BY: Spectre (21:3/101)
|11S|09> |10Here a lot of BBS became early dialup ISPs. I believe 90% |11S|09> of dialup BBS|07
|11S|09> |10were|07
|11S|09> |10gone by late 93, I forget a little, but it was every user just|07
|11S|09> |10disappeared|07
|11S|09> |10overnight. One month there were users, next month, not a one.|07
Yes, people got bored of the bbs'es and even if you bribed them with
money they did not want to touch them with a ten foot pole in 1996/1997.
This here is really interesting. I remember before 1995 (before Win95), taht BBSs were a common thing, and there was a sort "collective concious" of using BBSs to connect with others, I remember news paper articles about FIDOnet and how that could get you in touch with anyone anywhere in the world, but it wasn't until 1995 (and Win95, indeed...) with IExplroer preinstalled, and the browser war it ensued that *web browsing* (!!) really became something most people became aware of.
Perhaps in your personal experience you started hearing about it
in 1995, but that doesn't mean that's when it started.
From the beginning of this series of messages I had a feeling that
there was something 'regional' related to the different perceptions
and ideas that we all shared.
..when most people became aware of FIDONet? I'm not so sure. It seemed that there were a lot of people who bought their first computer in the mid-90s and were getting on the internet and didn't really have a knowlege of BBSes.
Re: Re: computers By: Malvinas to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 2024
11:30 pm
This here is really interesting. I remember before 1995 (before Win95), taht BBSs were a common thing, and there was a sort "collective concious" of using BBSs to connect with others, I
remember news paper articles about FIDOnet and how that could
get you in touch with anyone anywhere in the world, but it
wasn't until 1995 (and Win95, indeed...) with IExplroer
preinstalled, and the browser war it ensued that *web browsing*
(!!) really became something most people became aware of.
..when most people became aware of FIDONet? I'm not so sure. It
seemed that there were a lot of people who bought their first
computer in the mid-90s and were getting on the internet and didn't
really have a knowlege of BBSes.
And I think Internet Explorer was included as an optional install in
a Windows 95 add-on, and it came pre-installed in Windows 98. That
was around the time of the Microsoft anti-trust trial, and Microsoft
tried to say Internet Explorer was integrated into the OS and they
couldn't remove it..
Nightfox --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
Spectre wrote to Nightfox <=-
By the time you hit mid 90s anyone buying a modem has no interest in a
BBS they're being sold internet access. That's become the primary
reason for purchase.
By the time you hit mid 90s anyone buying a modem has no interest in a
BBS they're being sold internet access. That's become the primary reason
for purchase.
I miss the endless busy signals of the '90s. Wait, I don't. Being able to connect to the internet (mostly) without busy signals was a big part of the allure for some people.
I recall setting a handful of BBSes on repeat dial and waiting until one of them answered. Usually, the less popular one would connect you and you'd end up reading messages on a stock Spitfire board instead of the one you *really* wanted to call.
I miss the endless busy signals of the '90s. Wait, I don't. Being able
And I think Internet Explorer was included as an optional install in a Windows 95 add-on, and it came pre-installed in Windows 98. That was around the time of the Microsoft anti-trust trial, and Microsoft tried
to say Internet Explorer was integrated into the OS and they couldn't remove it..
Bear in mind also that commercial sale of DNS domains
started in 1992 (Network Solutions taking over from NSF).
I still have that Whole Internet book! I think its funny that once upon a time, all of the internet could fit in one book.
I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San Francisco
I should probably watch that show.. I watched the first episode (or part of it) and for some reason didn't continue watching the show.
Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-
I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San Francisco
I should probably watch that show.. I watched the first episode (or
part of it) and for some reason didn't continue watching the show.
I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San
Here a lot of BBS became early dialup ISPs. I believe 90% of dialup BBS were gone by late 93, I forget a little, but it was every user just disappeared overnight. One month there were users, next month, not a
IIRC, 'the internet', as such actually started out in 1995, replacing Compuserve.
I wouldn't know as I got my PC connected with a modem around 1997, when the inernet already was a thing but there wasn't much to do there
either, there was a lot more activity in BBS systems.
