John's Arcade Forum - Classic Arcade and Pinball Collecting and Restoring Discussion Forum - RETRO MAME - Nintendo Vs Forum

I really enjoyed John's latest video, where he talks about his friends BBS (The Web) and his concept BBS. Talking with people in the chat room, it seems there are others who were using BBSes in the 80s and 90s. My first experience was with a 2400 baud modem. Probably around 1988 or 1989. I loved it. I eventually got my own phone line and started my own BBS, Civil Disorder, lol.

For anyone else who enjoyed BBSes, here is a documentary (BBS: The Documentary) you  may enjoy.

http://youtu.be/dRap7uw9iWI

When I was like 5 years old, my dad had the second largest BBS in south florida. It was called The court room. His friend ran the largest. I forgot what it was called though. Needless to say I had any dos game I ever wanted. some of my favorites were gapper, sopwith, commander keen, supaplex man, leisure suit larry 1, F29 retaliator, impossible mission, wolfenstien 3d, ect

My favorite was being woken up by modem handshakes in the middle of the night. 

Definitely remember when I first heard the 14.4k handshake I was blown away. Sounded so much different than the 2400 baud I was used to hearing

http://youtu.be/6E9L19aOxZ0

I ran a very successful 4 node underground invite only BBS back in the day, it was very educational and allowed myself and allot of friends to follow into the I.T. sector and shaped them for carriers today

I've seen that documentary! Cool stuff. A little long, though.

I have a modem on the way. I'm gonna try dialing into a BBS. If I am successful I'll make a vid.

John you actually have a real land line?

I haven't had a phone line in almost 10 years now.

And if you have phone through your cable provider you can't use a modem on it because of the compression.

I just looked it up and slower modems might work over VoIP:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/129948/running-a-modem-over-a-voip-line

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Modem+over+VOIP

I loosely watched the new BBS video last night... I am surprised you can connect to anything at 300 bps...

as the operator can set the minim speed your able to connect at...

if your going to do this long term, I would look to upgrade your modem to something much faster... ( you will be limited thou without a 16550 UART on that Atari )

and an app / dialer that can handle the ANSI graphics its going to be more enjoyable on your end...

How about John starting his own Atari based BBS instead of connecting to other people's non-Atari BBS'es?

Oh, really? I can't use a modem with my cable phone line?

John, don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do something. If you can dream it, you can live it buddy.

Well at 300 baud you shouldn't have a problem. It is the later protocols that require a audio that isn't compressed.

Clearly. I put up a bbs video! :)

(http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/162/634/Abandon-thread1.gif)

We didn't get our first computer until 1993, which was an Apple IIC without a modem, so I never really used a BBS.  However, a few years later (circa 1996, once AOL let you actually connect to the World Wide Web), I stumbled upon this log of the last login to some BBS based on the TV show Moonlighting from the 1980s.  I remember reading it several times, and it seemed pretty cool and foreign to me.

http://www.textfiles.com/apple/PIRACY/bye.mnlghtng

Is there no TRS-80 love to be found here?  Green Machine, baby.

And, yes, that's an awesome documentary.  I'd purchased the DVDs the day they were available.