Before this whole net / Web fad , before AOL , before CompuServe , before even Prodigy , we had the BBS – dialup Bulletin Board Systems serve up communities of computer users . BBSed had their heyday in the Eighties , and they were broadly small , home brew scheme – a Sysop ( System Operator ) would take off up a BBS by installing special software on a spare electronic computer , attaching a modem and a phone line , and waiting for the call to roll in . The BBS was chiefly a local affair , because generally people did n’t need to spend money to dial long - distance . So what you had in the Eighties ( and still very much into the Nineties , and a bit still today ) was a panoptic hodgepodge of regional online communities . This local aspect of the organisation was for the most part lost when everyone moved to the net , and it ’s only present in niche land site like Craigslist and various City Guide sites .
As a teenager , I was hugely addicted to BBSes , and even had a special headphone line put in ( thanks , parent ! ) so I could dial up my local ' board ' to commute messages , take on online game , and claver ( that last choice was only usable if the BBS ’s Sysop was plentiful enough to have multiple earphone air running – or if you were chitchat with the Sysop him or herself ! ) . I often meet new computer geek protagonist online , then find out they snuff it to my mediate school . And this was in the Eighties !
I keep run into former BBS users who retrieve the " honest old Day , " ( when busy sign were a regular feature of " see to it your e-mail " ) and thought I ’d blog about the issue . The other day I was buy newspaper publisher at the local paper warehouse and the cashier and I somehow got into a conversation about BBSes . I ’m telling you , we ’re everywhere , hide out in plain eyeshot . So I ’m wonder –are anyflossersformer BBS users?Do you recollect the daytime of downloading file in tiny segments , configuring your dialup client to forge with the latest and majuscule download protocol , and trying to reckon out how to utilize Fidonet to send email ( then " e - mail " ) cross - land ? ( Bonus points : remember when your friends got 2400 baud modems before you did , and lord it over you for calendar month ? And when it bump again with 9600 and 14.4k modems ? )
Much more , including a 10 - moment clip of The BBS Documentary , after the jump !
Whether you ’re an old - school BBS user or just interested in computer story , there ’s one film that ’s required viewing : The BBS Documentary . cross three videodisc , this five - hour film chronicle various aspects of the BBS scene through interviews with those who wrote former BBS software , run major BBSes , even those who create the ASCII / ANSI artistic production that was a staple of the BBS scene . As Wired Magazine said , it ’s " amazingly engrossing . " I bought the videodisc set when it first came out in 2005 , and have recently started observe it again – and I ’m reminded how much history is revealed by the picture . This is history that ’s been happening in garages , cellar , and free bedrooms across the world for the past thirty years – and you ’d hardly know it if you did n’t see a film like this .
If you ’re ready to see the whole picture , rank The BBS Documentary now ! If you ’re not up for pay for it yet , you canwatch several hours of it onlineat Google Video , or watch this clips digest from YouTube :
