exist?

I'll host one if you want user

You're on one right now. Also I heard the local BBS from the 90s is still active round here.

my guess, baby millenials skipping BBS tech.

I would literally kill for a return to BBS' hubs. Topsites are not the same, and the ascii art is always lacking. ( rarely ansi )

Phone calls are way more expensive than a regular Internet connection.

I found a write up on the early New Zealand BBS scene that brought back some memories

codetapper.com/amiga/random-rants/auckland-bulletin-board-systems/

>millennial complaining about millennials
>can't spell millennial
Every single time.

I took my first breath in the 70's. I'm comfortable misspelling the world, I feel it's not "my word", but I'll recognize your correction

Ok loser.

sticks and stones

That's nice of you, user.

These BBSes are pretty damn cool.

My childhood BBS is still online. It's an Amiga hooked to some kind of Amiga modem to Ethernet device, so these days you telnet into it. People on Facebook tried to get people to start using it, but it's 1992 tech in 2016, it's just not useful.

cool, is it running Ami-Express?

>Bitstream Underground

>it's 1992 tech in 2016, it's just not useful.
Sure it does, it's a localized form of social media. That's great.

nice, sounds cool AF

I'm all for this.

Open it to the amateur radio crowd.

reminder that kim dot com Mega was an FBI snitch under the handle kimble who shut down BBS and attempted to entrap sceners for using sprint calling cards, after he got caught as a teenager.

Mr. Dotcom has lived a colorful life.
There is about 2,000 stories of him being a piece of shit.

Never hear the same one twice.

Who cares?

the latest that gave me a chuckle. ( not so new ) his first and only wife cucked him for the baby sitter

it's 2016, not even 2006, and certainly not 1996 (any 1986 shits want to raise their poop covered hands?), so it doesn't matter if it did or did not have the best names.

Did you know that certain amish use smartphones and the internet as long as it's to make money? So we have actual "luddites" who are more tech savvy than your typical "computer historian" or whatever the fuck you call yourselves where you've been fighting everything made after 2008.

Get with the times, your circlejerks ended two decades ago.

>hurr telling us what to do
Ok sure, old computer threads go like this:
>remember this stupid shit from the 90s
>yup, remember this other old piece of shit
>no
>KID KID KID KID
>hey guys, if you don't think the internet turn to SHIT at this date:
>1985, 1991, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2018, 2020
>then ur a KID KID KID
these threads end in age segregation and while your rebuttal will instantly be "go back to your smartphone thread kid", ironically more actually goes ON in those smartphone threads than your same 5-10 nostalgia pics posted over and over and over again. There is literally NOTHING said in any IRC anymore, BBS, and any thread like this.

Rude

there is nothing said in IRC anymore. Wrong.

I understand your point, drop old networks, embrace new, however, IRC is not dead.

Lets not make this a CD vs Vinyl narrative.

To understand the future you must understand the past - some guy

>drop old networks, embrace new
There's usually no reason the two can't coexist.

Whats law and orders focus, www, torrents, tor, against crackers, pedos, terrorists

I just want to chill away from that, irc, usenet, bbs, its comfy

That guy was krut cobain

As someone who missed out on BBS stuff, can someone please explain what it was like?

login in handle:
pw:

set user account with privileges ranging from low ratio ul/dl to unlimited

different sections for warez, porn, HPA stuff

thriving ascii art headers. Art work would often change on the more elite bbs

forum and private messaging

for more public doman boards, online games

sharing bants with the sysop over online chat

landline tied up 24/7 :)

>no lamers

for the more closed boards, everyone was an enthusiast, no spoonfeeding, all members have different skills to bring to the table

arent there any exploits to those old programs?

Amiexpress has some bugs and I remember cracked versions having backdoors to admin priv

I would speculate the last run versions would be secure enough since it was run by easily 10's of thousands of sysops if not 100s of thousands

* globally

So where is it?

For every 3 million citizens, you'd be looking at over 500 scene BBS in the 90s across platforms by rough estimation

that kind of ratio t b h

I assume you meant to reply to someone else.

