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Here is something fun for all you old Computer Users! A Flash Back to the 80's and 90s telnet://midnightwindbbs.kicks-ass.net

For those of you that are not old like me (HA HA) you will not know what the hell this is all about. A Little History for you.

Before the Internet made it on the seen and you could surf to anything that your wanted to see (ie *, games, MySpace) there was not much that you could do with your computer unless you bought programs that you loaded from 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. or you sat down and copied the program that you wanted from one of the many programming magazines and prayed that you did not make a tiny error in the hundreds lines of code that you spent hours typing in. Well a few geeks wanted to give their friends access to their computers via the phone line. So they sat down with their 300 baud carriage modems and figured out how to connect their computers to each other. The BBS was born. BBS stand for Bulletin Board System. Every thing was in text. You could send emails you other users and even join in groups and send emails to every one in that group. You could play Games like L.O.R.D., Planets, LOD, and a host of other games. You could only get on one time a day for a very limited time because the SYSOP or System Operator only have one phone line and a very slow modem. 

I Was one of those SYSOPs I Started Midnight Wind BBS in 1990 in Laramie Wyoming and then in 1994 I had 16 phone lines and 4 486 dx4 100 computers networked together and callers from all over the world calling in with there computers to play my games and download my stores of compressed software, send email and yes serf the brand new internet. in late 1994 I closed my doors callers started to fall off and I could no longer afford to give people access to the internet A startup company Called America Online we giving people access for a fee and the content was outstanding and you used windows it took on the shape of things to come. Netscape released an Internet browser and the World Wide Web took off like a rocket and the rest is history.

No you ask why in the hell would you want to have us check out something that is several steps backwards. Well the simple answer is because I can. But the real reason is because I missed playing some of the stupid text games that I had. So I decided to share it will you all. So Click on the link at the top of the box read the screen and warm up your fingers and put on your reading glasses and step back and enjoy this flash from the past

Those were the days!

I got my first taste of BBSes back in 86/87 with a TRS-80 Color Computer and a 300 Baud modem. In late 87/88 timeframe I was in my first year of college. My PC was an IBM PCjr and I had a 300 Baud Acoustic Coupler.

Anyone remember those? It would occasionally screw up and get lots of garbage on the screen. You'd have to turn it upside down and whack the microphone end on the desk to unpack the carbon in it to make it work right again. :D

ASCII *! Print it off on a dot matrix printer and stand back about 5 feet to see the babe you just printed out.  :5-

Back in 1995 we took the StarNet BBS online and set up an internet gateway. I had the Novell Server gateway running in the background behind the scenes to make it all work. I've been on IRC since 1995 and online with the internet ever since. It's addictive!

Hey, that BBS link comes up but hangs at "Resolving hostname..." too bad... I was looking forward to playing Legend of the Red Dragon.

RJ

The link works for me.

Ansi text!!!!

I remember the BBS days in the 80's.  I had 300 baud Atari 1030 modem.  (I never did get the acoustic version).
Then I got my PC and bought a full length HAYES 1200 bps modem.  It was FAST.
Then I upgraded to a Kyocera 2400bps modem, what a screamer that was.
I participated in several BBS's and was even a co-sysop in one of them.  We had 2 phone lines.

That was also how we used to get drivers for various products in the beginning.  It might have been a tad slow  :32-  :32-  :32- but the files weren't usually that big any way.

Yes, I remember, it was quite a paradigm shift when drivers and such could be obtained in the WWW or through ftp and not have to pay long distance charges to download the stuff.  Ah yes, the bad old days of using your modem to call long distance to get updated drivers.