Bulletin board system
Encyclopedia
A Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer
system
running software that allows users
to connect
and log in
to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user
can perform functions such as uploading and downloading
software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users
, either through email
or in public message boards. Many BBSes also offer on-line games
, in which users can compete with each other, and BBSes with multiple phone lines often provide chat room
s, allowing users to interact with each other.
Originally BBSes were accessed only over a phone line
using a modem
, but by the early 1990s some BBSes allowed access via a Telnet
, packet switched network
, or packet radio
connection.
Ward Christensen
coined the term "Bulletin Board System" as a reference to the traditional cork-and-pin bulletin board
often found in entrances of supermarkets, schools, libraries or other public areas where people can post messages, advertisements, or community news. By "computerizing" this method of communications, the name of the system was born: CBBS - Computerized Bulletin Board System. See History.
During their heyday from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, most BBSes were run as a hobby
free of charge by the system operator (or "SysOp
"), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access, or were operated by a business as a means of supporting their customers. Bulletin Board Systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web
, social network service
s and other aspects of the Internet
.
Early BBSes were often a local phenomenon, as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay additional long distance charges for a BBS out of the local calling area. Thus, many users
of a given BBS usually lived in the same area, and activities such as BBS Meets or Get Togethers were common, where users of the board would gather at a local restaurant, the SysOps home or similar venue and meet face to face.
As the use of the Internet became more widespread in the mid to late 1990s, traditional BBSes rapidly faded in popularity. Today, Internet forum
s occupy much of the same social and technological space as BBSes did, and the term BBS is often used to refer to any online forum or message board.
Although BBSing survives only as a niche hobby in most parts of the world, it is still an extremely popular form of communication for Taiwanese youth (see PTT Bulletin Board System). Most BBSes are now accessible over telnet
and typically offer free email
accounts, FTP services, IRC
and all of the protocols
commonly used on the Internet.
, started in August, 1973 in Berkeley, California
, using hardwired terminals located in neighborhoods.
The first public dial-up Bulletin Board System was developed by Ward Christensen
. According to an early interview, while he was snowed in during the Great Blizzard of 1978
in Chicago, Christensen along with fellow hobbyist Randy Suess, began preliminary work on the Computerized Bulletin Board System, or CBBS
. CBBS went online on February 16, 1978 in Chicago, Illinois
. CBBS, which kept a count of callers, reportedly connected 253,301 callers before it was finally retired.
With the original 110 and 300 baud
modems of the late 1970s, BBSes were particularly slow, but speed improved with the introduction of 1200 bit/s modems in the early 1980s, and this led to a substantial increase in popularity. The demand for complex ANSI and ASCII screens and larger file transfers taxed available channel capacity
, which in turn propelled demand for faster modems.
Most of the information
was displayed using ordinary ASCII
text or ANSI art
, though some BBSes experimented with higher resolution visual formats such as the innovative but obscure Remote Imaging Protocol
. Many systems became quite sophisticated in graphic presentation, especially considering that the system was confined to ASCII codes. Several systems attempted to simulate the appearance of GUI displays which were just appearing as DOS add-ons or Apple systems. Probably the ultimate development of graphic presentations was the Dynamic page implementation of the University of Southern California
BBS (USCBBS) by Susan Biddlecomb, which predated the implementation of the HTML
Dynamic web page
. A complete "Dynamic web page
" implementation was accomplished using TBBS
with a TDBS add-on presenting a complete menu system individually customized for each user.
Towards the early 1990s, the BBS industry became so popular that it spawned three monthly magazines, Boardwatch
, BBS Magazine, and in Asia and Australia, Chips 'n Bits Magazine which devoted extensive coverage of the software and technology innovations and people behind them, and listings to US and worldwide BBSes. In addition, in the USA, a major monthly magazine, Computer Shopper
, carried a list of BBSes along with a brief abstract of each of their offerings.
According to the FidoNet
Nodelist, BBSes reached their peak usage around 1996, which was the same period that the World Wide Web
suddenly became mainstream. BBSes rapidly declined in popularity thereafter, and were replaced by systems using the Internet
for connectivity. Some of the larger commercial BBSes, such as ExecPC BBS
, became actual Internet Service Providers.
The website textfiles.com
serves as an archive that documents the history of the BBS. The owner of textfiles.com, Jason Scott
, also produced BBS: The Documentary
, a DVD
film that chronicles the history of the BBS and features interviews with well-known people (mostly from the United States
) from the heyday BBS era.
The historical BBS list on textfiles.com contains over 105,000 BBSes that have existed over a span of 20 years in North America alone.
s, BBS computers (especially for smaller boards) were typically operated from the SysOp's home. As such, access could be unreliable, and in many cases only one user could be on the system at a time. Only larger BBSs with multiple phone lines using specialized hardware, multitasking software, or a LAN
connecting multiple computers, could host multiple simultaneous users.
The first BBSes used homebrew software,CBBS Chicago (which Ward Christensen
programmed) was about 20,000 lines of 8080 assembler. quite often written or customized by the SysOps themselves, running on early S-100
microcomputer
systems such as the Altair
, IMSAI
and Cromemco
under the CP/M
operating system. Soon after, BBS software was being written for all of the major home computer
systems of the late 1970s era - the Apple II
, Atari
, Commodore
and TRS-80
being some of the most popular.
A few years later, in 1981, IBM introduced the first DOS
based IBM PC
, and due to the overwhelming popularity of PCs and their clones
, DOS soon became the operating system on which the majority of BBS programs were run. RBBS-PC
, ported
over from the CP/M world, and Fido BBS, created by Tom Jennings
(who later founded FidoNet
) were the first notable DOS BBS programs. There were many successful commercial BBS programs developed for DOS, such as PCBoard BBS
, RemoteAccess BBS
, and Wildcat! BBS
which had early roots from the Colossus BBS started by the author of the popular shareware communications program Qmodem
. Some popular freeware BBS programs for MS-DOS included Telegard BBS
and Renegade BBS
, which both had early origins from leaked WWIV BBS
source code. There were several dozen other BBS programs developed over the DOS era, and many were released under the shareware concept, while some were released as freeware including iniquity.
During the mid-1980s, many sysops opted for the less expensive, ubiquitous Commodore 64
(introduced in 1982), which was popular among software pirate groups. Popular commercial BBS programs were Blue Board
, Ivory BBS
, Color64
and CNet 64
. In the early 1990s a small number of BBSes were also running on the Commodore Amiga
models 500
, 1000
and 1200
(using external hard drives), and the Amiga 2000
, Amiga 3000
and Amiga 4000
(which had built-in hard drives). Popular BBS software for the Amiga were ABBS, Amiexpress
, StormforceBBS
, Infinity and Tempest
.
MS-DOS continued to be the most popular operating system for BBS use up until the mid-1990s, and in the early years most multi-node BBSes were running under a DOS based multitasker such as DesqView
or consisted of multiple computers connected via a LAN
. (Around 1990, OS/2 came out with "preemptive multitasking" of DOS, an alternative to DESQview for multi-node BBS.) In the late 1980s, a handful of BBS developers implemented multitasking communications routines which, although run under MS-DOS, allowed multiple phone lines and multiple users to connect to the same physical BBS computer. These included Galacticomm's MajorBBS (later WorldGroup), eSoft TBBS
, and Falken
. A lot of the code for the BBS systems was still written in Assembler or Pascal, There was only a minority of C code.
By 1995, many of the DOS-based BBSes had begun switching to modern multitasking
operating systems, such as OS/2
, Windows 95
, and Linux
. TCP/IP networking allowed most of the remaining BBSes to evolve and include Internet hosting capabilities. Recent BBS software, such as Synchronet
, EleBBS, DOC
or Wildcat! BBS
provide access using the Telnet
protocol rather than dialup, or by using legacy MS-DOS based BBS software with a FOSSIL
-to-Telnet redirector such as NetFoss
.
-based, and early BBSes conversed using the simple ASCII
character set. However, some home computer manufacturers extended the ASCII character set to take advantage of the advanced color and graphics capabilities of their systems. BBS software authors included these extended character sets in their software, and terminal program authors included the ability to display them when a compatible system was called. Atari's native character set was known as ATASCII
, while most Commodore BBSes supported PETSCII
. PETSCII was also supported by the nationwide online service Quantum Link
.Quantum Link and parts of AppleLink
went on to become America Online.
