thank you @acn128 for setting up the world's first globaltalk FirstClass BBS! it is amazingly functional, and even has a Usenet feed via eternal-september

(apologies for the terrible photo - my phone grabbed the aperture grille by accident)

for those unfamiliar with FirstClass, it was one of the *very* few fully graphical BBSes of the 1990s, with a point and click graphical client. it predated larger systems like Lotus Notes by a decade

Viele Menschen versuchen derzeit sich von grossen Anbietern zu lösen. Auch wir haben uns vor Jahren von Twitter getrennt und auf #Mastodon eine gut funktionierende Alternative gefunden. Kurz darauf haben wir unter BBSindex.TV unser eigenes Videoarchiv gegründet.

Inzwischen ist das Feediverse weiter gewachsen und bietet eine solide Grundlage mit #PeerTube als Videoplattform an. Wir haben uns deshalb bei #MakerTube um einen Kanal beworben und diesen unter https://makertube.net/@bbsindex einrichten dürfen. Aktuell laden wir immer mal wieder unseren Content dort hoch.

Um nicht alles mit unseren Videos in der Liste was es neues gibt zu fluten laden wir nicht alles auf einmal dort hoch. Derzeit pushen wir unseren #Amiga Content nachdem wir bereits unsere #BBS Tutorial Videos dort veröffentlicht haben.

Das bedeutet nicht das wir von der grossen Plattform verschwinden oder unser Videoarchiv einstellen. Wir wollen lediglich Euch alternativen anbieten das Ihr eine bessere Auswahl habt wo Ihr Content anschaut.

Wenn Ihr noch nicht wisst was mit Videos im #feediverse geht dann nehmt Euch doch mal 15 Minuten Zeit und entdeckt diese immer besser werdene alternative. Mehr Creator und wachsende Communitys sorgen dafür das diese Plattformen in Zukunft bestehen können.

Vielen Dank!

back in the early and mid-90s, getting on the net meant you were a university student, or had corporate access through a big company. getting online wasn't easy.

worse, even if you had a dialup number and login, there was no such thing as a tcp/ip stack built-in to Windows 3.1.

even if you *did* have a winsock stack, you'd still need a file downloading protocol, gopher client, world wide web client, ftp client, email client. just getting your machine off the ground was nearly impossible unless you could grab these from a local BBS

to make things simpler, universities began offering dial-up internet software packages to their students and staff.

in 1994, my mom was an undergrad student at the University of Alberta. our family had just bought an IBM PS/1 with a 2400 baud modem, and i was abusing the hell out of our single phone line at night visiting local BBSes.

she somehow found out that the university was selling internet dial-up software for $10 to students, and brought home the diskette pack with her. along with a USR Sportster 14.4k modem, she gave me the install diskettes as a valentine's day gift.

it had a slick setup program that enabled SLIP using Trumpet Winsock, and provided a local (free!) dial-up number for access.

after 25 years, i finally tracked down a few versions of those diskettes. i've imaged them and uploaded them all to IA.

the first version of the dial-up package in 1994 was called WinSLIP. it had no PPP support yet, but contained some really cool shareware internet utilities like HGopher and NCSA Mosaic. this would have been the earliest programs offered for Windows 3.1

WinSLIP/MSKermit 1994/95:
https://archive.org/details/ua_winslip

The second version of the software was renamed to NetSurf. It stripped out most of the obscure shareware sadly, and replaced them with Netscape 2 and Eudora Light. The new version of Trumpet Winsock offered PPP which was a huge improvement:

NetSurf 1996/97:
https://archive.org/details/ua_netsurf_96

Now well into the Windows 95 era, the 1997/98 software was shipped on a CD with a hilarious "multimedia" installer/help program designed in Macromedia Director:

NetSurf 1997/98:
https://archive.org/details/netsurf-97-starter-kit

I hope this brings back some memories for fellow U of A alumni :)

just found a treasure trove of extremely obscure BBS history stashed away on IA

thank you hard-working book scanners for preserving this rarity.

if you're familiar with BBSing in the 90s, you'll remember just how fast the vast majority of boards disappeared in 1995. it went from multinode 24/7 bbses to disconnected phone numbers in just a few months

this book accounts for the very small number of BBSes that made the transition from telco-only to "telBBS" or telnettable/web-accessible boards

3/4 of the book is a carefully curated list of 500 boards with screenshots of their homepages and bbs login/title screens. most importantly, the URLs of these boards is preserved so we have a chance to look them up on WBM some day.

https://archive.org/details/internetbbss00rich

@Commodore1351 @Zitruskeks @heinz_hjo @Hal_9000 @torus

Neulich gabs einen überraschenden Besuch vom 8-Bit Guy in der 40 Jahre alten #Commodore64 Mailbox Snobsoft. Natürlich loggte sich David Murray nicht mit irgendeinem 0815-Rechner in den #BBS Dinoaurier ein, sondern stilecht mit seiner eigenen Retro-Computerkreation, dem Commander X16.
Snobsoft User DGeoffri haute ebenfalls an seinem X16 in die Tasten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHzA5RgFOVk

M-NET the oldest running Public Access UNIX has arrived! The original Altos ACS68000 will be on display next weekend at the Interim Computer Festival. M-NET is now under SDF.org Vintage Systems care. Thanks jfk, cross and tod! #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #community #bbs

now that kiki - my super lo-fi wiki/blog/website software - is running pretty darn smoothly, i'd like to think about adding support for weird protocols

telnettable bbs with menuing? gopherspace? gemini?

