Anyone else log into dial up BBS systems back in the 80s or 90s? A friend of mine used to run one in Houston. He had a second phone line so he could do that. I tried to do it at my house, but since we only had one phone line my parents shut that down pretty quick. I spent too much time in junior high playing SRE and Tradewars on my 1200 bps modem. Anyone else use these pre-internet dinosaur social media systems?
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Dial Up BBS Systems
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Last: 5 yr ago by Dallas82
BRE... trade alliance... invest for 2 weeks... kill everyone.
Yep. Those were fun days. Tradewars was awesome and there was another one where you'd start off with a small spaceship and eventually work up to getting a starship via trade, war and/or pirating.
I had a couple of friends who had BBSs with cracked games. And my neighbor across the street had one that was pretty solid. He is who got me into computers and helped me with my first build, a 486DX2/66 based system in 1992. We flipped through the voluminous Computer Shopper catalog for the various parts I wanted. Six weeks later everything arrived and we put it together. I had damn near every game you could think of downloaded from BBSs within a month or so (took a while to get them at 2400 baud, longer at 1200!).
The good ole days!
I had a couple of friends who had BBSs with cracked games. And my neighbor across the street had one that was pretty solid. He is who got me into computers and helped me with my first build, a 486DX2/66 based system in 1992. We flipped through the voluminous Computer Shopper catalog for the various parts I wanted. Six weeks later everything arrived and we put it together. I had damn near every game you could think of downloaded from BBSs within a month or so (took a while to get them at 2400 baud, longer at 1200!).
The good ole days!
Check out https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/bbs/rmac-diversi-dial-station-34 if you want to bring back memories. Be prepared.
I ran a small warez BBS on my 2400 baud modem in the early 90s. I can't remember if I ever upgraded to 9600 or 14400.
I know I ran Celerity BBS with the whole upload/download credit ratio implemented. Good times and chatting with random users late into the night.
I know I ran Celerity BBS with the whole upload/download credit ratio implemented. Good times and chatting with random users late into the night.
I used to dial into two or three bulletin boards when I lived in the Houston area. One was a dating site and the others had some pretty good discussions on a variety of topics.
I only had one date from the dating site and that was a disaster. The evening before, I was sailing on a 35 foot cat ketch sailboat on Galveston Bay. When we got back to the boat slip, I had one foot on the boat and one on the dock and found myself doing an increasingly painful split until I finally fell in. Just like in the cartoons.
A smaller boat would have moved away fast, but a 35 foot sailboat is too big and heavy to move that quickly. It was quickly increasing pain in slow motion.
The next day, I soaked in the tub with the water as hot as I could get it for a couple of hours before I got dressed for the date. I took her to dinner at a nice little restaurant near her apartment, but as soon as I could get away politely, I headed back home and got back in the tub.
I only had one date from the dating site and that was a disaster. The evening before, I was sailing on a 35 foot cat ketch sailboat on Galveston Bay. When we got back to the boat slip, I had one foot on the boat and one on the dock and found myself doing an increasingly painful split until I finally fell in. Just like in the cartoons.
A smaller boat would have moved away fast, but a 35 foot sailboat is too big and heavy to move that quickly. It was quickly increasing pain in slow motion.
The next day, I soaked in the tub with the water as hot as I could get it for a couple of hours before I got dressed for the date. I took her to dinner at a nice little restaurant near her apartment, but as soon as I could get away politely, I headed back home and got back in the tub.
I had dozens of disks completely full of games thanks to those!
Guilty. I never hosted one, but I dialed in pretty regularly.
Ran one in DFW between 88-92 on a 286 w/40M drive. Helped me learn to type with all my visitors chatting me up. Was a member of Razor 1911 for a short while. Lot of fun.
Yes, and thirteen y.o. me did a lot of phreaking on my ][e in order to call them for free and distribute elite warez, like this:
BTW, textfiles.com has a lot of info and archives on this era as well as a documentary that is on Youtube.
BTW, textfiles.com has a lot of info and archives on this era as well as a documentary that is on Youtube.
Razor 1911! I remember that group... I was running by BBS around the same time as you were active.Art96 said:
Ran one in DFW between 88-92 on a 286 w/40M drive. Helped me learn to type with all my visitors chatting me up. Was a member of Razor 1911 for a short while. Lot of fun.
I remember going to the Dallas electronics sidewalk sale to find cheap used drives. Remember scoring an 80MB drive for $75.
I remember dialing into The Atomic Cafe quite a bit back in the day.
Got into them while on my 486DX/66 with a 2400 baud modem. Started off on your run-of-the-mill type sites with Tradewars and the like, then eventually found our way to the "elite" local bulletin boards (hacking/phreaking/warez).
From there those guys taught me the ins-and-outs of wardialing for PBX codes and the like -- used for dialing long-distance DWANGO servers to play Doom 2 multiplayer and calling long-distance nationally known "elite" BBS's (Ghost Ship probably being the most well known).
That led to "Internet In a Box", which led to the ridiculous amount of illegal **** that got thrown around AOL (pre AOHell days). Was actually probably one of the first 50 or so people to use the actual "internet" through AOL with a hacked winsock.dll. By the time everything shifted from BBS -> AOL -> internet I was co-running one of the bigger courier group FTP distro sites, before I lost interest and started drinking beer, chasing girls and trying to fail out of A&M with Diggity.
