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SO I assume many of you guys ventured in BBS's before the internet boom. Do you remember the first time you logged into a BBS? I do. It was exciting... wasn't quite sure what it was all about.. but there was this compelling ASCII right there, and then BOOM! Some kind of an interface. What what whaaat? (M)ail (F)iles etc etc.. you know. Then you just used the commands and boom, there was like all these directories and files, and this is outside YOUR computer. Cool stuff.
A lot of people never had the feeling since they went straight to the internet so there was no progression of thought from nothing to BBS first, so anyway, an idea that you could download files and upload them. Too cool man... I mean, there are all these files, like mostly text files, but also other things, little programs, even a game or two. There was a distinct feeling when you went into these places, especially a new BBS you never called before or your first times in general. It was excitement, it was like watching a movie where someone walks in a dungeon.. what's next, what we will see? Who knows!?
It was an extremely personal experience every single time, almost intimate. Then, you discovered you could chat with the sysop. Some boards even had multiple nodes, so you could leave messages and read them, plus when smodem came, you could actually not only download but also upload at the same time, unlike that crappy zmodem, and you could CHAT with people at the same time. Now that's COOL!! Oh, and boards that had only zmodem were lame, you had to have smodem support.
Then of course, you found out, that there were games pirated in these places. The sysop would give you access to a whole new layers of the board, and woaaah, dude, I can get these games now! Then you move on, and suddenly, you'll notice there's a whole bunch of boards just dedicated to trading, and they had limits, like no older than 7d.... 0d boards were crazy, I even remember 12h board
. This was still before the internet boom, when all the action was on BBS's.
So then there were these groups like PWA etc, cool groups. Then one day, one of my friends had gotten into a group, so later on I was inducted as well because I was vouched for, right? Damn, I mean that felt like being a made man now, and not everyone can get in. In fact, back in the days it was exclusive, most people didn't even know what a modem is. Games would fit into like 15 megs or so.. then they started coming up with larger games, 50 megs and more, plus then you had to rip the sounds and all that stuff, because a release over 100 megs would be too big. It would take forever to download or upload. And games stared to come up with some crappy animation and all, so you had movie add ons, sound add ons and music add ons to games. So even if someone uploaded the game itself, you could still eat the cake by sodomizing the add ons in first.
I remember a time when people would go to these gatherings, like in the demo scene, so these groups would go there, and they would wear badges, because you could have a name tag, so they'd wear their handles and group affiliation like a badge of honour. I remember going into this big demo party back in the days, so I requested my badge and the dude who gave it to me was like "wooaah, you belong into X"? Instant God. Felt good.
How about some battles between groups, some feuds even. Or what about when you started to be interested in hmm.. how the hell do they crack these games anyway? All you needed back then was a hexaeditor, most of it was very very elementary. Early CDs had no protection what so ever usually anyway. Only thing you had to do most of the times was to enable the use of that CD from a HD0 or so, so it would function perfectly when you ripped it. That was all many times. They got a bit better in time, but not much.
Then all these, man, you can have these callers, you can call all these boards automatically, you could do a lot of stuff. Of course you still can, but it's just not fun.
Did you guys get excited with the boards or what?
A lot of people never had the feeling since they went straight to the internet so there was no progression of thought from nothing to BBS first, so anyway, an idea that you could download files and upload them. Too cool man... I mean, there are all these files, like mostly text files, but also other things, little programs, even a game or two. There was a distinct feeling when you went into these places, especially a new BBS you never called before or your first times in general. It was excitement, it was like watching a movie where someone walks in a dungeon.. what's next, what we will see? Who knows!?
It was an extremely personal experience every single time, almost intimate. Then, you discovered you could chat with the sysop. Some boards even had multiple nodes, so you could leave messages and read them, plus when smodem came, you could actually not only download but also upload at the same time, unlike that crappy zmodem, and you could CHAT with people at the same time. Now that's COOL!! Oh, and boards that had only zmodem were lame, you had to have smodem support.
Then of course, you found out, that there were games pirated in these places. The sysop would give you access to a whole new layers of the board, and woaaah, dude, I can get these games now! Then you move on, and suddenly, you'll notice there's a whole bunch of boards just dedicated to trading, and they had limits, like no older than 7d.... 0d boards were crazy, I even remember 12h board
. This was still before the internet boom, when all the action was on BBS's. So then there were these groups like PWA etc, cool groups. Then one day, one of my friends had gotten into a group, so later on I was inducted as well because I was vouched for, right? Damn, I mean that felt like being a made man now, and not everyone can get in. In fact, back in the days it was exclusive, most people didn't even know what a modem is. Games would fit into like 15 megs or so.. then they started coming up with larger games, 50 megs and more, plus then you had to rip the sounds and all that stuff, because a release over 100 megs would be too big. It would take forever to download or upload. And games stared to come up with some crappy animation and all, so you had movie add ons, sound add ons and music add ons to games
. So even if someone uploaded the game itself, you could still eat the cake by sodomizing the add ons in first. I remember a time when people would go to these gatherings, like in the demo scene, so these groups would go there, and they would wear badges, because you could have a name tag, so they'd wear their handles and group affiliation like a badge of honour. I remember going into this big demo party back in the days, so I requested my badge and the dude who gave it to me was like "wooaah, you belong into X"? Instant God. Felt good.
How about some battles between groups, some feuds even. Or what about when you started to be interested in hmm.. how the hell do they crack these games anyway? All you needed back then was a hexaeditor, most of it was very very elementary. Early CDs had no protection what so ever usually anyway. Only thing you had to do most of the times was to enable the use of that CD from a HD0 or so, so it would function perfectly when you ripped it. That was all many times. They got a bit better in time, but not much.
Then all these, man, you can have these callers, you can call all these boards automatically, you could do a lot of stuff. Of course you still can, but it's just not fun.
Did you guys get excited with the boards or what?
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