The use of these custom character sets was generally incompatible between manufacturers. Unless a caller was using terminal emulation software written for, and running on, the same type of system as the BBS, the session would simply fall back to simple ASCII output. For example, a Commodore 64 user calling an Atari BBS would use ASCII rather than the machine's native character set. As time progressed, most terminal programs began using the ANSI standard, but could use their native character set if it was available.
COCONET, a BBS system made by Coconut Computing, Inc., was released in 1988 and only supported a GUI interface (no text interface was available), and worked in EGA/VGA graphics mode, which made it stand out from the text-based BBS systems. COCONET's bitmap and vector graphics and support for multiple type fonts were inspired by the PLATO system, and the graphics capabilities were based on what was available in the Borland BGI graphics library. A number of companies wanted to license the COCONET GUI but Coconut Computing chose not to, and as a result, a competing approach called Remote Imaging Protocol
(RIP) emerged and was promoted by Telegrafix in the early to mid 1990s but it never became widespread. A similar technology called NAPLPS
was also considered, and although it became the underlying graphics technology behind the Prodigy service, it never gained popularity in the BBS market. There were several GUI-based BBS's on the Apple Macintosh platform, including TeleFinder
and FirstClass
, but these remained widely used only in the Mac market.
In the UK, the BBC Micro
based OBBS software, available from Pace for use with their modems, optionally allowed for colour and graphics using the Teletext
based graphics mode available on that platform. Other systems used the Viewdata
protocols made popular in the UK by British Telecom's Prestel
service, and the on-line magazine Micronet 800
whom were busy giving away modems with their subscriptions.
The most popular form of online graphics was ANSI art
, which combined the IBM Extended ASCII
character set's blocks and symbols with ANSI escape sequence
s to allow changing colors on demand, provide cursor control and screen formatting, and even basic musical tones. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, most BBSes used ANSI to make elaborate welcome screens, and colorized menus, and thus, ANSI support was a sought-after feature in terminal client programs. The development of ANSI art became so popular that it spawned an entire BBS "artscene" subculture
devoted to it.
Amiga
program Skyline BBS was the first in 1987 featuring a script markup language
communication protocol called Skypix
which was capable to give the user a complete graphical interface, featuring rich graphic content, changeable fonts, mouse-controlled actions, animations and sound.
Today, most BBS software that is still actively supported, such as WorldGroup, Wildcat! BBS
and Citadel/UX
, is Web-enabled, and the traditional text interface has been replaced (or operates concurrently) with a Web-based user interface. For those more nostalgic for the true BBS experience, one can use NetSerial (Windows) or DOSBox
(Windows/*nix) to redirect DOS COM port software to telnet, allowing them to connect to Telnet BBSes using 1980s and 1990s era modem terminal emulation
software, like Telix
, Terminate
, Qmodem
and Procomm Plus. Modern 32-bit terminal emulators such as mTelnet and SyncTerm include native telnet support.
community and thus amateur and packet radio
were often popular topics.
As the BBS phenomenon grew, so did the popularity of special interest boards. Bulletin Board Systems could be found for almost every hobby and interest. Popular interests included politics, religion, music, dating
, and alternative lifestyle
s. Many SysOps also adopted a theme
in which they customized their entire BBS (welcome screens, prompts, menus, and so on.) to reflect that theme. Common themes were based on fantasy
, or were intended to give the user the illusion of being somewhere else, such as in a sanatorium
, wizard's castle, or on a pirate ship.
In the early days, the file download library consisted of files that the SysOps obtained themselves from other BBS and friends. Many BBSes inspected every file uploaded to their public file download library to ensure that the material did not violate copyright law. As time went on, Shareware CD ROMs were sold with up to thousands of files on each CD ROM. Small BBS copied each file individually to their hard drive. Some systems used a CD ROM drive to make the files available. Advanced BBS used Multiple CD ROM disk changer units that switched 6 CD ROM disks on demand for the caller(s). Large systems used all 26 DOS Drive letters with multi-disk changers housing tens of thousands of copyright free shareware or freeware files available to all callers. These BBSes were generally more family friendly, avoiding the seedier side of BBSes. Access to these systems varied from single to multiple modem lines with some requiring little or no confirmed registration.
Some BBSes, called elite, warez or pirate boards, were exclusively used for distributing pirated software, phreaking
, and other questionable or unlawful content. These BBSes often had multiple modems and phone lines, allowing several users to upload and download files at once. Most elite BBSes used some form of new user verification, where new users would have to apply for membership and attempt to prove that they were not a law enforcement officer or a lamer
. The largest elite boards accepted users by invitation only. Elite boards also spawned their own subculture and gave rise to the slang
known today as leet
speak.
Another common type of board was the "support BBS" run by a manufacturer of computer products or software. These boards were dedicated to supporting users of the company's products with question and answer forums, news and updates, and downloads. Most of them were not a free call. Today, these services have moved to the web.
Some general purpose Bulletin Board Systems had special levels of access that were given to those who paid extra money, uploaded useful files or knew the sysop personally. These specialty and pay BBSes usually had something special to offer their users such as large file libraries, warez
, pornography
, chat rooms or Internet
access.
Pay BBSes such as The WELL and Echo NYC (now Internet forums rather than dial-up), ExecPC
, and MindVox
(which folded in 1996) were admired for their tightly-knit communities and quality discussion forums. However, many "free" BBSes also maintained close knit communities, and some even had annual or bi-annual events where users would travel great distances to meet face-to-face with their on-line friends. These events were especially popular with BBSes that offered chat rooms.
Some of the BBSes that provided access to illegal content did wind up in trouble. On July 12, 1985, in conjunction with a credit card fraud
investigation, the Middlesex County, NJ
Sheriff's department raided and seized The Private Sector BBS, which was the official BBS for grey hat
hacker quarterly 2600 Magazine at the time. The notorious Rusty n Edie's BBS
, in Boardman
, Ohio
, was raided by the FBI in January 1993 for software piracy, and in November 1997 sued by Playboy
for copyright infringement. In Flint
, Michigan
, a 21 year old man was charged with distributing child pornography
through his BBS in March 1996.
.
As is it was prohibitively expensive for the hobbyist SysOp to have a dedicated connection to another system, FidoNet was developed as a store and forward
network. Private email (Netmail), public message boards (Echomail) and eventually even file attachments on a FidoNet-capable BBS would be bundled into one or more archive files over a set time interval. These archive files were then compressed with ARC
or ZIP
and forwarded to (or polled by) another nearby node or hub via a dialup Xmodem
session. Messages would be relayed around various FidoNet hubs until they were eventually delivered to their destination. The hierarchy of FidoNet BBS nodes, hubs, and zones was maintained in a routing table called a Nodelist. Some larger BBSes or regional FidoNet hubs would make several transfers per day, some even to multiple nodes or hubs, and as such, transfers usually occurred at night or early morning when toll rates were lowest. In Fido's heyday, sending a Netmail message to a user on a distant FidoNet node, or participating in an Echomail discussion could take days, especially if any FidoNet nodes or hubs in the message's route only made one transfer call per day.
FidoNet was platform-independent and would work with any BBS that was written to use it. BBSes that did not have integrated FidoNet capability could usually add it using an external FidoNet front-end mailer such as FrontDoor, BinkleyTerm, InterMail or D'Bridge, and a mail processor such as FastEcho
or Squish
. The front-end mailer would conduct the periodic FidoNet transfers, while the mail processor would usually run just before and just after the mailer ran. This program would scan for and pack up new outgoing messages, and then unpack, sort and "toss" the incoming messages into a BBS user's local email box or into the BBS's local message bases reserved for Echomail. As such, these mail processors were commonly called "scanner/tosser/packers."
Many other BBS networks followed the example of FidoNet, using the same standards and the same software. These were called FidoNet Technology Networks (FTNs). They were usually smaller and targeted at selected audiences. Some networks used QWK doors, and others such as RelayNet
(RIME) and WWIVnet
used non-Fido software and standards.
Before commercial Internet access became common, these networks
of BBSes provided regional and international e-mail
and message bases. Some even provided gateways, such as UFGATE, by which members could send/receive e-mail to/from the Internet
via UUCP
, and many FidoNet discussion groups were shared via Usenet
. Elaborate schemes allowed users to download binary files, search gopherspace, and interact with distant programs
, all using plain text e-mail.
