The Elsmar Cove forum is Technically a BBS - A History

[Marc]

I doubt many of you folks know I ran a "BBS" from 1987 through 1990. While I was connected to a Fidonet node, it was in the days of the switch from 1200 baud to 2400 baud modems. I ended up with a US Robotics 9600 baud modem in 1989 - the 'sysops modem'. Problem is - back then a 9600 baud modem cost about US$1200! And - the caller also had to have an identical modem or it would default to 2400 baud (I think I still have that old modem in my garage somewhere. It was (is) huge! I got it on the cheap through what they called their 'Sysop' program.

My BBS ran on an Amiga 1000 running BBS-PC - a port of a peecee BBS program. It had a whopping 1 meg of RAM and 2 880K floppy drives!!! I did some work for Iomega back then and got a trade for a double drive 20 meg per drive for a whopping 40 megs of disk space in late 1988. It was like heaven - all that disk space!

Wildcat was one popular program for peecees at the time.

Anyway, to a large degree the old BBS was a lot like this system - although navigation was a bit more 'interesting. But then - so was Compuserve and Delphi - the two 'key services' at the time (they had modem banks - and 2400 baud was it. It was entirely a command line interface. You were given options, but no 'point and click'.

When AOL started it was an entirely Mac 'site'. It evolved when Windows finally came on the scene, but it was the early days of Point-and-Click.

If anyone here was there early in the game, or even if you weren't - there's a gread documentary on the History of BBS's at:

http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/index.html

[Marc]

Anniversary - This site has been online *almost* continuously for 10 Years since 5 January 1996...

[AndyN]

and here's to another 10.........

(man, 9600 baud was quick, wasn't it......?? )

Andy

[JRKH]

And thanks.........

[Atul Khandekar]

Where were YOU in January 1996?

I had just started dabbling with computers ...No internet ...
Glad to have found you in 2000...

Marc,

Hearty Congratulations and best wishes for many more years to come!


Regards,

-Atul

[Don Palmer]

and thanks!

[Claes Gefvenberg]

In january 1996...

I had beeen tinkering with computers for 15 years, and worked with quality related matters of one kind or another for almost as long. I believe I was running an Atari ST 1040 at the time, having decided that the 256-powered PC's of the era were woefully poor performers as well as hideously expensive.

Originally Posted by Marc

Wildcat was one popular program for peecees at the time.

I used it too, but I never really got serious with it. I was quite happy tinkering with it, and using it to communicate with a few select friends (I had no mail account in 1996).

You know... having been online for 10 years is a big deal. As far as the www is concerned, that is practically forever. It truly is an amazing achievement.

Let's work together to make it even more so in the years to come.

/Claes

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by Claes Gefvenberg

In january 1996...

I had beeen tinkering with computers for 15 years, and worked with quality related matters of one kind or another for almost as long. I believe I was running an Atari ST 1040 at the time, having decided that the 256-powered PC's of the era were woefully poor performers as well as hideously expensive.

I used it too, but I never really got serious with it. I was quite happy tinkering with it, and using it to communicate with a few select friends (I had no mail account in 1996).

You know... having been online for 10 years is a big deal. As far as the www is concerned, that is practically forever. It truly is an amazing achievement.

Let's work together to make it even more so in the years to come.

/Clae

What he said.