Josh Bailey wrote to All <=-
I'm very new, infact ive only been online for a few hours. Ecept for
the Web and EMAIL and stuff.
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Hey Josh... We were all new at one time. For me it as 1984. 300 baud Westridge style (TotalTelecommunications brand) direct connect modem. Some short months later the Commodore 1670 1200 bps modem was released and I jumped at it.
A lot of the BBS scene has changed since those days. Used to be every computer store had their own dial-up BBS to showcase their services and goods. Hobbyist BBS systems existed in most large towns and small cities. Each area code had LOADS of BBS systems. One might have to sit on redial for an hour or more to connect to their favorite BBS.
BBS users were a fairly large community as well. Online chats, debates, arguments, even feuds were all over the place. You could literally meet someone at a bar, club, or at church and find out later you've known them for years on the local BBS under an assumed name.
Today the scene is a lot smaller and insular but in a lot of ways much the same. Still a community of friends and "not friends" what spans the globe. We are unified by our interests in the BBS style of communication which is slower paced but more direct than social media. The BBS is still a one-stop shop, so to speak, where on can debate, converse, transact, upload/download software, and play some damned fun games all in on place. Now with some boards even by using a web browser instead of a terminal emulator.
There's also another subset of users. The Commodore BBS sect (and I'm assuming Apple and Tandy computers might also have their own representation) where the connections are a bit closer and more tight knit than the general scene as represented by ANSI systems. Some of these guys have taken the 8-bit platform to some interesting new levels of performance. My C128 setup, for example is capable of using USB storage instead of relying on 5 1/4 or 3 1/2 inch floppies and WLAN connections to telnet only BBS systems. I literally connect to a telnet server on a cartridge connected to the 128 to upload or download software to/from my PC and then can save that to either a USB device or a physical disk. Not bad for a platform that came out in the mid 80s and was considered obsolete by the mid-early 90s!
Anyway, I ramble, as I often do when I've had a few. Guess the lesson here Josh, is that the BBS situation has been around a long time and with thanks to God, those of us who are truly a part of it have ensured that the touch and feel of it remains very much as it was "back in the day."
... Wherever you go, there you are!
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