As the volume of FidoNet Mail increased and newsgroups from the early days of the Internet became available, satellite data downstream services became viable for larger systems. The satellite service provided access to FidoNet and Usenet newsgroups in large volumes at a reasonable fee. By connecting a small dish & receiver, a constant downstream of thousands of FidoNet and Usenet newsgroups could be received. The local BBS only needed to upload new outgoing messages via the modem network back to the satellite service. This method drastically reduced phone data transfers while dramatically increasing the number of message forums.
FidoNet is still in use today, though in a much smaller form, and many Echomail groups are still shared with Usenet via FidoNet to Usenet gateways. Widespread abuse of Usenet with spam
and pornography
has led to many of these FidoNet gateways to cease operation completely.
" movement was started via user distribution of software through BBSes. A notable example was Phil Katz
's PKARC (and later PKZIP
, using the same ".zip" algorithm
that WinZip
and other popular archivers now use); also other concepts of software distribution like freeware
, postcardware
like JPEGview
and donationware
like Red Ryder
for the Macintosh first appeared on BBS sites. Doom from id Software
and many Apogee
games were distributed as shareware. The Internet has largely erased the distinction of shareware - most users now download the software directly from the developer's website rather than receiving it from another BBS user 'sharing' it. Today shareware is commonly used to mean electronically-distributed software from a small developer.
Many commercial BBS software companies that continue to support their old BBS software products switched to the shareware model or made it entirely free. Some companies were able to make the move to the Internet and provide commercial products with BBS capabilities.
The BBS software usually provides:
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
system
Host (network)
A network host is a computer connected to a computer network. A network host may offer information resources, services, and applications to users or other nodes on the network. A network host is a network node that is assigned a network layer host address....
running software that allows users
User (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
to connect
Telecommunication circuit
A telecommunication circuit is any line, conductor, or other conduit by which information is transmitted.A dedicated circuit, private circuit, or leased line is a line that is dedicated to only one use...
and log in
Logging (computer security)
In computer security, a login or logon is the process by which individual access to a computer system is controlled by identifying and authentifying the user referring to credentials presented by the user.A user can log in to a system to obtain access and can then log out or log off In computer...
to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, a user
User (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
can perform functions such as uploading and downloading
Uploading and downloading
In computer networks, to download means to receive data to a local system from a remote system, or to initiate such a data transfer. Examples of a remote system from which a download might be performed include a webserver, FTP server, email server, or other similar systems...
software and data, reading news and bulletins, and exchanging messages with other users
User (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
, either through email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
or in public message boards. Many BBSes also offer on-line games
BBS door
A door is a computer program, on a bulletin board system, that runs outside of the main bulletin board program. Sometimes called external programs, doors are the most common way to add games, utilities, and other extensions to BBSes. From the 1990s on, most BBS software had the capability to...
, in which users can compete with each other, and BBSes with multiple phone lines often provide chat room
Chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...
s, allowing users to interact with each other.
Originally BBSes were accessed only over a phone line
Public switched telephone network
The public switched telephone network is the network of the world's public circuit-switched telephone networks. It consists of telephone lines, fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables, all inter-connected by...
using a modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
, but by the early 1990s some BBSes allowed access via a Telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
, packet switched network
Packet switched network
A packet-switched network is a digital communications network that groups all transmitted data, irrespective of content, type, or structure into suitably sized blocks, called packets...
, or packet radio
Packet radio
Packet radio is a form of packet switching technology used to transmit digital data via radio or wireless communications links. It uses the same concepts of data transmission via Datagram that are fundamental to communications via the Internet, as opposed to the older techniques used by dedicated...
connection.
Ward Christensen
Ward Christensen
Ward Christensen, born in West Bend, Wisconsin, U.S., is the founder of the CBBS bulletin board, the first bulletin board system ever brought online...
coined the term "Bulletin Board System" as a reference to the traditional cork-and-pin bulletin board
Bulletin board
A bulletin board is a surface intended for the posting of public messages, for example, to advertise things to buy or sell, announce events, or provide information...
often found in entrances of supermarkets, schools, libraries or other public areas where people can post messages, advertisements, or community news. By "computerizing" this method of communications, the name of the system was born: CBBS - Computerized Bulletin Board System. See History.
During their heyday from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, most BBSes were run as a hobby
Hobby
A hobby is a regular activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure, typically done during one's leisure time.- Etymology :A hobby horse is a wooden or wickerwork toy made to be ridden just like a real horse...
free of charge by the system operator (or "SysOp
SysOp
A sysop is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system or an online service virtual community. It may also be used to refer to administrators of other Internet-based network services....
"), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access, or were operated by a business as a means of supporting their customers. Bulletin Board Systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, social network service
Social network service
A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user , his/her social...
s and other aspects of the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
.
Early BBSes were often a local phenomenon, as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay additional long distance charges for a BBS out of the local calling area. Thus, many users
User (computing)
A user is an agent, either a human agent or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username , screen name , nickname , or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.Users are...
of a given BBS usually lived in the same area, and activities such as BBS Meets or Get Togethers were common, where users of the board would gather at a local restaurant, the SysOps home or similar venue and meet face to face.
As the use of the Internet became more widespread in the mid to late 1990s, traditional BBSes rapidly faded in popularity. Today, Internet forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
s occupy much of the same social and technological space as BBSes did, and the term BBS is often used to refer to any online forum or message board.
Although BBSing survives only as a niche hobby in most parts of the world, it is still an extremely popular form of communication for Taiwanese youth (see PTT Bulletin Board System). Most BBSes are now accessible over telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
and typically offer free email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
accounts, FTP services, IRC
Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file...
and all of the protocols
Communications protocol
A communications protocol is a system of digital message formats and rules for exchanging those messages in or between computing systems and in telecommunications...
commonly used on the Internet.
History
A precursor to the public Bulletin Board System was Community MemoryCommunity Memory
Community Memory was the first public computerized bulletin board system. Established in 1973 in Berkeley, California, it used an SDS 940 timesharing system in San Francisco connected via a 110 baud link to a teleprinter at a record store in Berkeley to let users enter and retrieve messages...
, started in August, 1973 in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
, using hardwired terminals located in neighborhoods.
The first public dial-up Bulletin Board System was developed by Ward Christensen
Ward Christensen
Ward Christensen, born in West Bend, Wisconsin, U.S., is the founder of the CBBS bulletin board, the first bulletin board system ever brought online...
. According to an early interview, while he was snowed in during the Great Blizzard of 1978
Great Blizzard of 1978
The Great Blizzard of 1978 was a historic blizzard which struck the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes from January 25–27, 1978. The 28.28 inches barometric pressure measurement recorded in Cleveland, Ohio was the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the mainland United States...
in Chicago, Christensen along with fellow hobbyist Randy Suess, began preliminary work on the Computerized Bulletin Board System, or CBBS
CBBS
CBBS was a computer software program created by Ward Christensen to allow him and other computer hobbyists to exchange information between one another....
. CBBS went online on February 16, 1978 in Chicago, Illinois
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
. CBBS, which kept a count of callers, reportedly connected 253,301 callers before it was finally retired.
With the original 110 and 300 baud
Baud
In telecommunications and electronics, baud is synonymous to symbols per second or pulses per second. It is the unit of symbol rate, also known as baud rate or modulation rate; the number of distinct symbol changes made to the transmission medium per second in a digitally modulated signal or a...
modems of the late 1970s, BBSes were particularly slow, but speed improved with the introduction of 1200 bit/s modems in the early 1980s, and this led to a substantial increase in popularity. The demand for complex ANSI and ASCII screens and larger file transfers taxed available channel capacity
Channel capacity
In electrical engineering, computer science and information theory, channel capacity is the tightest upper bound on the amount of information that can be reliably transmitted over a communications channel...
, which in turn propelled demand for faster modems.
Most of the information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
was displayed using ordinary ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
text or ANSI art
ANSI art
ANSI art is a computer art form that was widely used at one time on BBSes. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS and Unix environments...
, though some BBSes experimented with higher resolution visual formats such as the innovative but obscure Remote Imaging Protocol
Remote imaging protocol
The Remote Imaging Protocol Scripting Language, more commonly known as the Remote Imaging Protocol or RIPscrip, is a scripting language created by Jeff Reeder, Jim Bergman, and Mark Hayton to enhance bulletin board systems and other applications.RIPscrip was introduced in 1993 and consisted of...
