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A bulletin board system or BBS is a computer system running software that allows users to dial into the system over a phone line and, using a terminal program, perform functions such as downloading software and data, uploading data, playing games, reading news, and exchanging messages with other users. During their heyday (from the late 1970s to the late 1990s), many BBSes were run as a hobby free of charge by the "SysOp" (system operator), while other BBSes charged their users a subscription fee for access. The tower of a personal computer (specifically a Power Mac G5). ...
Computer software (or simply software) refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of a computer for some purpose. ...
The public switched telephone network (PSTN) is the concatenation of the worlds public circuit-switched telephone networks, in much the same way that the Internet is the concatenation of the worlds public IP-based packet-switched networks. ...
A terminal emulator, terminal application, term, or tty for short, is a program that emulates a dumb video terminal within some other display architecture. ...
Message in its most general meaning is the object of communication. ...
Events and trends Although in the United States and in many other Western societies the 1970s are often seen as a period of transition between the turbulent 1960s and the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, many of the trends that are associated widely with the Sixties, from the Sexual Revolution...
Events and trends Technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other technology Reduction in size and cost of mobile phones leads to a massive surge in their popularity Year 2000 problem (commonly known as Y2K) Microsoft Windows operating system becomes virtually ubiquitous on IBM...
This article is about pastimes. ...
A SysOp is short for system operator, and is a commonly used term for the administrator of a bulletin board system (BBS) or special-interest area of an online service or, historically, the operators of any computer system, especially a mainframe computer. ...
In modern usage (primarily in Japan) the term BBS may be used to refer to any online forum or message board. See Internet forum. Gaia Online, the largest English language forum-based community as of April 2005 — powered by phpBB. An Internet forum, also known as a message board, discussion board, discussion forum, web board, webboard, or, more simply, a forum, is a web application which provides a place for discussion, often for online...
Bulletin board systems were in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web and other aspects of the Internet. BBSes were a highly social phenomenon and were used for meeting people and having discussions in message boards as well as for publishing articles, downloading software, playing games and many more things using a single application. The BBS was also a local phenomenon, as one had to dial into a BBS with a phone line and would have to pay long distance charges for a BBS out of the local area. Thus, many users of a BBS lived in the same area and it was common for them to hold a BBS Meet, where everyone from the same board would gather and meet face to face. Graphic representation of the world wide web around Wikipedia The World Wide Web (WWW, or simply Web) is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI). ...
A phenomenon (plural: phenomena) is an observable event, especially something special (literally something that can be seen from the Greek word phainomenon = observable). ...
An Internet forum, also known as a message board or discussion board, is a web application that provides for online discussions, and is the modern descendant of the bulletin board systems and existing Usenet news systems that were widespread in the 1980s and 1990s. ...
The world's largest BBS was MBnet (1994–2002), located in Finland. MBnet ran PCBoard and had the most licensed nodes of any BBS in the world, 1000. The world's largest free BBS was The Gaming Center, at 40 licensed nodes. 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...
2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
PCBoard was an MS-DOS BBS software package first created by the Clark Development Corporation, first introduced in 1983. ...
The Gaming Center (TGC) was a South Florida based BBS that was popular in the gamer scene. ...
History
The first BBS, CBBS, went online on February 16, 1978 in Chicago. CBBS (Computerized Bulletin Board System) was a computer software program created by Ward Christensen to allow him and other computer hobbyists to exchange information between one another. ...
February 16 is the 47th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ...
Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ...
With the original 110– and 300 baud modems of the early 1980s, BBSes were painfully slow, but speed became acceptable with the introduction of 1200 bit/s modems in and around 1985, and this led to a substantial increase in popularity. The lack of autodial and autoanswer capabilities in many 110-300 bit/s modems was also an obstacle to their use in unattended BBS installations. In telecommunications and electronics, baud (pronounced ) is a measure of the signaling rate which is the number of changes to the transmission media per second in a modulated signal. ...
Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...
In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (sometimes written bitrate) is the frequency at which bits are passing a given (physical or metaphorical) point. It is quantified using the bit per second (bit/s) unit. ...
1985 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
A person, action, decision or thing becomes popular if many people like or use that entity/object. ...
