I was about 12 years old maybe 13 at the time and I forget a lot of the people that visited but I had a great time running it and learning how to set things up. I ran a few different brands of software but the last I remember is teleguard. I made some good friends via the bbs and was an early user of Fidonet.
Two of my friends and I spent many hours in my parents basement setting things up and calling other BBS’s around the world. I was lucky that my parents let me get a dedicated phoneline just for the BBS and to use to call into other BBS’s but that quickly became an issue when I had a $300 phone bill! We weren’t well off and it was a big hit to my parents and me since I was paying for the phoneline with money I made from odd jobs around the neighborhood. It got my computer privileges revoked for several months and a good old ass whooping if I remember correctly.
The area I was in had a loose network of BBS’s that would forward mail and sync. The sysops of those BBS’s were all older than I was but treated me well and included my ideas and my friends ideas in planning and setting things up.
A few years went by and I was getting interested in some government BBS’s like NASA who had an interface for data from the voyager prob and some ARPANET sites that I stumbled upon while poking around a local college campus computer lab. I ended up getting caught on (I can’t remember if it was a BBS or on ARPANET) The navel nuclear safety laboratory computer system. I didn’t get in trouble with the navy for that but they wanted to know how I got in and had me walk them through everything I did but I did get IN BIG trouble from my parents who took away the computer and made me take down the BBS.
I think I was about 16 or 17 when they took away the computer and the older guys that ran the other local BBS’s were just starting to build what would be the first local ISP. They had asked me to help with it in return for being a part of the company. I had to turn them down and in the end after being very successful those guys sold the ISP to a national company for millions of dollars. Funny how life works out sometimes. I can’t complain I ended up joining the local fire department and went to make a career out of that.
I’m a bit too young for that specific part of Internet history, but if you have any additional info and docs, this could make a great post on medium or some place like that. Super interesting!
I may have something left from back then but I doubt it. My memory isn’t that great anymore either. I hung onto the computer I ran the BBS on for a long time but with multiple moves and living on a boat for a couple of years I ended up trashing it along the way.
Thanks for joining and posting! Yes this shake up with Reddit has led me to rekindle the old love for the rough edge of free networks. I’m excited to try all the “new” options and explore some of the older options modernized. Possibly start a new bbs as well but with modern options to old systems. I also ran a bbs back in the day with other locals and even a school sanctioned one, right around the time “freenets” we’re becoming a thing and e-mail/Usenet we’re just taking off. Not sure, for now I’m enjoying the exploration!
I was just looking at some of the links in the sidebar and briefly thought about starting a BBS again but I have way to many other half finished projects to start a new one. If you do start one though make sure to share it and I’ll check it out. I like the learning curve and the newness of this also. Makes my time spent here more worthwhile I think.
Wow that’s cool! Hilarious that the navy was like “you didn’t do anything wrong, exactly” and your parents were like “OH YES HE DID!”
I was too young to run my own board, though my older brother did run a board on a dedicated line for a bit. Got a visit from a cop once regarding the Anarchist Cookbook being in the file section, but nothing came of it.