. Many systems became quite sophisticated in graphic presentation, especially considering that the system was confined to ASCII codes. Several systems attempted to simulate the appearance of GUI displays which were just appearing as DOS add-ons or Apple systems. Probably the ultimate development of graphic presentations was the Dynamic page implementation of the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
BBS (USCBBS) by Susan Biddlecomb, which predated the implementation of the HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
Dynamic web page
Dynamic web page
A dynamic web page is a kind of web page that has been prepared with fresh information , for each individual viewing. It is not static because it changes with the time , the user , the user interaction , the context A dynamic web page is a kind of web page that has been prepared with fresh...
. A complete "Dynamic web page
Dynamic web page
A dynamic web page is a kind of web page that has been prepared with fresh information , for each individual viewing. It is not static because it changes with the time , the user , the user interaction , the context A dynamic web page is a kind of web page that has been prepared with fresh...
" implementation was accomplished using TBBS
TBBS
TBBS is a multiline DOS based commercial bulletin board system software package written in 1983 by Philip L. Becker. He originally created the software as the result of a poker game with friends that were praising the BBS software created by Ward Christensen. Mr. Becker said he could do better and...
with a TDBS add-on presenting a complete menu system individually customized for each user.
Towards the early 1990s, the BBS industry became so popular that it spawned three monthly magazines, Boardwatch
Boardwatch
Boardwatch, published and edited by Jack Rickard, began as an important publication for the online Bulletin Board Systems of the 1980s and 1990s and ultimately evolved into the primary trade magazine of the ISP industry in the late 1990s. Late in the magazine's run, it was renamed to ISPWatch when...
, BBS Magazine, and in Asia and Australia, Chips 'n Bits Magazine which devoted extensive coverage of the software and technology innovations and people behind them, and listings to US and worldwide BBSes. In addition, in the USA, a major monthly magazine, Computer Shopper
Computer Shopper
Computer Shopper could refer to the following publications:* Computer Shopper - a home computer magazine published in the United Kingdom* Computer Shopper - a home computer magazine published in the United States...
, carried a list of BBSes along with a brief abstract of each of their offerings.
According to the FidoNet
FidoNet
FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...
Nodelist, BBSes reached their peak usage around 1996, which was the same period that the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
suddenly became mainstream. BBSes rapidly declined in popularity thereafter, and were replaced by systems using the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
for connectivity. Some of the larger commercial BBSes, such as ExecPC BBS
ExecPC BBS
ExecPC is an online service provider started in 1983 by owner Bob Mahoney as the Exec-PC BBS. It quickly grew to be one of the world's largest bulletin board systems in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, competing with the likes of Compuserve and Prodigy.ExecPC began offering Internet access in...
, became actual Internet Service Providers.
The website textfiles.com
Textfiles.com
textfiles.com is a web site run by Jason Scott dedicated to preserving the digital documents that contain the history of the BBS world and various subcultures. The site categorises and stores thousands of ASCII files. It focuses on text files from the 1980s, but also contains some older files and...
serves as an archive that documents the history of the BBS. The owner of textfiles.com, Jason Scott
Jason Scott Sadofsky
Jason Scott Sadofsky , more commonly known as Jason Scott, is an American archivist and historian of technology. He is the creator, owner and maintainer of textfiles.com, a web site which...
, also produced BBS: The Documentary
BBS: The Documentary
BBS: The Documentary is a 3-disc, 8-episode documentary about the subculture born from the creation of the bulletin board system filmed by computer historian Jason Scott Sadofsky of textfiles.com....
, a DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
film that chronicles the history of the BBS and features interviews with well-known people (mostly from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) from the heyday BBS era.
The historical BBS list on textfiles.com contains over 105,000 BBSes that have existed over a span of 20 years in North America alone.
Software and hardware
Unlike modern websites and online services that are typically hosted by third-party companies in commercial data centerData center
A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems...
s, BBS computers (especially for smaller boards) were typically operated from the SysOp's home. As such, access could be unreliable, and in many cases only one user could be on the system at a time. Only larger BBSs with multiple phone lines using specialized hardware, multitasking software, or a LAN
Län
Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....
connecting multiple computers, could host multiple simultaneous users.
The first BBSes used homebrew software,CBBS Chicago (which Ward Christensen
Ward Christensen
Ward Christensen, born in West Bend, Wisconsin, U.S., is the founder of the CBBS bulletin board, the first bulletin board system ever brought online...
programmed) was about 20,000 lines of 8080 assembler. quite often written or customized by the SysOps themselves, running on early S-100
S-100 bus
The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE696-1983 , was an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800, generally considered today to be the first personal computer...
microcomputer
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
systems such as the Altair
Altair 8800
The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were...
, IMSAI
IMSAI 8080
The IMSAI 8080 was an early microcomputer released in late 1975, based on the Intel 8080 and later 8085 and S-100 bus. It was a clone of its main competitor, the earlier MITS Altair 8800. The IMSAI is largely regarded as the first "clone" computer. The IMSAI machine ran a highly modified version of...
and Cromemco
Cromemco
Cromemco was a Mountain View, California microcomputer company known for its high-end Z80-based S-100 bus computers in the early days of the home computer revolution. The Cromemco Dazzler was the first color graphics card available for personal computers....
under the CP/M
CP/M
CP/M was a mass-market operating system created for Intel 8080/85 based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc...
operating system. Soon after, BBS software was being written for all of the major home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
systems of the late 1970s era - the Apple II
Apple II
The Apple II is an 8-bit home computer, one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products, designed primarily by Steve Wozniak, manufactured by Apple Computer and introduced in 1977...
, Atari
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
, Commodore
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
and TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
being some of the most popular.
A few years later, in 1981, IBM introduced the first DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
based IBM PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
, and due to the overwhelming popularity of PCs and their clones
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
, DOS soon became the operating system on which the majority of BBS programs were run. RBBS-PC
RBBS-PC
RBBS-PC was a public domain, open source BBS software program. It was written entirely in QuickBASIC by a large team of people, starting with Russell Lane and then later enhanced by Tom Mack and including Ken Goosens and others.It supported messaging conferences, questionnaires, doors RBBS-PC...
, ported
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
over from the CP/M world, and Fido BBS, created by Tom Jennings
Tom Jennings
Tom Jennings is a Los Angeles-based artist and technician. He is the creator of FidoNet, the first message and file networking system for BBSes...
(who later founded FidoNet
FidoNet
FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...
) were the first notable DOS BBS programs. There were many successful commercial BBS programs developed for DOS, such as PCBoard BBS
PCBoard
PCBoard was a bulletin board system application first introduced for DOS in 1983 by Clark Development Corporation. Clark Development was founded by Fred Clark. PCBoard was one of the first commercial BBS packages for DOS systems, and was considered one of the "high end" packages during the rapid...
, RemoteAccess BBS
RemoteAccess
RemoteAccess is a DOS Bulletin Board System software package written by Andrew Milner and was published by his company Wantree Development in Australia. RemoteAccess was written in Turbo Pascal with some Assembly Language routines. RemoteAccess began in 1989 as a clone of QuickBBS by Adam Hudson...
, and Wildcat! BBS
Wildcat! BBS
Wildcat! BBS was a bulletin board system server application that Mustang Software developed in 1986 for DOS, and later ported to Microsoft Windows. By the release of Version 4 it was the basis for more than 50,000 bulletin board systems worldwide....
which had early roots from the Colossus BBS started by the author of the popular shareware communications program Qmodem
Qmodem
Qmodem was an MS-DOS shareware telecommunications program and terminal emulator. Qmodem was widely used to access bulletin boards in the 1980s and was well respected in the Bulletin Board System community. Qmodem was also known as Qmodem SST and Qmodem Pro....
. Some popular freeware BBS programs for MS-DOS included Telegard BBS
Telegard
Telegard is an early bulletin board system software program written for IBM PC-compatible computers running MS-DOS and OS/2. Telegard was written in Pascal with routines written in C++ and assembly language, based on a copy of the WWIV source code....
and Renegade BBS
Renegade (BBS)
Renegade is a freeware bulletin board system written for IBM PC-compatible computers running MS-DOS that gained popularity among hobbyist BBSes in the early to mid 1990s...
, which both had early origins from leaked WWIV BBS
WWIV
WWIV was a popular brand of bulletin board system software from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. The modifiable source code allowed a sysop to customize the main BBS program for their particular needs and aesthetics...
source code. There were several dozen other BBS programs developed over the DOS era, and many were released under the shareware concept, while some were released as freeware including iniquity.
