Quite some time later also ran an OS/2 BBS for a while that I started with a younger highschooler. By then there were lots more BBSes and online services but not much for OS/2 so that made sense. I recall getting an amazing discount on a US Robotics Courier modem (the large flat black one, Dual Standard I think it was) it was so much faster. At that time I also had a job and the office used Telebit Trailblazer modems that had a fast proprietary protocol for communication between offices. I once did tech support from Toronto to Vancouver to recover corrupted OS/2 drives at an IBM office, I sent Norton Utility over the modem and a series of things to enter at the DOS prompt to reconstruct/undelete the OS/2 HPFS filesystem. This part doesn't have much to do with BBSes but that's what it was like around those times. Laplink was another super popular file transfer utility that could directly connect two computers using a printer/parallel, serial cable, or remotely via modem. BBSes were possibly how I also found the VESA VGA driver for OS/2 1.3 that a summer student had made at an IBM office--it was incredible being able to run high-res (800x600 or 1024x768) graphics on a PC clone and ATI VGA card (overclocked 11 MHz ISA bus) running OS/2.
2) sometimes there would be ads in magazines, once on any given BBS, there would usually be text files available for download with listings of other BBSs and dail up numbers, usually by city / area code.
3) both. there were a small handful of dominant big name BBSs, usually with some limited free access and paid access beyond that with lots of dialin lines, lots of up to date stuff available for download, etc., basically run as a business like an ISP and with fulltime staff. Then there would be smaller, hobbyist BBSs with one or a few dialin lines, probably free or very cheap, but less stuff available for download, updated less often, or maybe just a part-time operation instead of 24 hours. various schools, clubs, magazines, etc. also operated their own niche BBSs for users too/members too.
4) mostly just like usenet group, mailing list, forum, etc. it's not that different from, say, reddit or stack overflow or something like that, other than being all text, shorter messages, and generally people would be posting using their real name / identity, and often discussions on BBSs would lead to meetups in person and vice versa, maybe you'd recommend your school friends to use or try a certain BBS. to me, that was the big difference vs the internet today where it is mostly anonymous and discussions never really lead to meetups or ongoing friendships.
5) a lot of the discussion was just about where to buy hardware, prices, buying/selling gear, and hardware / products themselves. a big part of it was just about distributing files too - software, shareware, images, adult content, etc.
2) The phone numbers were in a little ad box in the newspaper one time.
3) Most people seemed to bounce around to each BBS but there were communities within each that also seemed to stick there. I expect that was partially due to relationships that people had with the sysops.
4) It was a small East Texas town, so people were generally friendly. We were just kids, like 12 years old, having political discussions with adults. People would also trade or offer up gear they had. I remember inviting a high school guy over to my (parent's) house to install a 28.8k modem for FREE because he had upgraded to 56k. He just gave it to me for nothing. As far as I knew people just treated each other like people. I don't recall ever knowing I was being excluded from something because of my age. For a while there were monthly meetups at a local pizza place.
5) I wasn't interested in programming back then. I remember a lot of talk of hardware, mostly modems, one guy trying to convince every Amiga was the future, file sharing/warez (I downloaded Duke Nukem 3D from a BBS in 5MB zip files), chess and other games over FidoNet.
2) We got a small list of boards from the family friend who helped install our modem, and after you had the first few boards most of the logout screens had a long list of others. There were also lists (by area code) that you could sometimes download from the files section, or some of the grey area ones were traded (usually required NUP/NUV anyway -- new user password/new user voting).
3) Both. Some 20+ node boards were legendary. Some boards were so empty that the sysop would break in after barely giving you time to login because they were so happy to finally see a caller.
4) Drama seemed to matter a lot more. Today it's mostly just drive-by arguing on X or something, and after you exchange unplesantries you move on with your life. On early boards (and into IRC) the communities felt more insular and drama really could divide an entire community and leave lasting marks. Topics were all over the place. Flirting seemed more open, and plenty of fights were just over girls because at the time the female side of tech was extremely unrepresented.
5) How to troubleshoot/fix computers was common. Discussing specific programming languages really bloomed with Usenet and IRC. The t-files on boards that were most interesting to me were about making computers do things they weren't meant to do. Fravia/ORC+ reversing tutorials, or phrack, etc etc.
I wasn't, but I didn't...beyond trying to connect a few times unsuccessfully and connecting once or twice and not knowing what to do.
Which is to say the era of BBS's was very much unlike the internet because only a very very small handful of people ever actively participated in BBS's in a meaningful way...remember the famous BBS's like The Well were a long distance phone call for most people...and there was no Google to tell you about BBS's you could call toll free...and long distance was expensive.