ABC shut down FiveThirtyEight, once an amazing site for data-driven journalism and sports analysis.

I loved incorporating 538's data into old-school #retrocomputing and BBS projects, like my ANSI "Elex Forecast" BBS door. It used data from their 2016 and 2020 Election Forecast visualizations.

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2016/10/04/who-needs-svg-when-youve-got-ansi/

https://github.com/Kirkman/elexforecast

Happy Twin Peaks Day.
RIP David Lynch.

+++ Sysop News +++ Sysop News +++

So I'm still investigating the connectivity issues I witnessed with #rc2014bbs and here are my current findings:

1.) while the telnet listener of the #Zimodem firmware is no longer open on port 2014, the #wifi of the #esp8266 itself is still active and the reserved ip is responding to ping requests.

2.) once the firmware gets reset via ATZ it sometimes restarts /re-opens the listener on port 2014

3.) the listener dies a few hours after initial powerup of the system

4.) my memory may be failing me but those issues began somewhere around autumn last year when I updated the firmware to version 3.7.1

As a result of these findings, I have reverted the firmware on the esp8266 to Zimodem version 3.6.5. It's not an official release - I checked it out using the corresponding commit hash.

The BBS was powered up with that version yesterday at 09:00 am and it is still running about 24 hours later, which was never the case with the 3.7.1 version of the firmware. I've also noticed a few other glitches not being present with the 3.6.5 version.

It is still a little too soon to call the problem solved, but there's movement here.

Also keep in mind that RC-BOX BBS (the world's first and - currently - only #rc2014 based #bbs) is using a wifi connection so other sources of influence may also have an effect on connectivity (although they never were *that* worse before 3.7.1).

BBSing, as one does on a snow day.

+++ Another Sysop News +++ Another Sysop News +++

Aside from (hopefully) working around the recent connectivity issues with RC-BOX BBS, I've also purged the "General" message file and moved all existing messages to a new "Archive" message file. It's read-only but it cotnains all the posts to "General" from july 2022 - january 2025.

Also, the "Making", "Code & Co." and "Announce" message files have been dropped as they have never been used.

As always you can find the telnet address of the BBS in the ALT-Text or my profile here on #oldbytesdotspace

#rcbox
#rc2014bbs
#bbs
#rcbbs
#rc2014

i really enjoyed reading this 40 year old textfile by Steve Punter, creator of the punter protocol. he walks you through, conceptually, how a high reliability BBS file transmission protocol works.
checksums, CRCs and other packet integrity strategies are explained in surprisingly human terms as he designs the C1 protocol out loud in just a few pages.

https://cbmfiles.com/genie/geniefiles/TelcomTools/C1-PROTOCOL-DESCRIPTION

+++ Sysop News +++ Sysop News +++

Over the past few months I have witnessed some strange behavior with RC-BOX BBS (the world's first - and currently only - RC2014 based BBS) where the Wifi modem would loose connection over night and not restore it properly. As a result the BBS was unreachable.

I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happens but may have found a workaround.

As always you can find the telnet address of the BBS in the ALT-Text or my profile here on #oldbytesdotspace

#rcbox
#rc2014bbs
#bbs
#rcbbs
#rc2014

The internet is going backwards.

Doing a web search in 2025 is a nightmare: even if you tell Google/DuckDuckGo to disable AI summaries, most of the top results you get are clearly AI-generated word salads. More than in the past, I am finding myself keeping a curated list of trusted sources, wikis, personal homepages, blogs, microblogs, to fetch information from, rather than relying on search engines. People increasingly host their own stuff, because it has become easier, and digital self sovereignty is being finally seen as something valuable. Archivists scramble to hoard data that might soon disappear. Fediverse means going back from web 2.0 to email, and frankly it's great. Well, we're still being shoved in our throats modern versions of Clippy, but I guess no pain no gain.

Now please bring back BBSs and 56k modems, and the cycle will be complete. I dream of a next era of steampunk utopia where "key exchange" has a very metallic meaning, and steam computers can factorize more than 15.

#ai #2025 #google #web3 #fediverse #digitalselfsovereignty #clippy #bbs #56k #steampunk #crypto #cryptography #quantumcomputing

Here's an updated picture of my Commodore VIC-20 running my bulletin board system (DeepSkies BBS).

In the back of the VIC is a VIC-1011A RS-232 card that connects the VIC via a null modem cable to a Mac mini that's in behind the VIC (on the right). The Mac is running tcpser that connects the VIC to the Internet.

There's also an SD2IEC drive plugged into the datasette port with a 32GB micro SD card in it that holds all the files for the BBS.

In the cartridge port is a VIC-2407 cartridge that supplies the VIC with 35KB of RAM expansion and a real time clock chip. The VIC also has a JiffyDOS ROM in it, and I added a toggle switch to the back so I can turn it off and use the stock ROM when I want (for compatibility with some stuff).

The VIC-2407 is a bespoke cartridge made for me by JaystoniansRetroShop on Etsy! He is fantastic to work with!

Over to the left, you can see my Ray Carlsen power supply with cold-war spec toggle switch that goes "KA-CHUNK!" when you flip it. It's awesome!

You can fire up your VIC-20 and dial into my BBS 24hrs a day, 7 days a week:

bbs.deepskies.com:6400