During the mid-1980s, many sysops opted for the less expensive, ubiquitous Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
(introduced in 1982), which was popular among software pirate groups. Popular commercial BBS programs were Blue Board
Blue Board
Blue Board was a BBS software system created by Martin Sikes for the Commodore 64 in the early 1980s in Vancouver, Canada, and sold worldwide. Due to optimized code and memory allocation, Blue Board boasted very fast performance for a BBS on that hardware platform...
, Ivory BBS
Ivory BBS
Ivory BBS is a simple and robust BBS program for the Commodore 64. Known for its default cool blue hues, and limited functionality. E-mail user-to-user, discussion forums, a file transfer area, and of course Sysop Chat...
, Color64
Color64
Color64 is a computer BBS system that was very popular for the Commodore 64 during the 1980s. It was written by Greg Pfountz. Color64 was advanced for its time. The I/O was all written in machine language. It was also composed in modules, each written in BASIC. Each module would be loaded into...
and CNet 64
C-Net DS2
C-Net DS2 was a full featured, single-line, Bulletin board system software system released in 1986 for the Commodore 64 microcomputer...
. In the early 1990s a small number of BBSes were also running on the Commodore Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
models 500
Amiga 500
The Amiga 500 - also known as the A500 - was the first “low-end” Commodore Amiga 16/32-bit multimedia home/personal computer. It was announced at the winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1987 - at the same time as the high-end Amiga 2000 - and competed directly against the Atari 520ST...
, 1000
Amiga 1000
The A1000, or Commodore Amiga 1000, was Commodore's initial Amiga personal computer, introduced on July 23, 1985 at the Lincoln Center in New York City....
and 1200
Amiga 1200
The Amiga 1200, or A1200 , was Commodore International's third-generation Amiga computer, aimed at the home market...
(using external hard drives), and the Amiga 2000
Amiga 2000
The Amiga 2000, or A2000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in 1986. It is the successor to the Amiga 1000.-Features:Aimed at the high-end market, the original Europe-only model adds a Zorro II backplane, implemented in programmable logic, to the custom Amiga chipset used in the Amiga 1000...
, Amiga 3000
Amiga 3000
The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, was the third major release in the Amiga computer family. Released in June 1990, it features improved processing speed, improved rendering of graphics, and a new revision of the operating system...
and Amiga 4000
Amiga 4000
The Commodore Amiga 4000, or A4000, is the successor of the A2000 and A3000 computers. There are two models, the A4000/040 released in October 1992 with a Motorola 68040 CPU, and the A4000/030 released in April 1993 with a Motorola 68EC030....
(which had built-in hard drives). Popular BBS software for the Amiga were ABBS, Amiexpress
Amiexpress
AmiExpress - also known as /X - by Synthetic Technologies was a popular BBS software application for the Commodore Amiga line of computers. AmiExpress was extremely popular among the warez scene for trading software....
, StormforceBBS
StormforceBBS
StormforceBBS was a bulletin board system on the Commodore Amiga range of computers.It was co-written by Kris Hudson-Lee and Andrew Ward in Blitz Basic and released in 1993....
, Infinity and Tempest
Tempest
Tempest or The Tempest may refer to:Tempest, a violent storm- Fiction :* The Tempest, a 1611 play by William Shakespeare** The Tempest , a 1667 adaptation of Shakespeare's play by John Dryden and William D'Avenant...
.
MS-DOS continued to be the most popular operating system for BBS use up until the mid-1990s, and in the early years most multi-node BBSes were running under a DOS based multitasker such as DesqView
DESQview
DESQview was a text mode multitasking program developed by Quarterdeck Office Systems which enjoyed modest popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s...
or consisted of multiple computers connected via a LAN
Län
Län and lääni refer to the administrative divisions used in Sweden and previously in Finland. The provinces of Finland were abolished on January 1, 2010....
. (Around 1990, OS/2 came out with "preemptive multitasking" of DOS, an alternative to DESQview for multi-node BBS.) In the late 1980s, a handful of BBS developers implemented multitasking communications routines which, although run under MS-DOS, allowed multiple phone lines and multiple users to connect to the same physical BBS computer. These included Galacticomm's MajorBBS (later WorldGroup), eSoft TBBS
TBBS
TBBS is a multiline DOS based commercial bulletin board system software package written in 1983 by Philip L. Becker. He originally created the software as the result of a poker game with friends that were praising the BBS software created by Ward Christensen. Mr. Becker said he could do better and...
, and Falken
Falken
For the tire brand, see Falken Tires.Originally created by Herb Rose, Falken BBS was one of the few BBS products which allowed up to 128 users to dial in to a single system using multiport hardware, requiring no external multitasker...
. A lot of the code for the BBS systems was still written in Assembler or Pascal, There was only a minority of C code.
By 1995, many of the DOS-based BBSes had begun switching to modern multitasking
Computer multitasking
In computing, multitasking is a method where multiple tasks, also known as processes, share common processing resources such as a CPU. In the case of a computer with a single CPU, only one task is said to be running at any point in time, meaning that the CPU is actively executing instructions for...
operating systems, such as OS/2
OS/2
OS/2 is a computer operating system, initially created by Microsoft and IBM, then later developed by IBM exclusively. The name stands for "Operating System/2," because it was introduced as part of the same generation change release as IBM's "Personal System/2 " line of second-generation personal...
, Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
, and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
. TCP/IP networking allowed most of the remaining BBSes to evolve and include Internet hosting capabilities. Recent BBS software, such as Synchronet
Synchronet
Synchronet is a multiplatform BBS software package, with current ports for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and BSD variants. Past versions also ran on MS-DOS and OS/2, but support for those platforms has been dropped in recent versions.-History:...
, EleBBS, DOC
Dave's own version of Citadel
Dave's own version of Citadel is a variant of the Citadel/UX Bulletin board system software which was developed specifically to run ISCA BBS in the late 1980s. It is based on Citadel/UX 3.0 but very heavily modified to suit the specific needs of ISCA BBS, which at its peak was a massive system...
or Wildcat! BBS
Wildcat! BBS
Wildcat! BBS was a bulletin board system server application that Mustang Software developed in 1986 for DOS, and later ported to Microsoft Windows. By the release of Version 4 it was the basis for more than 50,000 bulletin board systems worldwide....
provide access using the Telnet
TELNET
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
protocol rather than dialup, or by using legacy MS-DOS based BBS software with a FOSSIL
FOSSIL
FOSSIL is a standard protocol for allowing serial communication for telecommunications programs under the DOS operating system. FOSSIL is an acronym for Fido Opus SEAdog Standard Interface Layer. Fido refers to FidoBBS, Opus refers to Opus-CBCS BBS, and SEAdog refers to a Fidonet compatible mailer...
-to-Telnet redirector such as NetFoss
NetFoss
NetFoss is a popular Network FOSSIL driver for Windows.A FOSSIL is a serial communications layer to allow DOS based software to talk to modems without dealing with hardware I/O and interrupts....
.
Presentation
BBSes were generally text-based, rather than GUIGraphical user interface
In computing, a graphical user interface is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices with images rather than text commands. GUIs can be used in computers, hand-held devices such as MP3 players, portable media players or gaming devices, household appliances and...
-based, and early BBSes conversed using the simple ASCII
ASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
character set. However, some home computer manufacturers extended the ASCII character set to take advantage of the advanced color and graphics capabilities of their systems. BBS software authors included these extended character sets in their software, and terminal program authors included the ability to display them when a compatible system was called. Atari's native character set was known as ATASCII
ATASCII
The ATASCII character set, from ATARI Standard Code for Information Interchange, alternatively ATARI ASCII, is the variation on ASCII used in the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. The first of this family were the Atari 400 and 800, released in 1979, and later models were released throughout...
, while most Commodore BBSes supported PETSCII
PETSCII
PETSCII , also known as CBM ASCII, is the variation of the ASCII character set used in Commodore Business Machines 's 8-bit home computers, starting with the PET from 1977 and including the VIC-20, C64, CBM-II, Plus/4, C16, C116 and C128...
. PETSCII was also supported by the nationwide online service Quantum Link
Quantum Link
Quantum Link was a U.S. and Canadian online service for Commodore 64 and 128 personal computers that operated from November 5, 1985 to November 1, 1995. It was operated by Quantum Computer Services of Vienna, Virginia. In October 1991 they changed the name to America Online, which continues to...
