For discussion of 70s/80s/90s BBS systems, and their modern equivalents.
Questions about BBSes and their software, door games, ANSI art, and so on are welcome as are sysop advertisements.
Looking for a BBS to connect to? The Telnet BBS Guide is what you're after.
Need a client?
- Syncterm (win/mac/linux)
- Muffinterm (mac/ios)
- mTelnet (win/os2)
ANsI art sites:
Community rules:
- Self-promotion is not only permitted, but encouraged
-
BBS - Bulletin Board Systems @lemmy.uncomfortable.business cstine @lemmy.uncomfortable.business Want to know more about this whole BBS thing?
If you're not of a certain age, you probably have never actually used a BBS; they still exist and you can still visit them but it's hard to cover how big of a deal and how pervasive these systems were in the 80s and 90s. In lots of ways, they're the spiritual predecessors of modern federated services: individual instances run by a single or small team of admins that had their own culture, appearance, and rules which were (often) connected by discussion forums, usually called message bases.
A good place to start would be one of the several great video series: Jason Scott of textfiles.com and archive.org released a BBS Documentary that covers the technical, cultural and ongoing impact that the BBS had.
Also, a slightly more recent take is Back to the BBS which covers similar, but different perspectives on BBSes and their lasting impac