BBSing In the Modern Era
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Post by Syrinx


Before we get into the hella awesome retro tech and all that jazz, I 
should probably explain what a BBS is. Back in ye olde days of computing 
(the 80s) you would connect your computer to another using a modem 
(glorified handset that makes demonic noises when needed.) Before the 
world wide web really took off, there were other, arguably better, forms 
of communication. One of these was the BBS, or Bulletin Board System. You 
would “dial into” one of these systems, log in and exchange messages 
or play games. What you could do varied from BBS to BBS. Some had door 
games, others focused on downloads (not always legal) and other were just 
for communication. There were also networks, such as FidoNet, which 
allowed inter-BBS communication.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any memories of BBSs from their heyday. 
By the time I was old enough to comprehend the concept of a mouse, we had 
AOL. Who needs boring old text based bulletin board systems when you can 
send email and browse the World Wide Web? Hell, I barely knew that they 
ever existed until several years ago when I started getting into retro 
technology. I was unaware that they still existed until some research 
inspired by a visual novel that I played. So much for nostalgia. 

Historically, Bulletin Board Systems were accessed using a phone line. 
This is not particularly useful today, as fewer and fewer people still 
have a landline and very few computers have a modem by default. Obviously, 
this is a bit of a problem. Fortunately, humans smarter than I am figured 
out how to run a BBS over other protocols. The simplest of these being 
Telnet, but there are others. SSH is popular, as well as some browser 
clients. You can connect to your preferred system using one or several of 
these options. Most BBSs use Telnet, you can connect to one by using the 
following command: 

~$ telnet <DOMAIN OR IP OF BBS>

Assuming you know of a bulletin board system to connect to, you should 
be able access it using this method. Personally, I use the Archaic Binary 
BBS (bbs.archaicbinary.net) If you join it, message me. My username is 
microlost. There are many others, one of particular interest is the 
Monochrome BBS <https://mo.org> which has been running since the early 90s.
I recommend shopping around for a bit. I went through several systems before
I found a few that I like.

While using telnet from the command line (depending on your terminal 
emulator) you may have noticed that all of the pictures look really ugly 
and didn’t work properly. There is a super simple fix for this. All you 
need is some different software to access the BBS with. Personally, I use 
Netrunner, it is developed by the same people as MysticBBS, a piece of BBS 
server software. 

At this point, you may be thinking, “ol, I just did a thing, why is 
this significant?”

Hopefully you have as much fun as I have, messing around with old 
software