.Quantum Link and parts of AppleLink
AppleLink
AppleLink was the name of both Apple Computer's online service for its dealers, third party developers, and users, and the client software used to access it. Prior to the commercialization of the Internet, AppleLink was a popular service for Mac and Apple IIGS users...
went on to become America Online.
The use of these custom character sets was generally incompatible between manufacturers. Unless a caller was using terminal emulation software written for, and running on, the same type of system as the BBS, the session would simply fall back to simple ASCII output. For example, a Commodore 64 user calling an Atari BBS would use ASCII rather than the machine's native character set. As time progressed, most terminal programs began using the ANSI standard, but could use their native character set if it was available.
COCONET, a BBS system made by Coconut Computing, Inc., was released in 1988 and only supported a GUI interface (no text interface was available), and worked in EGA/VGA graphics mode, which made it stand out from the text-based BBS systems. COCONET's bitmap and vector graphics and support for multiple type fonts were inspired by the PLATO system, and the graphics capabilities were based on what was available in the Borland BGI graphics library. A number of companies wanted to license the COCONET GUI but Coconut Computing chose not to, and as a result, a competing approach called Remote Imaging Protocol
Remote imaging protocol
The Remote Imaging Protocol Scripting Language, more commonly known as the Remote Imaging Protocol or RIPscrip, is a scripting language created by Jeff Reeder, Jim Bergman, and Mark Hayton to enhance bulletin board systems and other applications.RIPscrip was introduced in 1993 and consisted of...
(RIP) emerged and was promoted by Telegrafix in the early to mid 1990s but it never became widespread. A similar technology called NAPLPS
NAPLPS
NAPLPS is a graphics language for use originally with videotex and teletext services. NAPLPS was developed from the Telidon system developed in Canada, with a small number of additions from AT&T...
was also considered, and although it became the underlying graphics technology behind the Prodigy service, it never gained popularity in the BBS market. There were several GUI-based BBS's on the Apple Macintosh platform, including TeleFinder
TeleFinder
TeleFinder is a Macintosh-based bulletin-board system written by Spider Island Software, based on a client–server model whose client end provides a Mac-like GUI. It appears to be the first such system on any platform, predating Apple's own AppleLink, as well as other Mac-based BBS systems like...
and FirstClass
FirstClass
FirstClass is a client/server groupware, email, online conferencing, voice/fax services, and bulletin-board system for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux...
, but these remained widely used only in the Mac market.
In the UK, the BBC Micro
BBC Micro
The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation...
based OBBS software, available from Pace for use with their modems, optionally allowed for colour and graphics using the Teletext
Teletext
Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
based graphics mode available on that platform. Other systems used the Viewdata
Viewdata
Viewdata is a Videotex implementation. It is a type of information retrieval service in which a subscriber can access a remote database via a common carrier channel, request data and receive requested data on a video display over a separate channel. Samuel Fedida was credited as inventor of the...
protocols made popular in the UK by British Telecom's Prestel
Prestel
Prestel , the brand name for the UK Post Office's Viewdata technology, was an interactive videotex system developed during the late 1970s and commercially launched in 1979...
service, and the on-line magazine Micronet 800
Micronet800
Micronet 800 was an information provider on Prestel, aimed at the 1980s personal computer market. It was an online magazine that gave subscribers computer related news, reviews, general subject articles and downloadable telesoftware....
whom were busy giving away modems with their subscriptions.
The most popular form of online graphics was ANSI art
ANSI art
ANSI art is a computer art form that was widely used at one time on BBSes. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS and Unix environments...
, which combined the IBM Extended ASCII
Extended ASCII
The term extended ASCII describes eight-bit or larger character encodings that include the standard seven-bit ASCII characters as well as others...
character set's blocks and symbols with ANSI escape sequence
Escape sequence
An escape sequence is a series of characters used to change the state of computers and their attached peripheral devices. These are also known as control sequences, reflecting their use in device control. Some control sequences are special characters that always have the same meaning...
s to allow changing colors on demand, provide cursor control and screen formatting, and even basic musical tones. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, most BBSes used ANSI to make elaborate welcome screens, and colorized menus, and thus, ANSI support was a sought-after feature in terminal client programs. The development of ANSI art became so popular that it spawned an entire BBS "artscene" subculture
Subculture
In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong.- Definition :...
devoted to it.
Amiga
Amiga
The Amiga is a family of personal computers that was sold by Commodore in the 1980s and 1990s. The first model was launched in 1985 as a high-end home computer and became popular for its graphical, audio and multi-tasking abilities...
program Skyline BBS was the first in 1987 featuring a script markup language
Markup language
A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...
communication protocol called Skypix
Skypix
Skypix is the name of a Script Markup Language aimed to add rich graphic content such as changeable fonts, mouse-controlled actions, animations and sound to Bulletin Board System nodes. The system was born on Amiga Systems in 1987 and available on BBS program called Skyline BBS.Skypix was probably...
which was capable to give the user a complete graphical interface, featuring rich graphic content, changeable fonts, mouse-controlled actions, animations and sound.
Today, most BBS software that is still actively supported, such as WorldGroup, Wildcat! BBS
Wildcat! BBS
Wildcat! BBS was a bulletin board system server application that Mustang Software developed in 1986 for DOS, and later ported to Microsoft Windows. By the release of Version 4 it was the basis for more than 50,000 bulletin board systems worldwide....
and Citadel/UX
Citadel/UX
Citadel/UX is a collaboration suite that is descended from the Citadel family of programs which became popular in the 1980s and 1990s as a bulletin board system platform. It is designed to run on open source operating systems such as Linux or BSD...
, is Web-enabled, and the traditional text interface has been replaced (or operates concurrently) with a Web-based user interface. For those more nostalgic for the true BBS experience, one can use NetSerial (Windows) or DOSBox
DOSBox
DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....
(Windows/*nix) to redirect DOS COM port software to telnet, allowing them to connect to Telnet BBSes using 1980s and 1990s era modem terminal emulation
Terminal emulator
A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture....
software, like Telix
Telix
Telix is a telecommunications program originally written for MS-DOS by Colin Sampaleanu and released in 1986. More recent versions were distributed by deltaComm Development, including a version for Microsoft Windows....
, Terminate
Terminate
Terminate was a shareware modem terminal and host program for MS-DOS and compatible operating systems developed from the early to the late 1990s by the Dane Bo Bendtsen...
, Qmodem
Qmodem
Qmodem was an MS-DOS shareware telecommunications program and terminal emulator. Qmodem was widely used to access bulletin boards in the 1980s and was well respected in the Bulletin Board System community. Qmodem was also known as Qmodem SST and Qmodem Pro....
and Procomm Plus. Modern 32-bit terminal emulators such as mTelnet and SyncTerm include native telnet support.
Content and access
Since early BBS' were frequently run by computer hobbyists, they were typically technical in nature with user communities revolving around hardware and software discussions. Many SysOps were transplants of the amateur radioAmateur radio
Amateur radio is the use of designated radio frequency spectrum for purposes of private recreation, non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, and emergency communication...
community and thus amateur and packet radio
Packet radio
Packet radio is a form of packet switching technology used to transmit digital data via radio or wireless communications links. It uses the same concepts of data transmission via Datagram that are fundamental to communications via the Internet, as opposed to the older techniques used by dedicated...
were often popular topics.
As the BBS phenomenon grew, so did the popularity of special interest boards. Bulletin Board Systems could be found for almost every hobby and interest. Popular interests included politics, religion, music, dating
Matchmaker.com
Matchmaker.com is an internet dating service. It was founded in 1986, making it the oldest of the current online dating sites. From 2000 to January 2006, it was run by Lycos...
, and alternative lifestyle
Alternative lifestyle
An alternative lifestyle is a lifestyle generally perceived to be outside the cultural norm. Usually, but not always, it implies an affinity or identification within some matching subculture...
s. Many SysOps also adopted a theme
Theme (computing)
In computing, a theme is a preset package containing graphical appearance details, used to customize the look and feel of an operating system, widget set or window manager....
in which they customized their entire BBS (welcome screens, prompts, menus, and so on.) to reflect that theme. Common themes were based on fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
, or were intended to give the user the illusion of being somewhere else, such as in a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
, wizard's castle, or on a pirate ship.