If a person was online, it was probably Compuserve or later AOL.
The commercial internet changed everything. For the better.
1 - When I started I'd call every couple of days. By the time I got into high school (the twilight of local BBSing in my area as dial-up ISPs moved-in) I was calling boards every day. We had a reasonably lively BBS community (for the population) and had real-life meetups, too. Missing a day sometimes meant missing a lot. I know of at least one married couple that met on the boards in their late teens. It was a pretty neat scene.
I used a lot of "Procomm Plus", but "Telix" and "Qmodem" were popular on the PC platform, too.
"Offline reader" software was really, really helpful. This was software that let you download a "packet" of message boards and email, read and reply offline, then upload your responses. (I was of the "Silly Little Mail Reader" religion.)
Once I got Windows 3.1 and could multitask I'd dial-in to a board, download an email "packet", then queue up and file downloads or uploads while I read messages, and maybe even got my reply upload prepared.
2 - The guy who sold me my first (used) modem gave me a couple local board numbers. BBS ads and lists downloaded from boards gave me a few. Word-of-mouth was how I got into the "underground" BBS scene.
3 - Locally there were just small single-line boards. Because some boards straddled two local calling areas they were more popular, but none of them were big. I recall a 40 user board being large. I called some Cleveland, OH-area boards, and there were definitely some bigger multi-line systems there with hundreds of users.
4 - Politics, humor, local issues, computers and tech, gaming, hacking, and "in joke" local board culture stuff are the things I remember. I stayed out of the political stuff, for the most part.
5 - Personal computing software and hardware were the main technical topics on most boards. There was a local board that had a fair amount of amateur radio discussion, too. I don't remember a lot of local BBS programming discussion. There were forums in the big online services (CompuServ, Prodigy, GEnie, etc) where programming was more seriously discussed. On the "underground" side cracking copy protection, hacking, phone phreaking, and virus writing were the more technical discussions (and, of course, there was the trash talking).
Some companies would put up a board to support their own software and, obviously, that dominated the discussion there.
Or would your PC just download a local copy?
Downloading files might also be limited by an upload/download ratio restriction, too.
A friend of mine wrote an external program for a particular BBS (what were colloquially known as "door" programs-- software adjunct to the BBS that remote callers could interact with) that allowed you to "bank" your quota time.
I was on most evenings and most of the weekends except when riding with Ward to the computer club in Chicago.
When cell phones came out they offered free call forwarding which I used the heck out of to get into Chinet, then InterAccess when commercial Internet became a thing.
Typically every couple days, but that all depended on how much free time (and available telephone time) one had.
> What program would you use?
Typically, a "terminal program". Qmodem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qmodem) and ProComm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procomm, link is what comes up on Wikipedia) were two popular favorites.
> 2) How did you even discover servers in the first place when you first started out?
Magazines and/or word of mouth.
> 3) Were there big popular servers that everyone used or was it fragmented?
Some of both, but way more fragmented than centralized (running a "big server" was also a "big expense" on the part of the Sysop, so most were small hobbyist endeavors that supported one to some small number (usually single digits) of concurrent users).
> 4) What was the general vibe of discussions like back then? How was it different than now?
As most were small (one or two phone lines to the BBS) and because toll (long distance phone) calls were charged by the minute, most were small isolated islands within a local calling area (which 'local' calls were usually unmetered [not charged a per minute charge]). So one usually ended up discussing with the same group of other users of that bbs rather than never encountering the same user again as is the case today. I.e. it was more a "remote access social club" for geographically "near" individuals.
At the same time, no one had the ability to broadcast to the world (in the same manner as FB, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, etc.) so there was (sometimes) less "politics" and/or if there was "politics" being discussed it was often local instead of national.
Amiga bbs were 3l373 and PC bbses were for n00bs. However, Amiga bbses were all ASCII while PC bbses had way better ANSI graphics.
My bbs alias was "interrupt". I had no idea what it meant but I thought interrupt handlers were cool (they are!).
Someone wrote there wasn't politics but as I recall there was lots of bickering and quibbling. Things like "X banned me from his bbs for Y. He is a turd! Spread the message." Some people registered under others names and acted as pricks. I used the "sysop assistance" paging feature to wake up sysops in the middle of the night. Got me banned from more than a few bbses. :p
1. I used to go to local computer stores to get a locally produced "magazine" - printed on news print - that was focused exclusively on computing in and around Orange County (where I lived). The back pages were all listings for locally run BBSes with their phone numbers.
