thank you @acn128 for setting up the world's first globaltalk FirstClass BBS! it is amazingly functional, and even has a Usenet feed via eternal-september
(apologies for the terrible photo - my phone grabbed the aperture grille by accident)
for those unfamiliar with FirstClass, it was one of the *very* few fully graphical BBSes of the 1990s, with a point and click graphical client. it predated larger systems like Lotus Notes by a decade
Viele Menschen versuchen derzeit sich von grossen Anbietern zu lösen. Auch wir haben uns vor Jahren von Twitter getrennt und auf #Mastodon eine gut funktionierende Alternative gefunden. Kurz darauf haben wir unter BBSindex.TV unser eigenes Videoarchiv gegründet.
Inzwischen ist das Feediverse weiter gewachsen und bietet eine solide Grundlage mit #PeerTube als Videoplattform an. Wir haben uns deshalb bei #MakerTube um einen Kanal beworben und diesen unter https://makertube.net/@bbsindex einrichten dürfen. Aktuell laden wir immer mal wieder unseren Content dort hoch.
Um nicht alles mit unseren Videos in der Liste was es neues gibt zu fluten laden wir nicht alles auf einmal dort hoch. Derzeit pushen wir unseren #Amiga Content nachdem wir bereits unsere #BBS Tutorial Videos dort veröffentlicht haben.
Das bedeutet nicht das wir von der grossen Plattform verschwinden oder unser Videoarchiv einstellen. Wir wollen lediglich Euch alternativen anbieten das Ihr eine bessere Auswahl habt wo Ihr Content anschaut.
Wenn Ihr noch nicht wisst was mit Videos im #feediverse geht dann nehmt Euch doch mal 15 Minuten Zeit und entdeckt diese immer besser werdene alternative. Mehr Creator und wachsende Communitys sorgen dafür das diese Plattformen in Zukunft bestehen können.
Vielen Dank!
Just found this epic channel! This was quite entertaining 
Part of me really hates that I missed the golden age of BBS.
@sergio_101 Maybe some aprs filter can show only those stations active in packet/bbs?
#WintermuteBBS - that's my second, #Linux based #BBS running the #MBSEBBS software - is now #back #online !
I've updated MBSE BBS to the latest version 1.1.0 (this is a pre-release but I don't mind) and purged quite a bunch of inactive users.
There will be smaller updates and changes throughout the next weeks, as some of the #rss #feeds no longer work and will either be updated or removed (most likely the latter) .
With the code to support plain #ASCII terminals being rewitten in this new release, I will try to rework some of the ASCII screens - but this is may take some time.
tinkering around with the latest release of #Synchronet #BBS on #Linux and I must say, things have improved for the better over the past two decades - nice!
back in the early and mid-90s, getting on the net meant you were a university student, or had corporate access through a big company. getting online wasn't easy.
worse, even if you had a dialup number and login, there was no such thing as a tcp/ip stack built-in to Windows 3.1.
even if you *did* have a winsock stack, you'd still need a file downloading protocol, gopher client, world wide web client, ftp client, email client. just getting your machine off the ground was nearly impossible unless you could grab these from a local BBS
to make things simpler, universities began offering dial-up internet software packages to their students and staff.
in 1994, my mom was an undergrad student at the University of Alberta. our family had just bought an IBM PS/1 with a 2400 baud modem, and i was abusing the hell out of our single phone line at night visiting local BBSes.
she somehow found out that the university was selling internet dial-up software for $10 to students, and brought home the diskette pack with her. along with a USR Sportster 14.4k modem, she gave me the install diskettes as a valentine's day gift.
it had a slick setup program that enabled SLIP using Trumpet Winsock, and provided a local (free!) dial-up number for access.
after 25 years, i finally tracked down a few versions of those diskettes. i've imaged them and uploaded them all to IA.
