Showed this ANSI tile map to my son, who noticed something extra when the sprite is moving. “That’s the cursor,” I said. “This is all text.”
“That’s text?” he asked incredulously.
I highlighted the entire screen. “Yep.”
“Can you copy and paste that into an email and send it to me?”
#BaudDay #ANSI #BBS #retrocomputing #gamedev #textmode #ansiart
Serial port settings on a Tek-4013 vector graphics terminal, 1973. #BaudDay #RetroComputing
One last bit of #BaudDay celebration — I blogged about some of the advances I made on my experimental #ANSI tile map on my #BBS.
It scrolls smoothly, one character/line at a time. And the ANSI sprites also walk smoothly from tile to tile.
My work on this experiment has come in five-year intervals, but I'm pretty happy with it. Someday I hope to make this into a proper BBS game in memory of my daughter, Jadzia.
https://breakintochat.com/blog/2024/03/12/revisiting-my-ansi-tile-map/
☎️ 🖥️
Why visit my #BBS, guardian.synchro.net, on #BaudDay?
Well, you can fool around with some pretty cool ANSI experiments I've made over the years.
From a parallax-scrolling [Millennium Falcon animation](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2017/05/25/new-parallax-ansimation-millennium-falcon-dodging-asteroids/), to a couple versions of [RPG tile maps](https://breakintochat.com/blog/2015/05/26/ansi-tile-map/), to ANSI-fied movie clips, there's some neat stuff.
Or, if you're on an Atari ST with IGS v2.19, I also have a pretty fantastic logon sequence, unlike anything else out there.
3/12/24 isn't over yet, so don't miss out on #BaudDay!
All you need to connect to a BBS is a good terminal program.
SyncTerm is one the best for calling BBSes. It supports lots of #retrocomputer character sets like ATASCII, PETSCII, and ANSI.
I have also heard many good things about https://muffinterm.app/ and https://github.com/mkrueger/icy_term
Once you have a terminal, try connecting to my #BBS, guardian.synchro.net !
Almost forgot— it’s #BaudDay today: 3/12/24 happy baud day to all those that celebrate!
🍅🍆🥔🥕🫑🥒🥜🫛🍠 here are the new #ironchefofmusic #remix ingredients for #baudday
It's ALL THE MODEMS
💾https://ironchefofmusic.com/ingredients/icom-ingredients-20240312-BAUD-DAY-all-the-modems.zip 🍅🍆🥔🥕🫑🥒🥜🫛🍠 https://ironchefofmusic.com/
At 110, a little too slow even for #baudday :(
Oh well! Here's some hearts to everyone out there loitering with me on the berm of the information superhighway...
Happy #baudday, everyone!
Hey, it's 3/12/24! Happy #BaudDay ya'll.
The first computer my family owned was an Atari 400, the 8k entry-level machine with a membrane keyboard so kids wouldn’t muck it up with their grubby hands.
I learned to type on that keyboard, ingraining a stompy two-finger typing style that I’ve never been able to shake. On the night my dad brought it home, we all gathered around the portable TV with a 4inch black & white screen that the Atari was plugged into and played Star Raiders. (1/5)
(7/7) The legacy? My terminal is still has those lovely ANSI colors and to this day I strongly prefer text mode software.
In around 2010s I was contacted by someone on IRC, asking if I could tell them about BBSes and the BBS scene of 90s. I did and provided some pics too.
That is nowdays the basis for the Finnish Wikipedia article about BBSes, check out the pics even if you don't speak the language!
https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS
Oh, and my servers are a lot larger nowdays!
(6/7) FinBox BBS closed in '02, after 8 years of operation. It taught me a lot about networking and other concepts that were also very handy in my IT work.
I think about the early 90s fondly, but there's also a lot that I don't miss; that 2400bps modem as a file transfer device sure was a pain compared to the fibre we have nowdays.
RIP FinBox BBS, 1994-2002.
(5/7) FinBox got a 2nd line at some point and as Internet connections appeared, it also got multiple telnet "lines" aswell. It was a pretty well equipped BBS: a lot of file storage, local and echo-mail discussion areas, networked games, free e-mail for users and so forth.
In its heyday I was among the big ones in Finland. As you can probably guess, people slowly migrated to Internet for things they'd call a BBS for and eventually I had to downscale until I had only one line left.
(4/7) I networked quickly with other people. FinBox eventually got its own phone line and went from night BBS to 24/7 one, with a dedicated computer running it. At the same time I was in my first job in a computer store so you can probably guess how this escalated fast.
The system at my room grew: it got a server, running NT 3.51 and the dedicated BBS machines running DOS 6.22 used its network shares so I could be online same time from another computer have a chat.
(3/7) Naturally it didn't stop there. I was so damn curious about how these BBS systems worked. I downloaded one, called SuperBBS and the download alone took like hours with the speeds of the time.
Setting it up wasn't as difficult as I had assumed. The first actual problem was the phone line that I couldn't afford at 13 years old. A lot of broke-ass teens ran so called night BBSes, that used their family phone but only like after 10pm or so.
So, FinBox BBS was born early '94.
(2/7) I was using a beaten up old 8088, for which I got a 2400bps modem. I saved up for a long time to get that. Naturally I went wild and called every long distance BBS I could find.
The first phone bill was big enough to be delivered with a fork lifter. Parents weren't exactly impressed. But the concept of reaching out to other people outside the little bubble I lived in was kind magical. It's hard to describe it to people who have lived in the connected world all their lives.
(1/7) Since it's apparently "baud day" in a wonderfully American fashion in dates (3/12/24), let me tell you a bit of something I did in the 90s.
I saw my dad use a modem for the first time in the late 80s and I was extremely intrigued by the concept of just "calling" onto another computer. It wasn't until 91 or 92, when I got my first own modem and started foraging for information in the BBS world.
It was however something that literally changed my life.
Happy Baud Day, everyone!!
3/12/24
In honor of this singular occasion, I share two facing pages from the modem section of a 1983 Inmac computer supply catalog, for your enjoyment.
Let the festivities commence!
#BaudDay #Baud #bps #modem #telecommunications #computinghistory #BBS #BBSing #terminals #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #vintagetech #tech #hardware #computing #holiday #celebration #March
My first and last purchased modems, 300 Baud VicModem that I first used on my Commodore Vic20 & C64 in the early 80s to the 56k USRobotics Courier HST Dual Standard on my Amiga & later PCs. These pre-internet modems connected me to a lot of systems and in turn lifelong friends. 3/12/24 #BaudDay #IYKYK