We didn't have a lot of money, so most of my equipment was hand me downs. Back then, the phone company charged you by "zones" - the further from your "zone", by area code and first three digits of the phone number, the more it cost per minute to call. If they were in your same zone, it was free.
I'd sit down with the magazine and the phone book and figure out which numbers were in my zone and circle them. Then, each evening when my mother was asleep or otherwise no longer using the phone, I'd dial into each one to see what they were about.
I eventually landed on about five I'd check regularly, once a night. I played doors (online games) and participated in the online forums.
Eventually, I convinced my mom to spend the money to let me run my own BBS, which rang up as busy when I did my nightly rounds to the other systems.
2. The back pages of that magazine. I want to say it was called "OC Computing", but probably not.
3. Fragmented as hell - see my explanation for the zone system above. If you count Compuserve, Prodigy, and GEnie as BBSes - and we probably should - those were the only "big" games in town. I met folks from around the country on them.
But, otherwise, it was all local due to calling costs. We occasionally met in person at local pizza parlors so we could put faces to the handle. That was AWESOME.
4. BBSes were self limiting by location and by technical capability. In my experience, few of the discussions were especially technical. It was really a place where the BBS owners could promote their other interests or build community. Everyone looked out for each other and, over time, got to know each other pretty well. As one of the youngest in the community, they tended to especially look out for me and want to help me on my computer journey. It was an overwhelmingly positive experience.
I was a very lonely kid due to things beyond my control (I lived a 30 minute drive from where I went to school, so I never had any of those after school friendships others had. We moved a lot, so I never really had friends near me, either). When I finally went to high school near where I actually lived, I gained a group of tight friends. I slowly let the BBS go since I was getting my social life organically.
5. It was the first place I ever learned about "open source" - I'm not even sure the term was popular yet. BBSes had a lot of file download sections - usually pictures and, um... pr0n... but occasionally shareware applications. When I was learning Pascal, I found a helicopter side shooter game someone else had written and compiled in Pascal. I asked if they would share the source with me so I could learn, and they just... let me have it. It was incredible.
But that's all I remember technically. Not sure if that was just because I never focused on those things or hung out in those forums, or whether they just weren't a part of my BBS experience. I remember the BBSes being less about technology and more about community - finding friends online to meet up with offline, getting exposed to new ways of thinking, learning about cool things happening in my area...
All of that experience has inspired me to try and build a similar experience on top of the ActivityPub protocol. I just released the first version for my local community - https://sociallyconcord.com - and am actively improving it so more people will want to get on. To simulate the zone thing, joining is invite only, and you can only get an invitation code from an existing member.
I intend on eventually opening another instance for a wider community of friends and colleagues who don't live in my town.
BBSes were what social networking promised us. That we ceded control to a bunch of money-pilled perverts is the problem, not the social network itself.
I'm curious what was the age range of most people at these meetups back then?
Also was it like all "nerds" at that point
I should also note - the person who handed most of his equipment down to me was also active on local BBSes, primarily focused on the gay community at a time and in a place where that was not a topic people were really allowed to discuss at all. He was a good friend of my mother's, and I didn't learn that about him until much later. He used to hang out on a BBS called "The Strawberry Patch", which was for those who were attracted to gay, red-headed men.
Yet another example where online communities can help people find "the others" to build their communities and find support.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.bbsdocumentary.com...
https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://software.bbsdocumentar...
https://archive.org/details/bbs_documentary
https://archive.org/details/BBS_Documentary_DVD_Set
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO5vjmDFZaI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41848656
BBS: The Documentary (2005) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38746221 - December 2023 (65 comments)
Enjoyed Jason Scott’s BBS documentary - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31740247 - June 2022 (39 comments)
Ask HN: What was it like to use BBS? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29140217 - November 2021 (230 comments)
The Full BBS Documentary Interviews Are Going Online - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16221915 - Jan 2018 (1 comment)
BBS the Documentary (2013) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9521867 - May 2015 (23 comments)
Others?
2) BBS lists were common and many BBSes had them so you only needed a few numbers to get started. Computer stores usually had them too.
3) A city would have dozens or even hundreds of BBSes in larger markets. Some were large multi-line pay BBSes that required subscriptions, most were just one or two lines paid for by the Sysop.
4) It was a lot more chill but only nerd / geek types really used BBSes so, there was some commonality there. More of a sense of overall community.
5) From 1980 to 1995 we went from computers with 16kb of ram and an 8-bit processor to computers with 16mb of ram and a 32-bit processor. There was always some new tech to talk about. It was a very exciting time!