What was your favorite BBS back in the 80's ?

10 posts / 0 new
Last post
A2forever's picture
Offline
Last seen: 7 years 5 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 226
What was your favorite BBS back in the 80's ?

What was your guy's favorite BBS's back in the day? I can name just a few , but remember it all depended upon what the user was looking for in a BBS. One which a friend of mine ran , in Southern California was Called The Silarillian , soon later it was changed to Dune , which IMO was one of the best boards around at it's time. This board was so far ahead of it's time , with the capabilities it leneded to it's users was unheard of at it's time! With the right amount of User Priv. a user was able to call into the BBS and using a Touch Tone Phone , was able to retrieve Voice Messages left by other users! This idea actually was the only one of it's kind back in the 80's , and I am looking into all the 5 1/4 Floppies that I have here to find the actual Source Code for the proggram that was used in conjuction with the Sam Speech Board. This board also had one of the largest G File sections of it's kind anywhere at that time! For those of you who are not familure with what a G Phile is , well these were TEXT FILES that were written by users and uploaded to the BBS. The topics were very wide , everything from Phreaking , Cracking , Anarchy , Warez , the list went on and on. A good collection of these G Philes can be found at www.textfiles.com which was uploaded by Jason Scott and does a fantastic job of preserving these remarkable files!

Another BBS which yet another friend of mine ran in Southern California was Called The Digital Dimension! This was another awsome board! But were so many others out there , not just on the West Coast , but a ton and I mean a ton on the East Coast! The Safe House was another one , but there were so many to name!

Any how , if you can remember , or if you were an actual Sysop of a board , let's here it! Let's take a great trip back down memory lane and discuse the info about what made these boards great! Maybe even get re-connected with lost users back in the day!

Thanks..

Patrick.
A2forever

Offline
Last seen: 2 years 10 months ago
Joined: Jan 28 2004 - 12:14
Posts: 40
My own, The Mortuary ( 1 thru

My own, The Mortuary ( 1 thru 3 )...

eeun's picture
Offline
Last seen: 1 year 8 months ago
Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 17:34
Posts: 1895
Zaphod's Playground. The BBS

Zaphod's Playground.
The BBS ran on an Atari TT030.
It had an Atari focus, but evolved in to a small group of friends that expanded from the BBS into the 'real' world.
After I'd been a member for a while, the local telephone company re-zoned the area codes and it was suddenly a long-distance call, even though it was only a 15-minute drive away. Fortunately, someone gave me a local access number that I could bounce my call through to the BBS without the long-distance charges :ebc:

blackbag's picture
Offline
Last seen: 12 years 3 months ago
Joined: Oct 9 2005 - 22:46
Posts: 31
There were lots of well known BBS', but my favorite was...

The Curse! BBS

It was a hallmark of the Apple II pirate community, which strangely enough, didn't provide any warez on it. Most of the crackers/group members at the time called there regularly, and it became a place to hang out, get in rag wars, share programming/cracking tips, etc for the community. I wish I had kept text captures of the site, as he had screen captures of all the original Apple II pirate boards and AEs throughout the years. As many sites went down for different reasons, it was a neat way to relive sites of the past, or to get a glimpse of sites you never had a chance to visit.

A2forever's picture
Offline
Last seen: 7 years 5 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 226
Wow!

Kewl! Yea AE's! Those were the Ascii Express Boards? I remember those. I remember the fun it was with calling the Boards. As GBBS got better and better , more Sysops' were adding more and more lines! I believe The Adventures' Tavern had 4 active lines! A good friend of mine who ran The Digital Dimension had something like 6 lines piped into his home! Seems Conference calling was a big deal back then , although with a little know how and some Phreaking knowledge, one was able to start up their own Conference calling! In fact I am waiting on a hard drive to be fixed and hopefully I will be able to access it , it houses some very impressive boards! Dune , Simarillion and I believe The Digital Dimension! But the main deal is that I want to get to the TEXT FILES ... The Posts , the G-Files etc... These are gold in themselves!

Anyhow.

Patrick.
A2forever

Oddball's picture
Offline
Last seen: 4 months 1 week ago
Joined: Apr 4 2009 - 18:20
Posts: 93
NYMUG BBS

I loved being able to download all kinds of stuff from our User Group Library.

jt Smile

Offline
Last seen: 11 years 11 months ago
Joined: Dec 7 2009 - 22:58
Posts: 8
The Dark Tower

Mine was a BBS based out of Long Island, NY called "The Dark Tower"
The system was online from Aug 1981 through Nov 2006. It ran on an apple 2 from 1983-1989, Prior to 1983 it ran on an IBM PC Model 5150 running RBBS PC, As an Apple 2e system it ran Networks, AppleNet, GBBS, GBBS Pro (ACOS), After the Apple was retired, it was run on various PC's with software ranging from Telegard, Renegade, MajorBBS, Worldgroup, Synchronet. As far as I knew from the information I had at the time it was taken down, it was the oldest continually running BBS (Even running the same 516-491-0877 phone number the entire time)

Sorry to bump an old thread but I was curious if anyone remembered it.

I've actually recently gotten the Apple 2e machine up and running in the same state that it was taken offline, originally it was to get a backup of the Sider hard disk before if failed for good, now that I have it backed up (and running sucessfully in an emulator) I have become obscessed with playing with the old hardware.

Offline
Last seen: 11 years 3 months ago
Joined: Jan 16 2010 - 15:11
Posts: 1
The Curse BBS

Thanks! The text captures was called "The Curse Lyceum". There was about 50 old BBS' and AE. You could even do a silumlated "crash the BBS". Boards, Junk Walls, Global new message scans.. and of course all the "K-Kool" mods. Those were the days.

I came accross this board readind some of Jason Scott's textfiles. Those crack screens and bbs lore bring backs some good memories.

pc4now

AKA Incognito, Sysop of The Curse BBS ...yes, it's me! Smile

Offline
Last seen: 11 years 11 months ago
Joined: Dec 7 2009 - 22:58
Posts: 8
AE File share systems

I remember AE file sharing systems running something called Tardis as a front-end.. I think I came across a copy of it in my library of old floppies recently.

My favorite system was of course my own.. Smile The Dark Tower (Long Island NY) apparently the name wasn't as unique as I had thought it was. But I did use it first. It was named after an old board game from the 70's and NOT the Stephen King stories of the 80's.

Offline
Last seen: 1 year 10 months ago
Joined: May 27 2009 - 01:37
Posts: 1002
Space Station One

My very own (how could it be anything else?) Space Station One BBS.
At times it was run on the Networks ][ software (much modified by me over time) and AsciiExpress 4.x I had a 10meg Sider drive and a ramdisk or two running on it. It started out with a Micromodem][ 300 baud with microcoupler, and eventually got upgraded to an AppleCat with 212 expansion card. I ran this setup for about 2 or 3 years. I still have all the user logs and files and whatever else 'came with' running a bbs back then. Hardware too, all the original drives and cables and cards.

I don't know what was more amazing, the ramdisk or the sider][ !!

Log in or register to post comments