In the early days, the file download library consisted of files that the SysOps obtained themselves from other BBS and friends. Many BBSes inspected every file uploaded to their public file download library to ensure that the material did not violate copyright law. As time went on, Shareware CD ROMs were sold with up to thousands of files on each CD ROM. Small BBS copied each file individually to their hard drive. Some systems used a CD ROM drive to make the files available. Advanced BBS used Multiple CD ROM disk changer units that switched 6 CD ROM disks on demand for the caller(s). Large systems used all 26 DOS Drive letters with multi-disk changers housing tens of thousands of copyright free shareware or freeware files available to all callers. These BBSes were generally more family friendly, avoiding the seedier side of BBSes. Access to these systems varied from single to multiple modem lines with some requiring little or no confirmed registration.
Some BBSes, called elite, warez or pirate boards, were exclusively used for distributing pirated software, phreaking
Phreaking
Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a culture of people who study, experiment with, or explore telecommunication systems, such as equipment and systems connected to public telephone networks. As telephone networks have become computerized, phreaking has become closely...
, and other questionable or unlawful content. These BBSes often had multiple modems and phone lines, allowing several users to upload and download files at once. Most elite BBSes used some form of new user verification, where new users would have to apply for membership and attempt to prove that they were not a law enforcement officer or a lamer
Lamer
Lamer is a jargon or slang name originally applied in cracker and phreaker culture to someone who did not really understand what he or she was doing. Today it is also loosely applied by IRC, BBS, and online gaming users to anyone perceived to be contemptible. In general, the term has come to...
. The largest elite boards accepted users by invitation only. Elite boards also spawned their own subculture and gave rise to the slang
Slang
Slang is the use of informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's language or dialect but are considered more acceptable when used socially. Slang is often to be found in areas of the lexicon that refer to things considered taboo...
known today as leet
Leet
Leet , also known as eleet or leetspeak, is an alternative alphabet for the English language that is used primarily on the Internet. It uses various combinations of ASCII characters to replace Latinate letters...
speak.
Another common type of board was the "support BBS" run by a manufacturer of computer products or software. These boards were dedicated to supporting users of the company's products with question and answer forums, news and updates, and downloads. Most of them were not a free call. Today, these services have moved to the web.
Warez
Warez refers primarily to copyrighted works distributed without fees or royalties, and may be traded, in general violation of copyright law. The term generally refers to unauthorized releases by organized groups, as opposed to file sharing between friends or large groups of people with similar...
, pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
, chat rooms or Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
access.
Pay BBSes such as The WELL and Echo NYC (now Internet forums rather than dial-up), ExecPC
ExecPC BBS
ExecPC is an online service provider started in 1983 by owner Bob Mahoney as the Exec-PC BBS. It quickly grew to be one of the world's largest bulletin board systems in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, competing with the likes of Compuserve and Prodigy.ExecPC began offering Internet access in...
, and MindVox
MindVox
MindVox was a famed early Internet Service Provider in New York City. A controversial sometime media darling — the service was referred to as "the Hells Angels of Cyberspace" — it was founded in 1991 by Bruce Fancher and Patrick Kroupa , two former members of the legendary Legion of Doom hacker...
(which folded in 1996) were admired for their tightly-knit communities and quality discussion forums. However, many "free" BBSes also maintained close knit communities, and some even had annual or bi-annual events where users would travel great distances to meet face-to-face with their on-line friends. These events were especially popular with BBSes that offered chat rooms.
Some of the BBSes that provided access to illegal content did wind up in trouble. On July 12, 1985, in conjunction with a credit card fraud
Credit card fraud
Credit card fraud is a wide-ranging term for theft and fraud committed using a credit card or any similar payment mechanism as a fraudulent source of funds in a transaction. The purpose may be to obtain goods without paying, or to obtain unauthorized funds from an account. Credit card fraud is also...
investigation, the Middlesex County, NJ
Middlesex County, New Jersey
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 750,162 people, 265,815 households, and 190,855 families residing in the county. The population density was 2,422 people per square mile . There were 273,637 housing units at an average density of 884 per square mile...
Sheriff's department raided and seized The Private Sector BBS, which was the official BBS for grey hat
Grey hat
A grey hat, in the hacking community, refers to a skilled hacker whose activities fall somewhere between white and black hat hackers on a variety of spectra. It may relate to whether they sometimes arguably act illegally, though in good will, or to show how they disclose vulnerabilities...
hacker quarterly 2600 Magazine at the time. The notorious Rusty n Edie's BBS
Rusty n Edie's BBS
right|thumb|360px|A typical [[ASCII art|ASCII]] advertisement for Rusty n Edie's BBS.Rusty n Edie's BBS was a bulletin board system founded on May 11, 1987 by the two SysOps, Russell & Edwina Hardenburgh, of Boardman, Ohio...
, in Boardman
Boardman, Ohio
Boardman is a census-designated place in Boardman Township, Mahoning County, Ohio, United States, just south of Youngstown. Boardman is considered to be a moderately affluent community and is one of two major retail hubs in the greater Youngstown area...
, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, was raided by the FBI in January 1993 for software piracy, and in November 1997 sued by Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
for copyright infringement. In Flint
Flint, Michigan
Flint is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit. The U.S. Census Bureau reports the 2010 population to be placed at 102,434, making Flint the seventh largest city in Michigan. It is the county seat of Genesee County which lies in the...
, Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
, a 21 year old man was charged with distributing child pornography
Child pornography
Child pornography refers to images or films and, in some cases, writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child...
through his BBS in March 1996.
Networks
Most early BBSes operated as stand-alone islands. Information contained on that BBS never left the system, and users would only interact with the information and user community on that BBS alone. However, as BBSes became more widespread, there evolved a desire to connect systems together to share messages and files with distant systems and users. The largest such network was FidoNetFidoNet
FidoNet is a worldwide computer network that is used for communication between bulletin board systems. It was most popular in the early to mid 1990s, prior to the introduction of easy and affordable access to the Internet...
.
As is it was prohibitively expensive for the hobbyist SysOp to have a dedicated connection to another system, FidoNet was developed as a store and forward
Store and forward
Store and forward is a telecommunications technique in which information is sent to an intermediate station where it is kept and sent at a later time to the final destination or to another intermediate station. The intermediate station, or node in a networking context, verifies the integrity of...
network. Private email (Netmail), public message boards (Echomail) and eventually even file attachments on a FidoNet-capable BBS would be bundled into one or more archive files over a set time interval. These archive files were then compressed with ARC
ARC (file format)
ARC is a lossless data compression and archival format by System Enhancement Associates . It was very popular during the early days of networked dial-up BBS. The file format and the program were both called ARC...
or ZIP
ZIP (file format)
Zip is a file format used for data compression and archiving. A zip file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce file size, or stored as is...
and forwarded to (or polled by) another nearby node or hub via a dialup Xmodem
XMODEM
XMODEM is a simple file transfer protocol developed as a quick hack by Ward Christensen for use in his 1977 MODEM.ASM terminal program. XMODEM became extremely popular in the early bulletin board system market, largely because it was so simple to implement...
session. Messages would be relayed around various FidoNet hubs until they were eventually delivered to their destination. The hierarchy of FidoNet BBS nodes, hubs, and zones was maintained in a routing table called a Nodelist. Some larger BBSes or regional FidoNet hubs would make several transfers per day, some even to multiple nodes or hubs, and as such, transfers usually occurred at night or early morning when toll rates were lowest. In Fido's heyday, sending a Netmail message to a user on a distant FidoNet node, or participating in an Echomail discussion could take days, especially if any FidoNet nodes or hubs in the message's route only made one transfer call per day.
FidoNet was platform-independent and would work with any BBS that was written to use it. BBSes that did not have integrated FidoNet capability could usually add it using an external FidoNet front-end mailer such as FrontDoor, BinkleyTerm, InterMail or D'Bridge, and a mail processor such as FastEcho
FastEcho
FastEcho is a message processing package for FTN mail systems. It was written and released as shareware by Tobias Burchhardt in 1991. The latest available version is 1.46.1 which was released in 1997. FastEcho was one of the fastest FTN mail processing packages available for FTN style messages...
or Squish
Squish (FidoNet)
Squish is both the name of a FidoNet mail tossing application originally designed for DOS and OS/2, and the name of the primary mail storage format in which this application stores FidoNet and other local BBS messages. Before Squish, open storage formats for FidoNet and Bulletin Board messages...