>feeling nostalgic for something you didn't experience

>back in the bad old days
>would have phreaked every payphone in existence to get enough quarters to buy something as blinding fast as a 56k modem
>cruise around some BBSs
>stumble across some neat stuff
>few places where original edgelords discuss culture jamming, random anarchist stuff
>some groups talk about all the zero day exploits in various computer systems they know of
>stuff used by banks, some super old school security systems, TV station broadcast controls that could take phone commands to switch cameras for some reason
>stumble across one fairly popular discussion
>few handfuls of replies in a day
>there is 3kb of text uploaded
>have a dodgy connection so it won't open fully, have to try to reload a few times
>watch the bytes trickle in
>finally get it
>ASCII porn in the header
>body of text is some paranoid rantings about future predictions, HIV being used to kill off all the poor people, Republicans merging with computer systems to rule the world, the government can listen to you by pointing a laser at your window, and there are lasers inside of TV screens
>read the whole thing
>felt like a bad ass

If you want to relive what this felt like go to textfiles.com, start reading through shit, and pretend like you're one of the only people in the world to have seen this sacred arcane knowledge. Thats what it was like.

So pretty much exactly like the internet today, but with less commercialism.

>2016
>reading responses.

Things were hard to find, and only the highly motivated could find them. The average person wasn't aware of internet communication. It was a select handful of the tech savvy, normies never would have dreamed of wasting their time on it.
It was like trespassing. There was a slight air of danger, an understanding that you were doing something others didn't do, something that might not be legal. You were the proverbial cat burglar slinking around an empty building at night, rifling through a file cabinet, looking over your shoulder.

The internet now is an open and mundane thing. There is no mystery to it, and normal people are in every corner, shitting it up. Children are just about everywhere posting openly with no regard to privacy, decorum, or basic net literacy. Its like walking through the food court of a shopping mall during business hours. Who the fuck cares if you're there with a million other people?

they still exist, the cyberpunk general uses them sometimes.

OMG I just dug up my stack of USR Courier V.Everything modems a few weeks ago, too. Nice choice of an image to post, OP...

Ah I miss those days. I used to run a BBS with a whopping TWO lines and three 6 CD carousel CDROM's. Had one of the libraries filled with NightOwl CD's, another with SimtelNet, and the third with misc stuff.

Other than my own BBS (which had two phases; one I ran TAG, and the other Renegade. I tried PCBoard at one point, but wasn't fond of it).

Other than my BBS, and a couple locals (Memory Prime and Disk Mania), I was a member of The Hell Pit.

Anyway, thanks for the trip down memory lane.

the nostalgia for me is the fact that people like you really didnt really exist online back then for the most part. to even get online and post you had to know how to use a computer.

now someone like you can bounce their face off a keyboard and hit send. even the trolls were witty and funny, now its copy paste 12 year olds on bath salts lel

> clicking internet explorer or iexplorer.exe in msdos was hard
> hurr only the master elites could do it hurrr

case in point

There's still tons, just way less than in the 80s/90s. As well, most go over telnet now rather than dialins. Google for local bbs listings, or for ones globally.

Canyou tell me the hotkeys for U.A.D? No, I didn't think so...

used audio jacks out of my amiga to my sony walkman, killing time on a payphone, jamaican party, with my irish and aussie bros, who i'd never met face to face, in the city. i did it for free.

* jamaican party line

It's alao (excluding ansi/ascii art and other general graphics) a form of social media/interaction and file sharing that doesn't have ads, tracking, or an overload of fucking data/webpages... I guess.

So true. The only shilling was for sprint calling cards and CCs. I was just a warez guy. A courier. This is my story.

I'm all for this too. The text/ascii graphical environments (not familiar too much with usenet) are minimal, quick, and very comfy, especially IRC... at least when it's active.

Sorta the same with priv trackers... almost. At least good ones give a shit about having good users (ie. BTN).

every one had a job

You could code? Cool, make some cool BBS plug ins
Make a group demo
You like music? Cool, fire up octomed
Enthusiast with money in the bank? Nice, buy a 100MB HD and wack some phone lines in
Can access games? Supplier
Trader? Courier
Artist, good make some logos, make a nice nfo

Everyone had a purpose under a banner

I notice TRSI pre'ing wii stuff. That took me back. Especially anyone that remembers TRSI megademo.