the first version of the dial-up package in 1994 was called WinSLIP. it had no PPP support yet, but contained some really cool shareware internet utilities like HGopher and NCSA Mosaic. this would have been the earliest programs offered for Windows 3.1
WinSLIP/MSKermit 1994/95:
https://archive.org/details/ua_winslip
The second version of the software was renamed to NetSurf. It stripped out most of the obscure shareware sadly, and replaced them with Netscape 2 and Eudora Light. The new version of Trumpet Winsock offered PPP which was a huge improvement:
NetSurf 1996/97:
https://archive.org/details/ua_netsurf_96
Now well into the Windows 95 era, the 1997/98 software was shipped on a CD with a hilarious "multimedia" installer/help program designed in Macromedia Director:
NetSurf 1997/98:
https://archive.org/details/netsurf-97-starter-kit
I hope this brings back some memories for fellow U of A alumni :)
just found a treasure trove of extremely obscure BBS history stashed away on IA
thank you hard-working book scanners for preserving this rarity.
if you're familiar with BBSing in the 90s, you'll remember just how fast the vast majority of boards disappeared in 1995. it went from multinode 24/7 bbses to disconnected phone numbers in just a few months
this book accounts for the very small number of BBSes that made the transition from telco-only to "telBBS" or telnettable/web-accessible boards
3/4 of the book is a carefully curated list of 500 boards with screenshots of their homepages and bbs login/title screens. most importantly, the URLs of these boards is preserved so we have a chance to look them up on WBM some day.
March Madness in ANSI!
I've updated my bracket browser on Guardian of Forever BBS so it'll be fetching live game data over the next few weeks.
To check it out, just telnet to guardian.synchro.net.
@Commodore1351 @Zitruskeks @heinz_hjo @Hal_9000 @torus
Neulich gabs einen überraschenden Besuch vom 8-Bit Guy in der 40 Jahre alten #Commodore64 Mailbox Snobsoft. Natürlich loggte sich David Murray nicht mit irgendeinem 0815-Rechner in den #BBS Dinoaurier ein, sondern stilecht mit seiner eigenen Retro-Computerkreation, dem Commander X16.
Snobsoft User DGeoffri haute ebenfalls an seinem X16 in die Tasten.
M-NET the oldest running Public Access UNIX has arrived! The original Altos ACS68000 will be on display next weekend at the Interim Computer Festival. M-NET is now under SDF.org Vintage Systems care. Thanks jfk, cross and tod! #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #community #bbs
For St. Louisans, March 14 is #314Day! 
In celebration, I'm sharing a tiny tech time capsule — a collection of textfiles related to St. Louis-area #BBS networks!
I gathered these 30 years ago when I was cosysop of "Something in the Attic BBS" and seeking to attract more users.
Brace yourself for all manner of capitalization! (PIllowNet, SPORKnet, StupidNET)
Ending "z"s!
And lots of exclamation marks!
now that kiki - my super lo-fi wiki/blog/website software - is running pretty darn smoothly, i'd like to think about adding support for weird protocols
telnettable bbs with menuing? gopherspace? gemini?
Just a quick note to any VIC-20 BBS users, that my BBS is temporarily offline. It is a technical issue with the network (I can call into the BBS locally with no issues), so it could be my ISP or something that I've ham-fisted. I'll post here once it is back up, or you can check my board's status page here:
In recent weeks I've been playing "DDST," a fun adventure game for Atari ST BBSes that I had never tried before.
I *love* that it lets you save basically whenever you want. Makes it possible to avoid losing progress while exploring dungeons crowded with monsters and traps.
My wife took a quick peek while I was in a dungeon and asked if it was a QR code. Nope ... just some VT52 text art!
Holy time capsules, Batman... Here is the console screen of the last BBS that I operated, restored and working from a July 1996 CD-ROM backup. Logging-in this morning for the first time in nearly 30 years was... surreal.
Tip of the hat to @pheller and his TBBS archival work, and his work on "TBBSBox," a specialized fork of DOSBox tailored to making it possible to run TBBS on modern hardware. Amazing.
ABC shut down FiveThirtyEight, once an amazing site for data-driven journalism and sports analysis.
I loved incorporating 538's data into old-school #retrocomputing and BBS projects, like my ANSI "Elex Forecast" BBS door. It used data from their 2016 and 2020 Election Forecast visualizations.
https://breakintochat.com/blog/2016/10/04/who-needs-svg-when-youve-got-ansi/
If you've ever wanted to play #LegendOfTheRedDragon, #BarrenRealmsElite, or #FalconsEye, now is the best time.
X-League has just started up, with several #BBS connected and competing for the top spot!
Play right now at conchaos.synchro.net, or participating systems like @a_net_online