Most of the information was presented using ordinary text or ANSI art, though some offered graphics, particularly after the rise in popularity of the GIF image format. Such use of graphics taxed available bandwidth, which in turn propelled demand for faster modems. Towards the early 1990s, the BBS industry became so popular that it spawned a monthly magazine, Boardwatch, which devoted extensive coverage and listings to international BBSs. In addition, a major monthly magazine, "Computer Shopper", carried a list of BBSes along with a brief abstract of each of their offerings. Information is a term with many meanings depending on context, but is as a rule closely related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, instruction, communication, representation, and mental stimulus. ...
A screenshot of TheDraw editing an ANSI art picture of a shuttle; the purple text blinks ANSI art is a computer artform widely used at one time on BBSes. ...
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a bitmap image format that is widely used on the World Wide Web, both for still images and for animations. ...
The term graphics refers to images; e. ...
Analog Bandwidth is the width, usually measured in hertz, of a frequency band f2 − f1. ...
Events and trends Technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other technology Reduction in size and cost of mobile phones leads to a massive surge in their popularity Year 2000 problem (commonly known as Y2K) Microsoft Windows operating system becomes virtually ubiquitous on IBM...
Computer Shopper used to be a magazine for buyers of mail order computer parts. ...
Before commercial Internet access became common, networks of BBSes provided regional and international e-mail and message bases. Some even provided gateways by which members could send/receive e-mail to/from the Internet. Elaborate schemes allowed users to download binary files, search gopherspace, and interact with distant programs, all using plaintext e-mail. Most BBS networks were not linked in realtime. Instead, each would dial up the next in line, and/or a regional hub, at preset intervals to exchange files and messages. The largest BBS network was Fidonet, which is still widely used outside of the United States. A wide variety of systems of interconnected components are called networks. ...
Gateway has several meanings. ...
In mathematics, an element (also called a member) is an object contained in a set (or more generally a class). ...
The word Gopher has a number of meanings: A gopher is any small burrowing rodent of the pocket gopher family Geomyidae, native to North America. ...
A computer program (often simply called a program) is an example of computer software that prescribes the actions (computations) that are to be carried out by a computer. ...
FidoNet is an inter-connecting file and message transport system that was used by bulletin board systems. ...
However, with the rise of the Internet in the middle/late 1990s BBSes rapidly declined in popularity in the west. However, BBSes have gained considerable increase in popularity since the end of 1990s in China mainland and Taiwan. Several largest BBS sites once had tens of thousands of online users at any time, such as SMTH,YTHT, etc. However, those BBSes located in China have been limited on access or closed since 2004. Events and trends Technology Explosive growth of the Internet; decrease in the cost of computers and other technology Reduction in size and cost of mobile phones leads to a massive surge in their popularity Year 2000 problem (commonly known as Y2K) Microsoft Windows operating system becomes virtually ubiquitous on IBM...
Shuimu Tsinghua (水木清华; pinyin: shǔimù qīnghuá, abbreviated SMTH) BBS is the first and most prestigious bulletin board system among Chinese universities. ...
YTHT BBS began on September 17, 1999, and was built by students in Peking University, Beijing, China. ...
Several BBS systems connected directly to the Internet, removing the necessity of direct dial-up and consequently attracting a more geographically-diverse user base. Most of these systems ran on derivations of a free code package called Citadel. A few are still extant (as of 2004). Citadel is software for running a Bulletin Board System. ...
2004 is a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Some general purpose bulletin board systems had special levels of access that were given to those who paid extra money or knew the sysop personally. BBSs that charged money usually had something special to offer their users such as door games, a large user base, or pornography. While many pay BBSes had pornography, some of the largest BBSs charged users merely for discussion boards. Pay BBSes such as The WELL and Echo NYC (both of which exist to this day) were admired for their tightly-knit communities and quality discussion forums. A BBS door was a mechanism to execute and communicate with an external program, commonly a game on bulletin board systems (commonly referred to as Door games). ...
Pornography (from Greek πορνογραφια pornographia — literally writing about or drawings of harlots) is the representation of the human body or human sexual behaviour with the goal of sexual arousal, similar to, but (according to some) distinct from, erotica. ...