They basically span from c64 -> 2016 now. Well done, boys.

gotta fix that

Red Sector MEgademo ( before they merged with Tristar )

youtu.be/e9zDWgeV8zY

How do I read a specific message thread and reply to it with quotes?

How did the 2 lines work? Literally 2 phone lines? Wouldn't that give 2 different phone numbers to dial into?

FIRST ONE TO EVER HAVE A FAMILY PLAN ALL TO HIMSELF.

2PHONESHAWTY.

Please tell more. I was "with it" back in 2011/12, but I was always curious about racing back in the BBS days, especially given the massive number of warez boards out there. What was it like for you?

I had to stop because a guy snitched on me when he got taken down, but i was a minor so untouchable.

But for that time. A lot fo friendships with international guys. killing hours on the phone talking shit.

playing games 0 day

reading HPA and feeling like a bad ass

cosysoped 3 BBS ( no locals ) , but i was local

mainly great friendships. I got kicked out of home at 16 and one of my scene friends let me stay at his flat for like 6 months

Also tyhe stereotypes didnt apply. A bunch of my scene friends were skaters, vegans, into beastie boys n shit as well as phreaking, coding, blueboxing.

its sounds sad, but it was a real time to be alive.

fat neckbeards of the 80s anti-social network where they "join" and then idle for 15+ years thinking that this makes them fit in and now claim it's some lost golden internet age but can't admit it's been two decades of selective bad-memory-removal and was shit the entire time.

go watch bbs the documentary, explains it perfectly.
>episode one: this is what bbses were like, we're all kind of losers tho haha (FILMED 100% FROM BASEMENTS)
>episode 2-8: I'M A PIECE OF SHIT BUT I'M FUCKING BETTER THAN YOU!

this is right, they evolved into forums and imageboards. Saying this causes BBS turds to go apeshit every time because it doesn't have shitty ascii "art" (instead it has this newfangled thing called a JAYPEG) and an interface that isn't shit on purpose and more than 8 users total. The common way they pretend to refute this is by saying modern evolutions don't have any "soul" (it isn't shit).

Yes. A line 1, and a line 2. ( with 2 modems ofcourse )

It was funny because the internet was almost an extension of real life vs today where it's almost an entirely separate place, socially.

this is wrong. Alot of my scene friends were skaters with girl friends who loved computers phreaking and coding, and their GFs would complain. You are wrong.

>please tell me only the positive things that you remember and conveniently leave out all the bad things

>feeling like a bad ass
key words "feeling"

>it sounds sad
Maybe it sounds sad because it actually was

they were NEEt tho, but they'd go skate every day

Pretty much what it's like now:
>friday
>stay in
>hate self
>play with machine to forget misery
>talk with others to forget virgin at 30

This wrong.

First BBS I ever dialled into was Slamdance Central sysop'd by Stussy

He was a skater. It wasn't a 0 day board, probably 5 day.

He was no neckbeard. His GF was a nurse, if I remember correctly.

This neckbeard sterotype has got to go

telnet pharcyde.org

Enjoy, Sup Forums. It's quite active.

Does not play nice with terminal.app

>a bunch of namefag edgelords and neckbeards circlejerking

so what we're doing right now then.

Holy shit, you weren't kidding. This is the same TRSI from the 80s, right? Or 90s even, god they're old as fuck.

from the 80s, yea.

Right, but how did you ensure that 2 numbers pointed to the same BBS? Could you mix them together so it's just one number, but 2 lines?

I'm also confused as to like... if someone calls into the BBS on one line, is that line basically full? Nobody else can connect? So then how could people chat and stuff if there was 1 line, or even 2? You'd basically need like... 3-4 lines, in that situation, to get any sort of real "activity".

Did they basically just have lots of lines and modems...?

the lines would be seperate with seperate numbers, or they called them nodes. Generally both numbers would be listed on BBS nfo tags. or node 1 for new uer or lopw ratio usert and node 2: private , for couriers.

Is there a Telnet/BBS client for Android, or what's the protocol I'd have to use to call into one on my phone? I think that'd be neat, just leaving messages while on the go. Combine the old with the new.

At least they went outside, unlike you.

