[TriLUG] Google Fiber Triangle Build out

[Matt Flyer via TriLUG]

On Fri, 2016-08-26 at 02:29 -0400, David Burton via TriLUG wrote:
> I think I probably had the last BBS up and running in the Triangle
> <http://archive.is/CxHPo#selection-9.1680-9.1758>. One of the very
> last
> ones, anyhow.
> 
> It ran Waffle, on OS/2, and provided a free dial-up UUCP email
> forwarding
> service for quite a few neighbors, once upon a time. It ran two
> lines, but
> I eventually cut it back to just one line, as a combination BBS+fax.

On Fri, 2016-08-26 at 01:56 -0400, Ric Moore wrote:
> On 08/25/2016 01:14 PM, Matt Flyer via TriLUG wrote:
> > 
> I remember back when there were about 50 modem users in all of
> Houston. 
> You could tell all of the Apple][ users since we typed in all caps!
> From 
> 300 baud, things have REALLY changed! :) Ric
> 
I remember those good old days of calling up BBS systems, dialing and
redialing for tens of minutes trying to get through to popular ones.  I
remember one in particular had some sort of medieval, feudal, multi-
player game going and you were allowed two turns per day.  It was a
challenge to just get through.  

The other thing the BBS's were good for was repositories of free
software to download.  Piracy was a big no-no, at least publicly,
though there was certainly a counter culture, that seemed to be derived
from the "phone freakers" that focused on breaking copy protection,
which was pretty much a joke back then anyway and typically amounted to
putting "error" sectors in hidden areas of the disk.

I had several friends with whom I would call and we would switch our
modems over to data (first 300 baud, then 1200, and when 2400 came out
you were really cruising).  We would exchange game programs using
protocols such as X-Modem, Punter, and Kermit and getting periods of
bad phone connections were hair pulling events.

It still amazes me what was done with 48K of ram and a 1 MHz, 8 bit
processor, especially compared to a lot of the bloated garbage produced
today.  There is still something intrinsically fun about those old game
programs and I still like to play them on an emulator once in a while.

I must be getting old ....