Some BBSs, called elite boards, were exclusively used for distributing pirated software. 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 weren't a law enforcement officer or a lamer. The largest elite boards accepted users by invitation only. Lamer is a jargon or slang name applied to individuals thought to be lacking in maturity, social skills, technical competence or intelligence. ...
Today, BBSing survives as a niche hobby for those who enjoy running BBSes and those users who remember BBSing as an enjoyable pastime. Many BBSes are now accessible through telnet and offer free email accounts. Some BBSes are Web-enabled and have a Web-based user interface, allowing people who have never used a BBS before to use one easily via their favorite web browser. For those even more nostalgic for the true BBS experience, one can use DOSBox and its modem emulation via TCP/IP to dial up Telnet BBS's with 1980's and 1990's era modem software, like Telix, Q-Modem and ProComm+. DOSBox on BeOS running Ultimate Soccer Manager DOSBox is an emulator which creates a DOS-like environment primarily intended for running older, MS-DOS-based PC computer games which may not run properly on newer PCs. ...
A website known as Textfiles.com (http://www.textfiles.com/) serves as a collection point of historical data involving the history of the BBS. This site has also produced a documentary available for sale that includes interviews with well known people from the BBS era. A documentary is a work in a visual or auditory medium presenting political, scientific, social, or historical subjects in a factual and informative manner. ...
Shareware Much of the "Shareware" and "Free software" movements were started via sharing software through BBSes. A notable example was Phil Katz's PKARC (and later PKZIP, using the same algorithm that WinZip now uses); also Wolfenstein 3D and Doom from id Software and many Apogee games. Shareware is a marketing method for software, whereby a trial version is distributed without payment ahead of time as is common for proprietary software. ...
Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation (FSF), is software which is free as in freedom, not as in beer (also referred to as libre or freedom software). ...
Phillip W. Katz, better known as Phil Katz (November 3, 1962 - April 14, 2000), was a computer programmer best-known as the author of PKZIP, a program for compressing files which ran under the PC operating system MS-DOS. Early Life He received a bachelors degree in computer science...
PKZIP is an archiving tool originally written by the late Phil Katz, and marketed by his company PKWARE, Inc. ...
Flowcharts are often used to represent algorithms. ...
WinZip is a commercial file archiver for Microsoft Windows users, developed by WinZip Computing (formerly known as Nico Mak Computing). ...
Wolfenstein 3D (commonly abbreviated to Wolf 3D) is the computer game that started the first person shooter genre on the PC. It was created by id Software and published by Apogee Software on May 5, 1992. ...
Doom1 is a 1993 computer game developed by id Software, and one of the most seminal titles in the first-person shooter genre. ...
id Software is a computer game developer based in Mesquite, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. ...
Corporate logo of Apogee Software Apogee Software, Ltd. ...
See also: ANSI escape code, BBS door, Fido and Fidonet, Internet forum,Ward Christensen ANSI escape codes are used to specify visual effects on text terminals. ...
A BBS door was a mechanism to execute and communicate with an external program, commonly a game on bulletin board systems (commonly referred to as Door games). ...
FidoNet is an inter-connecting file and message transport system that was used by bulletin board systems. ...
Gaia Online, the largest English language forum-based community as of April 2005 — powered by phpBB. An Internet forum, also known as a message board, discussion board, discussion forum, web board, webboard, or, more simply, a forum, is a web application which provides a place for discussion, often for online...
Ward Christensen was the founder of the CBBS bulletin board. ...
Features
A typical BBS has:
- Some BBSes allow telnet access over the Internet using a telnet server and a virtual FOSSIL driver:
- COM/IP (Windows)
- GameSrv/NetFOSS (Windows)
- NetModem (Windows)
- SIO/VMODEM (OS/2)
The BBS software usually provides: The tower of a personal computer (specifically a Power Mac G5). ...
A modem (a portmanteau word constructed from modulator and demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal (sound), to encode digital information, and that also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. ...
This is a list of notable dial-up bulletin board system (BBS) software packages. ...
A SysOp is short for system operator, and is a commonly used term for the administrator of a bulletin board system (BBS) or special-interest area of an online service or, historically, the operators of any computer system, especially a mainframe computer. ...
Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area network LAN connections. ...
FOSSIL is a standard for allowing serial communication for telecommunications programs under DOS. FOSSIL stands for Fido Opus Seadog Standard Interface Layer and was made by a group of Fidonet sysops to make their software work on different machines. ...
- Login screen
- Welcome screen
- One or more message bases
- File download area
- File upload area (sometimes)
- Online games (usually single player or only a single active player at a given time)
- A doorway to third-party online games
- Usage auditing capabilities
- Multi-user chat (more common in later multi-line or telnettable BBSes)
- Internet email (more common in later Internet-connected BBSes)
A BBS will often have mail (or mailer) software to interface with a network, such as Fidonet. Commonly used mailers include (or have included): This article is about the computer terms. ...
This article is about the computer terms. ...
Internet games (also known as online games) are games that are played online via the Internet. ...
A player can be any of the following: A player is a participant in a game. ...
A BBS door was a mechanism to execute and communicate with an external program, commonly a game on bulletin board systems (commonly referred to as Door games). ...
FidoNet is an inter-connecting file and message transport system that was used by bulletin board systems. ...
- BinkleyTerm (http://btxe.sf.net) (widely ported to different Operating Systems)
- Seadog (very old!)
- D'Bridge
- FrontDoor
- Intermail
- McMail
- Sinister Offline Mail Reader
- Xenia
- Portal of Power (http://home.foni.net/~marcusroeckrath/dfue/portal.html)
- Qmail
- Rnet
- MarkMail
- SLMR
- CamMail
In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ...
See also
BBSes - Demon Roach Underground, a popular hacker BBS and former home of CULT OF THE DEAD COW
- The Gaming Center, a large Florida-based free BBS
- GROGGS, a popular BBS in the University of Cambridge
- KaraNet, the biggest BBS in Austria
- Monochrome, a popular BBS in City University, London
- TRN, a popular BBS in Phoenix, Arizona
- Rusty n Edie's BBS, raided by the FBI in 1993 and sued by Playboy in 1997
- UNaXcess, a popular BBS in the University of Manchester
Demon Roach Underground (DRU) was a Lubbock, Texas based BBS that was popular in the hacker scene. ...
CULT OF THE DEAD COW is a high-profile computer hacker organization founded in 1984 in Lubbock, Texas. ...
The Gaming Center (TGC) was a South Florida based BBS that was popular in the gamer scene. ...
State nickname: Everglade State, Sunshine State Other U.S. States Capital Tallahassee Largest city Jacksonville Governor Jeb Bush Official languages English Area 170,451 km² (22nd) - Land 137,374 km² - Water 30,486 km² (17. ...
GROGGS (General-purpose Reverse-Ordered Gossip Gathering System) is a bulletin board system at Cambridge University. ...
The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world. ...
KaraNet is the biggest austrian BBS Bulletin board system. ...
Categories: Stub | Bulletin board systems ...
City University is an institution of higher learning in Clerkenwell, London, England. ...
Roughneck BBS is a popular bulletin board system, located in Phoenix, Arizona. ...
Phoenix is surrounded by twenty two towns and cities that have grown so closely together that it is almost impossible to distinguish one from another in this satellite image. ...
A typical ASCII advertisement for Rusty n Edies BBS. Rusty n Edies BBS (Rusty-N-Edies) was a bulletin board system founded on May 11, 1987 by the two sysops, Rusty Hardenburgh and Edwina Hardenburgh, of Boardman, Ohio. ...
A bulletin board system originally started at Bradford University by Brandon S Allbery in 1984. ...
University of Manchester Motto: Cognitio Sapientia Hvmanitas Knowledge, wisdom, humanity. ...
Related terms Gaia Online, the largest English language forum-based community as of April 2005 — powered by phpBB. An Internet forum, also known as a message board, discussion board, discussion forum, web board, webboard, or, more simply, a forum, is a web application which provides a place for discussion, often for online...
A chat is a casual conversation. ...
A chat room is an online forum where people can chat online (talk by broadcasting messages to people on the same forum in real time). ...
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a form of instant communication over the Internet. ...
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