>Friday
>Stay in
>Play games on PC because I've worked all week and now I can really just relax without having work the next day
>Do WEBRips and other shit to upload
>Organize DOS games and other stuff I've downloaded

Feels good to just chill on a Friday on my PC, doing whatever work/organizing/gaming I want.

You either telnet or use a modem, I think most could telnet now.

Wew lad, and they're STILL active today. Then again, R1911 is..? For the most part? And I'd imagine there's other groups that took breaks and stuff. Just neat to see. Pretty sure 8088 is totally dead, one of the earliest groups.

Oldest entry that Layer13 has for TRSI is for 1992, which is odd.

The earliest release I have for TRSI is Cruise_For_a_Corpse_English_256_Colour-TRSI, which was PRE'd 13/07/1992, according to the NFO, with Die Hard II being listed as 01/07/1992 in their NFO.

Wiki lists their demogroup/I guess TRSI as 1990, but RSI as 1985.

Get syncterm, looks great here, pic related. Loads of ANSI art follows that screen.

That's what I was thinking. You have a public line, and a private. One for racers, the other for whoever else. But still, the issue persisted then of only one person per line being able to chat/whatever?

Right, so I can just telnet from my phone then with a Linux shell terminal? I'm more wondering if maybe there's a dedicated app to properly show images and stuff.

Right, I'm daft, just use Connectbot.

yup. for a 2 line set up. max 2 users at any given time. if a racer needed a free line for something special, he'd call the sysop and line 1 low rank user would get booted.

if line 2 was tied up already. Not an everyday occurance, but would happen

sysop could chat with both users, individually, by breaking into their session in chatmode. this would not affect UL's or DL'

Yea, i goofed by not taking into account red sector released things first, then merged with Tristar to become TRSI. My bad on that.

The Red Sector megademo blew my mind back in the day, and predates TRSI, tho essentially Red Sector is half of TRSI.

>Get syncterm, looks great here, pic related. Loads of ANSI art follows that screen.
Neat, I'll try that. Are you on pharcyde?

Everyone in this thread is already on Sup Forums. Why'd you come to Sup Forums to join some shitty circlejerk namefag psuedo-forum? You are already here, you can already talk to everyone.

Maybe to have a reliable place where he can find, interact, and keep up with like-minded people regarding this subject? Instead of making a thread on Sup Forums and hoping any number of them find it and reply to it.

agree. threads are transient. I'd chill on a hub quite happily with other old schoolers who arent snitches

fuck off

Fuck off

Yes, we call these sorts of things "circlejerks". Reddit would probably be more your thing.

I've been on Sup Forums for over 6 years and seen this BBS circlejerk repeat itself every 8 months. Sometimes it's a lot at once, sometimes it gets nasty where they viciously post "NOTHING PAST 2000 TECH IN THIS THREAD" for weeks as they secretly want young people to show up so they can hate on them.

Always ends the same way, only difference is the time it takes to get to the end. The way it ends is that someone either makes or finds some shitty BBS, then they e-lock the virtual doors and it becomes a private circlejerk. I've seen this happen on Sup Forums where there were at least 15 people involved in it, and they disappeared overnight once the link was posted. Once you join one of these, there's no turning back as you'll start to drone everything out, then people will start to drop off the private club and there will be nobody left either in the BBS or the rest of the world that you can talk to.

Just out of curiosity, would you accept anyone young in your soon to be private club, if they had an appreciation for old tech? How do you tell the age of someone online if they just idle, you have to be sure that nobody young and therefore shit infiltrates the club so it can truly be a place full of people who are full of shit... I mean who get it.

I don't really know how to answer your question. I don't have a private club, but to use the same approach as then. Someone either was involved in the era. or. can bring something to the table and know people / interest in the history. My answer is imagined, but if the most some one can bring is, i'm a private torrent user, then thats not much. contemporary h/p is still interesting.

I really don't understand what your rant is about.

I'll say for a fact, there's a large grouip of topsite users and racers who simply weren't involved in bbs yet consider it the roots of their contemporary scene and don't shit on it with old man grandpa comments because what they have, the lineage , would not be the same if it werent for the start, and what they know now would also be different.