Netscape Navigator came out in 1994,
You guys call it NutScrape too?
I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my area were still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and the BBS ran for a good 10 years (dialup, then web based around 2001) longer before life made me shut down. By 2003 things where really slowing down on the Dialup scene but when we transitioned to a web board it kept going for a while.
Bah.. the Internet was a 30 year old overnight success by the time 95 rolled around. The marker for 95 was simply Windows 95, which was built to be online at the time. 3.1 would do it of course with WinSock but it was a pita and unreliable. 95 was the shit.. the world changed that day.
You guys call it NutScrape too?
No.. usually it was "F*&#$ng Netscape".. often times after it locked up or crashed.. usually just about the time before you got to see boob on the photo you where downloading in the browser window..
No.. usually it was "F*&#$ng Netscape".. often times after it locked up
I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my area were still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and the BBS
ways, and having to flip between Nutscrape and Internet Exploiter as they
I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my area were
still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and the BBS
Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...
Halt and Catch Fire - where are you streaming these seasons from? I am interested in re-watching it, but am hesitant to sign up for another darn streaming service.
Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...
I started using the internet in 1995 with Windows 3.1 and Winsock. I don't think it was a PITA.. It actually seemed fairly easy to set up.
That's odd. In the San Francisco Bay Area there were hundreds of BBSes in the area and a whole echomail distribution system. I was part of that until the late 90s, probably 1998. I got an ISDN line and connection to the internet and started using FTP to get fidonet mail.
I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my ar still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and
Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...
Spec
*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
I didn't leave FidoNet until 1996 or 97... don't remember for sure
because I recently looked at some old nodelists and saw my node listed in a 97 list.
I brought my old Atari 8-bit BBS back on the internet in 1999 and it is still up and running...
I have access to all 4 seasons ;)That is AWESOME! But, where do I get it?
Klunk
Spectre wrote to Bf2K+ <=-
Back in 93-94 I don't think we had enough ways to migrate a BBS to the internet. Most had already left the building by the time they became available.
I do remember seeing RLFOSSIL back then, but having no way to use it
with any of my existing infrastructure.
I started using the internet in 1995 with Windows 3.1 and Winsock. I don't think it was a PITA.. It actually seemed fairly easy to set up. You'd just configure Winsock for your ISP and dial in, and you were online. I did that for a while until in 1996, I got my first job and spent my first couple paychecks on parts for a new PC, which I installed Windows 95 on.
Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...
I don't remember having such a problem with Netscape. It always seemed like a good browser.
I don't remember having such a problem with Netscape. It always seemed
like a good browser.
I never found it to be an especially great browser.. it wasn't horrible but it was early days in the world of WWW. I was very happy when FireFox came out.
I have access to all 4 seasons ;)
That is AWESOME! But, where do I get it? --Matt
I don't think there was a terminal program that could do Telnet and
Zmodem back then; that was the one show-stopper I kept going back to. Between QWK and file transfers, Zmodem was a requirement.
their own "special" tags that the others couldn't use or recognize. I think back to the days of IE being the "premier" browser with its ActiveX controls. Many financial institutions developed their sites for that browser and you could only access them with IE.
Mhansel739 wrote to TheNerd <=-
Netscape, or any of the other browsers out at the beginning of the wild west days of the world wide web (WWW), were hit or miss. Web page/site developers had to choose what browser they were developing for.
I should probably watch that show.. I watched the first episode (or
part of it) and for some reason didn't continue watching the show.
If Netscape wasn't a great browser, what browser were you comparing Netscape to? I don't think there were very many web browsers available
at the time, and they were probably about on par with each other.
Firefox didn't come out until 2004..
developers had to choose what browser they were developing for. One browser rendered one way, the other another way. And each of them had their own "special" tags that the others couldn't use or recognize.
I think back to the days of IE being the "premier" browser with its
That is AWESOME! But, where do I get it?
I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San Francisco and worked at a software company in San Francisco. San Francisco was cool, and the epicenter of multimedia in tech. San Francisco was cool and the rest of the bay area was uncool. I wonder what would have happened if I'd decided to work outside of San Francisco in the uncool valley and gotten a job at Netscape.Where are you watching it? streaming service? which one.
