Collaborate Disseminate
The 80s and 90s were the glory days of the BBS. The plain old telephone system was responsible for bringing us connection to other digital beings, along with plenty of …read more Continue reading BBS Builder Is A Framework For Running Your Own PETSCII Paradise
A computing platform is never really dead unless people stop developing new software for it. By that measure, the Commodore 64 is alive and well: new games, demos, and utilities …read more Continue reading The WiC64 Brings Classic Commodores Online, Google Maps Included
Up until the mid-1980s, connecting a computer to a phone line was tricky: many phone companies didn’t allow the connection of unlicensed equipment to their network, and even if they …read more Continue reading Acoustic Coupler Gets You Online Through Any Desk Phone
Some of us who’ve been online since the early days fondly remember the web of yore — with its flashing banners, wildly distracting backgrounds, and automatic side-scrolling text. But there …read more Continue reading A Handy Guide To The Humble BBS
Back in the golden age of modems and phone lines, bulletin board systems, or BBSes, were a great way to find new software from the comfort of your own home. …read more Continue reading A Faux BBS Gets Software On To Your Vintage Machines
While he couldn’t quite come up with the cash to buy one in their hayday, [Bruno Antunes] has always been fascinated with the Amiga. When PCs got fast enough he used emulators like UAE to get a taste of the experience, but it was never quite the same thing. Not …read more
Continue reading Amiga in the MiST gets Online with an ESP8266
Before there was the Internet, there were a lot of would-be Internets. Compuserve comes to mind, as do Prodigy, GEnie, Delphi, and the innumerable BBS systems that were once gateways to worlds beyond our CRT monitors and 300 baud Hayes Supermodems.
Service providers varied by region, of course. The French …read more
Continue reading Arduino Revives A Classic 1980s Minitel Terminal
Post-C64 Hacking (in Part 1 of Hacker History)… now on to Part 2: The BBS Years
Late 1986 (a few months before I started my first non-newspaper delivery and non-family-business job – working at a local supermarket) I launched my first bulletin … Continue reading Hacker History II: The BBS Years
While the weather alternated between mist and monsoon for most of it, the thirteenth annual Vintage Computer Festival East was still a huge success. People came from all over the country, and indeed the world, to show off computers and equipment that was easily older than many of those in attendance. From 1980’s robots to recreations of the very first machines to ever carry the name “computer” as we understand it today, there were a dizzying array of fascinating exhibits to see for those who made the pilgrimage to the InfoAge Science Center in Wall, New Jersey. The people who …read more
Continue reading VCF East XIII: Another Day in Retro Paradise
As you read this, there are still people chatting away on Bulletin Board Systems all over the world. Running on newly written software and without the need to actually use a dial-up modem, these (slightly) more modern takes on the BBSs of yore can be compelling diversion for those who might want to decompress a bit from contemporary social networks.
[Blake Patterson] is one of these people, and he writes in to tell us about his recent experiments with using a particularly gorgeous example the Epson PX-8 “Geneva” laptop on modernized BBSs. The form factor of the device makes it …read more
Continue reading Browsing Modern Day BBS on the Epson PX-8 Laptop