If you have a chance, check out "BBS: The Documentary" movie that is floating around. If you were in the "scene' during the 80's-90's, you'll see a lot of familiar screen-names in interviews -- and yeah, those guys look about how you figure they look.
Fun times -- it was basically the dark web before the dark web existed.
From there those guys taught me the ins-and-outs of wardialing for PBX codes and the like -- used for dialing long-distance DWANGO servers to play Doom 2 multiplayer and calling long-distance nationally known "elite" BBS's (Ghost Ship probably being the most well known).
That led to "Internet In a Box", which led to the ridiculous amount of illegal **** that got thrown around AOL (pre AOHell days). Was actually probably one of the first 50 or so people to use the actual "internet" through AOL with a hacked winsock.dll. By the time everything shifted from BBS -> AOL -> internet I was co-running one of the bigger courier group FTP distro sites, before I lost interest and started drinking beer, chasing girls and trying to fail out of A&M with Diggity.
If you have a chance, check out "BBS: The Documentary" movie that is floating around. If you were in the "scene' during the 80's-90's, you'll see a lot of familiar screen-names in interviews -- and yeah, those guys look about how you figure they look.
Fun times -- it was basically the dark web before the dark web existed.
just found a picture of Hayden from freshman year:
Diggity said:
just found a picture of Hayden from freshman year:
I thought this was him...
I'm sure I called all the #s in computer currents or whatever that other one was (texas computing monthly?) at least once
Don't remember which ones, but lots of familiar names on this site
http://bbslist.textfiles.com/214/oldschool.html
Don't remember which ones, but lots of familiar names on this site
http://bbslist.textfiles.com/214/oldschool.html
Woah...small world bro. Sector Seventeen of the Digital Gang checking in. :-) I was friends with both Sysops of those Elite Warez boards - 201 and 716.JustinAg97 said:
Yes, and thirteen y.o. me did a lot of phreaking on my ][e in order to call them for free and distribute elite warez, like this:
BTW, textfiles.com has a lot of info and archives on this era as well as a documentary that is on Youtube.
Trivia question: who ran the Mines of Moria BBS ? On an Apple IIe with a disk array...and four phone lines. Pretty impressive for the late 80's.
I'll probably be put on to some sort of FBI watch list for admitting this, but I remember downloading "The Anarchist Cookbook" from some BBS. I don't think I ever read a single page, but I thought it was cool having it.
I have no idea who ran Mines of Moria, but I remember logging into that place.Tailgate88 said:Woah...small world bro. Sector Seventeen of the Digital Gang checking in. :-) I was friends with both Sysops of those Elite Warez boards - 201 and 716.JustinAg97 said:
Yes, and thirteen y.o. me did a lot of phreaking on my ][e in order to call them for free and distribute elite warez, like this:
BTW, textfiles.com has a lot of info and archives on this era as well as a documentary that is on Youtube.
Trivia question: who ran the Mines of Moria BBS ? On an Apple IIe with a disk array...and four phone lines. Pretty impressive for the late 80's.
AustinAg2K said:
I'll probably be put on to some sort of FBI watch list for admitting this, but I remember downloading "The Anarchist Cookbook" from some BBS. I don't think I ever read a single page, but I thought it was cool having it.
Can still download it off a Berkeley webpage. Third Bing result.
yep. my brother printed out several copies on the dot matrix printer and sold them in junior high. Ended up in the principal's office. These days, you would probably get a visit from the police.AustinAg2K said:
I'll probably be put on to some sort of FBI watch list for admitting this, but I remember downloading "The Anarchist Cookbook" from some BBS. I don't think I ever read a single page, but I thought it was cool having it.
I bought a bunch of stuff at the sidewalk sale--good times!!flintdragon said:Razor 1911! I remember that group... I was running by BBS around the same time as you were active.Art96 said:
Ran one in DFW between 88-92 on a 286 w/40M drive. Helped me learn to type with all my visitors chatting me up. Was a member of Razor 1911 for a short while. Lot of fun.
I remember going to the Dallas electronics sidewalk sale to find cheap used drives. Remember scoring an 80MB drive for $75.
I was the king of my workgroup at GD with an 800MB SCSI HDD I bought for $600 back in the day--Whoop!
Buddy had a second line and one of the few BBS setups in College Station back in the day. Fun stuff. Then the awesome 14.4 modems came out and CompuServ, GEnie, and AOL all got local numbers to BCS and we had a cornucopia of online offerings to choose from.
Good times, good times.
Good times, good times.
Legend of the Red Dragon!
Was big into BBS until TSN/INN and Doom on Dwango came along. That kept me occupied until online internet play really took off.
Was big into BBS until TSN/INN and Doom on Dwango came along. That kept me occupied until online internet play really took off.
SJEAg said:
Legend of the Red Dragon!
Was big into BBS until TSN/INN and Doom on Dwango came along. That kept me occupied until online internet play really took off.
Loved that game. I downloaded it about a decade ago and played again as far as trial version would let you
Got my first modem in 1986 to dail into newsgroups and a few pirate boards. Never got into online games. I had an AOL account paid for by my employer where I played a lot of trivia games in the middle of the night. Fastest modem used was the Supra FaxModem at 28.8.
I still remember getting onto the 'internet' back in 1992 using Mosaic as a browser.
I still remember getting onto the 'internet' back in 1992 using Mosaic as a browser.