Re: Re: computers
By: Spectre to TheNerd on Fri Jul 26 2024 03:29 am
Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...
That's odd. In the San Francisco Bay Area there were hundreds of BBSes
in the area and a whole echomail distribution system. I was part of that until the late 90s, probably 1998. I got an ISDN line and connection to the internet and started using FTP to get fidonet mail.
OMG yes.. This is why my foray into web design as a profession ended. Constant standard changes or stupid extras that where real cool in IE didn't render right or at all in netscape or firefox.. no thanks. Now I look at code for pages and no thanks.
OMG yes.. This is why my foray into web design as a profession ended. Constant standard changes or stupid extras that where real cool in IE d render right or at all in netscape or firefox.. no thanks. Now I look code for pages and no thanks.
CSS was pretty cool when it hit wide spread adoption tho... IE needed t that up a bit as usual of course.
Mhansel739 wrote to TheNerd <=-
Yes, this is what I was talking about. Browsers rendered things "differently" depending on how the developers "interpreted" the HTML or CSS code. Yes, CSS was a developing standard, but it was still the WWW (wild wild west) on the WWW (world-wide web). My foray into web-dev was similar. I found it silly creating different versions of pages for different browsers, or locking someone into a specific browser to look
at or use a page.
The problem from my perspective was extensions and interpretations of
the HTML standard by Microsoft making IE less compatible. Microsoft
knew that corporate networks would support IE and intentionally erode
competitor's market share. Microsoft in the '90s was ruthless and
should have been broken up.
As much as we love Linux, there are "too many" variations for it to take hold. It does well in the server arena, but not the desktop. And Mac, as good as it is missed the mark.Just recently I saw a conference by Linus Torvalds where he pointed out just that. That MS was succesful because there's only 1 Windows in each cycle, whereas in Linux, each app creator has to release an immense amount of binaries to have their app ready to be used in a myriad of different distros. The Cathedral and the Bazaar, back for blood... Still, Mr. Torvalds pointed out that is yet another huge corporation one that could push this culture and logic into the linux sphere, when Steam would have to standarize binary releases for games compatible with the linux platform
Think about this. Once Microsoft established itself as the OS of choice for IBM and the clones, it already created a foothold. Commodore, Atari, and other platforms just could not compete with the common platform that software was being created for.
--Matt
On this last piece of your post: MS didn't "establish itself"... they d some kind of shady move with IBM to have their OS pre-installed in OEM computers for a good few years, until it was irreversible. I know ameri folks (coming from "the land of opportunity and the free and brave), se these 'corporate moves' as not so much as "shady", but you gotta give t that's not quite "squeaky clean"...No doubt that MS did some shady stuff to get DOS on the IBM. They have
born in the 80's but have been getting back into retro computers again,
i miss the times when this was primary means of comms.
I grew up with dial-up in the 90s and 2000s, but never saw or used a BBS until last year. Using one now has changed my apprecation for using the Internet, and has changed my ideas on how to use it to communicate.
i was born in 1991! this is a cooler way to talk! :D
--mary4 (Victoria Crenshaw) the 286 enthusiast
... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Datanet BBS | telnet://datanetbbs.net:23 (21:1/166)
i was born in 1991! this is a cooler way to talk! :D
--mary4 (Victoria Crenshaw) the 286 enthusiast
... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Datanet BBS | telnet://datanetbbs.net:23 (21:1/166)
I have always thought so.same here! this is so much better than fb.
same here! this is so much better than fb.i was born in 1991! this is a cooler way to talk! :D
Nightfox wrote to Malvinas <=-
Yea, my reply was about that other guy saying that pretty much 'over night', users vaporized into thin air... I thought not seeing that happen here might've been a 'regional' thing... you say it was pretty similar in the US too...
Yeah.. I was surprised he also said he thought about 90% of BBSes had disappeared in 1993, which seems pretty early to me. The BBS scene was still fairly big here, I think until about 1997 or so when I noticed
users started to dwindle fairly fast. I didn't even know about the internet in 1993, and I'm not entirely sure how many people did.