. The front-end mailer would conduct the periodic FidoNet transfers, while the mail processor would usually run just before and just after the mailer ran. This program would scan for and pack up new outgoing messages, and then unpack, sort and "toss" the incoming messages into a BBS user's local email box or into the BBS's local message bases reserved for Echomail. As such, these mail processors were commonly called "scanner/tosser/packers."
Many other BBS networks followed the example of FidoNet, using the same standards and the same software. These were called FidoNet Technology Networks (FTNs). They were usually smaller and targeted at selected audiences. Some networks used QWK doors, and others such as RelayNet
RelayNet
RelayNet, also known as RIME for RelayNet International Mail Exchange, was an e-mail exchange networking protocol supported by the PCBoard bulletin board system. It was in most respects similar to FidoNet in purpose and technology, although it used names for its nodes instead of Fido's numeric...
(RIME) and WWIVnet
WWIVnet
WWIVnet was a Bulletin board system network for WWIV-based BBSes. It was created by Wayne Bell on December 1, 1987.-Network layout:WWIVnet consisted of several participating BBSes, each referenced by a unique number called a node number. Originally, WWIVnet nodes were numbered by area code...
used non-Fido software and standards.
Before commercial Internet access became common, these networks
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
of BBSes provided regional and international e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
and message bases. Some even provided gateways, such as UFGATE, by which members could send/receive e-mail to/from the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
via UUCP
UUCP
UUCP is an abbreviation for Unix-to-Unix Copy. The term generally refers to a suite of computer programs and protocols allowing remote execution of commands and transfer of files, email and netnews between computers. Specifically, a command named uucp is one of the programs in the suite; it...
, and many FidoNet discussion groups were shared via Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
. Elaborate schemes allowed users to download binary files, search gopherspace, and interact with distant programs
Computer program
A computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...
, all using plain text e-mail.
As the volume of FidoNet Mail increased and newsgroups from the early days of the Internet became available, satellite data downstream services became viable for larger systems. The satellite service provided access to FidoNet and Usenet newsgroups in large volumes at a reasonable fee. By connecting a small dish & receiver, a constant downstream of thousands of FidoNet and Usenet newsgroups could be received. The local BBS only needed to upload new outgoing messages via the modem network back to the satellite service. This method drastically reduced phone data transfers while dramatically increasing the number of message forums.
FidoNet is still in use today, though in a much smaller form, and many Echomail groups are still shared with Usenet via FidoNet to Usenet gateways. Widespread abuse of Usenet with spam
Spam (electronic)
Spam is the use of electronic messaging systems to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately...
and pornography
Pornography
Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...
has led to many of these FidoNet gateways to cease operation completely.
Shareware and freeware
Much of the "SharewareShareware
The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
" movement was started via user distribution of software through BBSes. A notable example was Phil Katz
Phil Katz
Phillip Walter Katz was a computer programmer best known as the co-creator of the zip file format for data compression, and the author of PKZIP, a program for creating zip files which ran under DOS.- Career :...
's PKARC (and later PKZIP
PKZIP
PKZIP is an archiving tool originally written by Phil Katz and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc. The common "PK" prefix used in both PKZIP and PKWARE stands for "Phil Katz".-History:...
, using the same ".zip" algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
that WinZip
WinZip
WinZip is a proprietary file archiver and compressor for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, developed by WinZip Computing...
and other popular archivers now use); also other concepts of software distribution like freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
, postcardware
Postcardware
Postcardware, also called just cardware, is a style of software distribution similar to shareware, distributed by the author on the condition that users send the author a postcard.This is similar to beerware...
like JPEGview
JPEGView
JPEGView was a popular image viewer for Mac OS in the 1990s by Aaron Giles. Initially released in 1991 it was one of the first internet image viewers for Mac OS. The program was also the first postcardware. Giles said he had "received somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 postcards"...
and donationware
Donationware
Donationware is a licensing model that supplies fully operational software to the user and pleads for an optional donation be paid to the programmer or a third-party beneficiary . The amount of the donation may also be stipulated by the author, or it may be left to the discretion of the user,...
like Red Ryder
Red Ryder (software)
Red Ryder was the name of a well known communications and terminal emulation software program created for the Apple Macintosh in the 1980s. It was one of the first donationware programs to be distributed on the internet...
for the Macintosh first appeared on BBS sites. Doom from id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
and many Apogee
3D Realms
3D Realms is a current video game publisher and former video game developer based in Garland, Texas, United States, established in 1987...
games were distributed as shareware. The Internet has largely erased the distinction of shareware - most users now download the software directly from the developer's website rather than receiving it from another BBS user 'sharing' it. Today shareware is commonly used to mean electronically-distributed software from a small developer.
Many commercial BBS software companies that continue to support their old BBS software products switched to the shareware model or made it entirely free. Some companies were able to make the move to the Internet and provide commercial products with BBS capabilities.
Features
A classic BBS had:- A computerComputerA computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
- One or more modemModemA modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
s - One or more phone lines
- A BBS software package
- A sysopSysOpA sysop is an administrator of a multi-user computer system, such as a bulletin board system or an online service virtual community. It may also be used to refer to administrators of other Internet-based network services....
- system operator - A user community
The BBS software usually provides:
- Menu Systems
- One or more message bases
- File areas
- SysOp side, live viewing of all caller activity
- Voting - opinion booths
- Statistics on message posters, top uploaders / downloaders
- Online gameOnline gameAn online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...
s (usually single playerPlayer (game)A player of a game is a participant therein. The term 'player' is used with this same meaning both in game theory and in ordinary recreational games....
or only a single active player at a given time) - A doorwayBBS doorA door is a computer program, on a bulletin board system, that runs outside of the main bulletin board program. Sometimes called external programs, doors are the most common way to add games, utilities, and other extensions to BBSes. From the 1990s on, most BBS software had the capability to...
to third-party online games - Usage auditing capabilities
- Multi-user chat (only possible on multi-line BBSes)
- Internet email (more common in later Internet-connected BBSes)
- Networked message boards
- Most modern BBSes allow telnetTELNETTelnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...
access over the Internet using a telnet server and a virtual FOSSILFOSSILFOSSIL is a standard protocol for allowing serial communication for telecommunications programs under the DOS operating system. FOSSIL is an acronym for Fido Opus SEAdog Standard Interface Layer. Fido refers to FidoBBS, Opus refers to Opus-CBCS BBS, and SEAdog refers to a Fidonet compatible mailer...
driver. - A "yell for SysOp" (The original chat, before multi-line systems) caller side menu item that sounded an audible alarm to the SysOp. If chosen, the SysOp could then initiate a text-to-text chat with the caller; similar to what commercial websites have used to sell and support products.
See also
- ANSI artANSI artANSI art is a computer art form that was widely used at one time on BBSes. It is similar to ASCII art, but constructed from a larger set of 256 letters, numbers, and symbols — all codes found in IBM code page 437, often referred to as extended ASCII and used in MS-DOS and Unix environments...
- BBS: The DocumentaryBBS: The DocumentaryBBS: The Documentary is a 3-disc, 8-episode documentary about the subculture born from the creation of the bulletin board system filmed by computer historian Jason Scott Sadofsky of textfiles.com....
- Internet forumInternet forumAn Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
- KOM (BBS)
- List of BBS software
- List of bulletin board systems
- MinitelMinitelThe Minitel is a Videotex online service accessible through the telephone lines, and is considered one of the world's most successful pre-World Wide Web online services. It was launched in France in 1982 by the PTT...
- PODSnetPODSnetPagan Occult Distribution System Network was a neopagan/occult computer network of Pagan Sysops and Sysops carrying Pagan/Magickal/Occult oriented echoes operating on an international basis, with FIDO Nodes in Australia, Canada, Germany, the U.K., and across the USA...
- Terminal emulatorTerminal emulatorA terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture....
- UsenetUsenetUsenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
- WarezWarezWarez refers primarily to copyrighted works distributed without fees or royalties, and may be traded, in general violation of copyright law. The term generally refers to unauthorized releases by organized groups, as opposed to file sharing between friends or large groups of people with similar...
External links
- bbs-scene.org - BBS related services
- The BBS Archives
- The BBS Corner
- The Telnet BBS Guide
- The BBS Documentary - (Video Collection)
- The BBS History Library