Anyone remember the old school dial up BBS boards? Before the intraweb was big? I use to rock those joints with my 2400baud modem!!!

DCnet was one of them. I know there were at least two others in the NOVA area that were big. Anyone remember?

Wow there's a blast from the past!

I frequented a local board called "Oasis" that had great games like Lord of the Red Dragon (L.O.R.D) and Falcon's Eye.

NOVA operated one too where you could download the latest shareware programs. I even remember the phone number, 703-323-3321.

There was a great mac-only BBS that ran FirstClass instead of the usual Wildcat BBS software but I forget the name.

There were a ton of great local BBS's back in the day but those are the only ones I vividly remember. Anyone remember more? This should definitely be added to the wiki for nostalgic value if nothing else.

i hated those

Anyone remember the old school dial up BBS boards?

I used to dial in to one in the Philly area with my ADAM computer back in the mid 80's. I remember downloading ASCII porn and being terrified that my parents would somehow find it. I wish I still had all those txt files I acquired over the years, I'm sure some of them would be real funny nowadays.

i never got into the bbs but i did have a 2400bps modem. i remember clicking on a pic of some chick, walking away for 5 min, the coming back to look at it. if she was busted, i'd be pissed off.

vaburbia.com

I remember the Mac only BBS Oasis rings a bell too!

Just fond this site too: http://www.textfiles.com
Attachments:

ahhh, the good old days
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        M     M    OOOO     OOOO                 ###   ######   ###
        MM   MM   O    O   O    O                #######    #######
        M M M M   O    O   O    O               #                  #
        M  M  M   O    O   O    O              #    ###      ###    #
        M     M   O    O   O    O             #    #   #    #   #    #
        M     M    OOOO     OOOO              #    # ###    # ###    #
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That did not work out....

edit by Cary: added "pre" tags to make it work

EoM



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2007 06:20PM by Cary.

There was a Fairfax County Public Schools BBS. It was mostly for teachers but I joined somehow as a kid. I don't actually remember what I did there, if anything.

Cary Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There were a ton of great local BBS's back in the
> day but those are the only ones I vividly
> remember. Anyone remember more? This should
> definitely be added to the wiki for nostalgic
> value if nothing else.

I was on Atari back then but yeah I was on in the very early 80's... Merlin's Litterbox (run out of Burke), Gallifrey (run out of MD), Fido (which ran FIDO for BBS software, original). k-kQQl dudes I'm a SYSOP! NovAtari was a NoVA-based Atari shareware BBS. Yeah, those were the good old days... running phreaking software to pick up MCI long distance codes, making boxes, etc.

Oh yeah.. Used to use multiple BBSs back in the day with my C-64. I had a good friend who was a SYSOP on one. Man. I was cool.

If you guys want to reminisce check this site out:

http://bbslist.textfiles.com/usbbs.html



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2007 12:54AM by trogdor!.

oMG. I just found my old hangout bbs.. That was 23 years ago. Scary.

The DC Tavern
Crystal Quill
The Bird's Nest

I remember all of those!

Oh to be a teen in high school again with a 2400 baud modem and no clue lol.

EoM

TheMeeper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I remember downloading ASCII porn and being terrified that my
> parents would somehow find it.

And today we're afraid that the cops will find a^SD*(&877
NO CARRIER

Reading this brings back a lot of memories and makes me wonder how old everyone is on this board. While I am not from this area, I had similar experiences growing up in NJ with a Commodore 64 and TRS-80 using Compuserve. This is back in the late 70s when I was a teenager. Is it safe to assume that most of the people posting here are 40+?

I had a conversation a couple of months ago with some colleagues around my age (45) and some "kids" in the mid-to-late 20s talking about computer technology. The discussion turned to what computers and programming languages we worked with in college and it made us old guys misty eyed and sad to realize that these equipment makers...DEC, Data General and Wang...are long gone. COBOL and Fortran seemed like ancient history and it took a lot of coffee-fueled late nights to make that assembly language program just a wee bit smaller so that it did not run out of memory. The kids just looked at us asking "what is assembly language?" Looking back, I realize why my friends and I did not have girlfriends or date much.