Nightfox wrote to TheNerd <=-
I don't remember having such a problem with Netscape. It always seemed like a good browser.
TheNerd wrote to Nightfox <=-
I started using the internet in 1995 with Windows 3.1 and Winsock. I don't think it was a PITA.. It actually seemed fairly easy to set up. You'd just configure Winsock for your ISP and dial in, and you were online. I did that for a while until in 1996, I got my first job and spent my first couple paychecks on parts for a new PC, which I installed Windows 95 on.
OH gawd I hated Winsock. Early in my career I had to support that for
an ISP.. thankfully not for long before it filtered out of the system. Nothing but pain with a 'user' on the other end of the phone.
Malvinas wrote to Mhansel739 <=-
On this last piece of your post: MS didn't "establish itself"... they
did some kind of shady move with IBM to have their OS pre-installed in
OEM computers for a good few years, until it was irreversible. I know american folks (coming from "the land of opportunity and the free and brave), see these 'corporate moves' as not so much as "shady", but you gotta give that that's not quite "squeaky clean"...
Yeah.. I was surprised he also said he thought about 90% of BBSes had
disappeared in 1993, which seems pretty early to me. The BBS scene was
Here, when we moved from Jackson to Memphis, there were still SEVERAL BBS's running! I paid for a dial up shell account to use for telnet and such, before we migrated to AOL for 'the web.' But even then BBS's were still popular. This was 93-94 or so.
Remember bloatware? You'd buy that $300 Packard Bell or HP machine,
and it woud be preinstalled with a TON of stuff that you had to
delete to get system space and processing back. I found out that
the companies PAID to have their stuff installed, and that's how
they could sell the PC's so cheaply.
JIMMY ANDERSON (21:2/127) wrote to Nightfox <=-
Here, when we moved from Jackson to Memphis, there were still
SEVERAL BBS's running! I paid for a dial up shell account to
use for telnet and such, before we migrated to AOL for 'the
web.' But even then BBS's were still popular. This was 93-94
or so.
Nightfox wrote to Jimmy Anderson <=-
Where I am, I'd say there were more than just 'several' BBSes still running in 1993. I didn't even start running my BBS until 1994, and I think there were still a lot of BBSes in my area at that time. Mine
got plenty of callers.. I think it was around 1997 or so when BBS
usage in my area started to drop off, and it seemed to drop off fairly quickly. I took my BBS down in 2000 because it was rarely getting any callers anymore.
What I think is interesting is that I think my current BBS now gets
more use than my original BBS was getting in 2000..
Malvinas wrote to Jimmy Anderson <=-
Remember bloatware? You'd buy that $300 Packard Bell or HP machine,
and it woud be preinstalled with a TON of stuff that you had to
delete to get system space and processing back. I found out that
the companies PAID to have their stuff installed, and that's how
they could sell the PC's so cheaply.
Thing is, you could delete those "tools and utils", and still be able
to use the machine. Talk about the OS... what do you do if you wipe out your HD and have no OS to install, to replace it. Having an agreement
with the OEMs to have *your* OS pre installed and not let people find whatever OS they'd like... I think it was anything but "nice".
Utopian Galt wrote to Jimmy Anderson <=-
JIMMY ANDERSON (21:2/127) wrote to Nightfox <=-
Here, when we moved from Jackson to Memphis, there were still
SEVERAL BBS's running! I paid for a dial up shell account to
use for telnet and such, before we migrated to AOL for 'the
web.' But even then BBS's were still popular. This was 93-94
or so.
They started to die out when I graduated from high school in 1997.
People who started to go to college ended up killing off their bbses.
I was the only long term bbs in my area for another decade before i stopped paying for the modem line.
Agreed... At least now there are usually restore files on the hard
drive. :)
Malvinas wrote to Jimmy Anderson <=-
Agreed... At least now there are usually restore files on the hard
drive. :)
And "live" pendrive .iso files, that let you "try before install" different OSs and distros... something that was still the stuff of
dreams in the first half of the 80s.
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