Nifty:
So I’ve been a geek long enough to say “Yeah, I know what a BBS is…” “Yes, I know how painful it is to download 100k on a 2400 baud modem BEFORE zmodem and any other “download resume” protocol was standard.”
I played around in the Bay Area BBS scene between 88 to 92. I had my favorite list of BBS I would autodial through, check the latest postings, the latest files, synchronize my FIDONET feed, etc. Most of this occured between 7pm and 4am, at which point I would catch up on sleep in my high school classes :). I had my elite accounts on a number of boards (note that was before l337, existed) Hey, it was the only way a student had any chance of getting software with a non-existant salary. Oh, and I was much more in tune with all the dial prefixes in the Bay Area. (Trust me, when the household phone bill goes from $30 to $200, your parents notice!)
Then I discovered “THE INTERNET”. I was not a student, but I was lucky enough to know the main administrator for UCSF’s computer department. He decided to give me 1) An Unix account, 2) the LS command, and 3) The MAN command. After that I never looked back at BBS’s.
In general, BBS’s started to die around 1995, mostly because Windows 95 and AOL had become pretty popular and were making it easier and easier for the rest of the world to discover “The Internet”.
Just reciently, I discovered information about a DVD Documentary on the whole BBS subculture that happend in the late 80’s / early 90’s. I am so getting this 🙂
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/
Unfortunately it looks like the release was delayed a bit.