Ah, the good old days!

Lester Burnham Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Reading this brings back a lot of memories and
> makes me wonder how old everyone is on this board.
> While I am not from this area, I had similar
> experiences growing up in NJ with a Commodore 64
> and TRS-80 using Compuserve. This is back in the
> late 70s when I was a teenager. Is it safe to
> assume that most of the people posting here are
> 40+?
>
> I had a conversation a couple of months ago with
> some colleagues around my age (45) and some "kids"
> in the mid-to-late 20s talking about computer
> technology. The discussion turned to what
> computers and programming languages we worked with
> in college and it made us old guys misty eyed and
> sad to realize that these equipment makers...DEC,
> Data General and Wang...are long gone. COBOL and
> Fortran seemed like ancient history and it took a
> lot of coffee-fueled late nights to make that
> assembly language program just a wee bit smaller
> so that it did not run out of memory. The kids
> just looked at us asking "what is assembly
> language?" Looking back, I realize why my friends
> and I did not have girlfriends or date much.
>
> Ah, the good old days!


I'm 29.

vaburbia.com

21.. not old enough to experience, but i know all about it.. My first computer was in 94 - it had dos with nibbles and gorrilas ("tanks" but with gorillas throwing bananas) - and i was like 8, so even if i had known about this stuff back then (which i kinda wish i did), i dont know how i would have gotten long phone calls past my mom :)

Cary Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wow there's a blast from the past!
>
> I frequented a local board called "Oasis" that had
> great games like Lord of the Red Dragon (L.O.R.D)
> and Falcon's Eye.
>
> NOVA operated one too where you could download the
> latest shareware programs. I even remember the
> phone number, 703-323-3321.
>
> There was a great mac-only BBS that ran FirstClass
> instead of the usual Wildcat BBS software but I
> forget the name.
>
> There were a ton of great local BBS's back in the
> day but those are the only ones I vividly
> remember. Anyone remember more? This should
> definitely be added to the wiki for nostalgic
> value if nothing else.


i played L.O.R.D
musta been 10 or so years ago



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2007 12:29PM by MrDoctor.

TheMeeper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Anyone remember the old school dial up BBS boards?
>
>
> I used to dial in to one in the Philly area with
> my ADAM computer back in the mid 80's. I remember
> downloading ASCII porn and being terrified that my
> parents would somehow find it. I wish I still had
> all those txt files I acquired over the years, I'm
> sure some of them would be real funny nowadays.


http://www1.zkm.de/%7Ewvdc/ascii/java/

I'm 30 so I got in on the tail end of this stuff.

EoM

Alright - I'll 'fess up to being the "old fart". I'm 49 and wrote my first FORTRAN program in '75 on punch cards for an IBM System 36.

Oh - and I also walked to school in 3 feet of snow uphill both ways (just being preemptive - get off my lawn!)

makes me wonder how old everyone is on this board

Old enough to have worked on TRS-80's when I was in 7th grade (i.e. 36). Remember those things? When I was 13 we used to write these goofy TRS-DOS BASIC programs to draw silly graphics and shit. Me and my one friend wrote this 'elaborate' program where you could make a menu selection for one of the 50 states, and then the computer would draw a picture of the state (we'd map them out on graph paper and then code in the coordinates). Back then, it really impressed the heck out of our teachers.

I also remember saving programs under fake names, like FOOTBALL or HOCKEY, but they were joke programs that would just print "Fuck You!" all over the screen. Teachers were pissed but never figured out who was doing it. I thought I was so clever.

lol i used to do that to library computers with paint back before everybody figured out windows 95

Cary Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There was a great mac-only BBS that ran FirstClass
> instead of the usual Wildcat BBS software but I
> forget the name.

DigitalNation?