Happy New Year from The Oasis BBS!
#HappyNewYear2025 #TheOasisBBS #RetroComputing #Commodore64 #C64 #C64Community #VintageTech #BBSLife #RetroGaming #8BitForever #StayRetro
https://theoasisbbs.com/happy-new-year-from-the-oasis-bbs/?feed_id=946&_unique_id=67756167667ee

Ink 2 ANSI by Tainted <B7>.

#blocktronics #ansi #textmode_art #bbslife

I do find it amusing seeing people refer back to the community feeling of the old BBS days here.

If you didn't get to experience the pre-interner "online" world, it really did feel like a whole new frontier.

I was fortunate to grow up in a household which had personal computers. I remember the first computer was the #atari 400 with a membrane keyboard we bought from Service Merchandise. It took cartridges but also loaded programs from cassette tapes.

I would mostly play games my dad would give me magazine source code to enter and play.

Fast forward a few years and a kid at school asked me in class "hey do you have a modem?" To which I said yes, but I had no idea what a modem was. He scribbled some phone number on my science book and told me to call it.

I forgot all about it.

My dad was an insurance underwriter by day but his passion was his hobbies and one of those were computers. He would spend hours on his computer after work when we went to bed. When a friend asked me if my dad could help him fix their computer at home we made plans to go over there on a weekend. My dad resolved it, and answered questions about the computer. My friend asked "what is the comit program?" To which my dad said 'it allows you to use a modem to call other computers'.... There was that word again! I quickly asked to use the house phone to call my mom to read me the number scribbled on my science book and gave it to my dad. He entered it into comit and plugged in the phone line and dialed it. I remember the screeching sound as the screen came to life and he showed what was the front door of a BBS.

I was. Amazed. I asked my dad "can we do this at home?' to which he said 'yes I call computers all the time I will show you when we get home'

We had a more modern Atari ST by that time and I think a 1200bps modem. That night I had called the BBS and discovered other BBSes from there all around the world. Oddly enough I was "sick" that week and had to stay home from school so I just happened to be able to use the computer while my parents were at work. :)

I would discover new boards, and new numbers to try that were always busy. When you finally connected it was some new unexplored world. Small communities, where you would just chat and play door games that would turn into meetups and friends in real life.

We would eventually get a PC clone and I would learn that and then build my own PC, and learn and explore more. I remember beta testing this new thing America Online. Downloading duke nukem and Wolfenstein 3d. Never winter nights. Setting up FIDONET relay servers and offline mail clients. So many phone bills to work off.

The big BBS's had 8-12 lines or more where that many people could be online together chatting. It was a rare event when the big systems would open up a shared connecting to other big systems and you would get 24 people! 24!

Something was changing and this thing called 'the internet' was out there..... And I would have to find a way to connect to it. But that is a different story.

But it all started because someone was excited to share what they had discovered and asked me if I had a modem. It was that moment and a father who would share his geeky passion with me that lit the spark that would light up ways I could never have seen as a kid. All of that had lead me to a very fortunate career that I never stop exploring and growing.

My father, a true hacker, didn't live to see a world beyond the modem at home. iSDN was a thing and DSL was in the near future. I often think back on what he might think of the world today and how far it has come and how connected everything is. I think most of all he would be amazed at the opportunity he gave me.

So yeah when you discover a new community and you start seeing it grow with new people and new ideas and thoughts it is a good time. We now live in connected world, much different than 30-40 years ago. I wonder with so much connection we still struggle to find our own community so I am glad that people may be discovering theirs.

I know this was long so if you made it this far thanks for listening to my trip down memory lane :)

#bbslife #atarist #modem #community