BBSs, Dead OSs, and Door Games
Rogers Cadenhead reminds us of our BBS days...
This month marks the 25th birthday of the bulletin board system, the old-school online network invented by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess.
As someone who began using a BBS in 1981 and claims to have invented the BBS door game, I could inflict all kinds of punishing remembrances.
You kids today got it good. Back then we transmitted our data over acoustic modems at 300 bits per second. And we were grateful!
Ah...to be young and foolish! I remember running my BBS out of my parent's garage (what computer geek didn't live in their parent's garage?). I was doing contract programming on Windows 3.1, back when Hello World! was 93 lines of C and SDK code. I started out running Wildcat BBS software and a pile of door games (thanks Rogers!) I multi-tasked with the help of QEMM and Desqview. Then I moved up to OS/2 and a Digiboard. At the peak of Tweak Computer Support BBS we were running multiple lines happily on a single 486 with 8 megs. I started at 1200bps, but when it ended, I think I was just looking at a sweet new USR 9600 v.Everything.
Rogers: You might take a look at http://www.telery.com/, they let you play classic BBS Door Games on the 21st century 'Net! GO Tradewars!
About Scott
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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