So I know I'm Ancient of Days, because my home BBS was M-Net. M-Net is still around, as are some of the old names like Marcus Watts, whose home page is one of those deep Internet history pastiches...
So I know I'm Ancient of Days, because my home BBS was M-Net. M-Net is still around, as are some of the old names like Marcus Watts, whose home page is one of those deep Internet history pastiches you can spend days browsing.
I'm probably doxxing myself, but I met and married another M-Net user back in the '90's - we're both still hanging in together.
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever met an M-Net user. Are you familiar with Grex? Grex finally sailed off into the sunset earlier this year. I was one of the more recent sign-ups on Grex and among a...
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever met an M-Net user. Are you familiar with Grex? Grex finally sailed off into the sunset earlier this year. I was one of the more recent sign-ups on Grex and among a handful of people who saluted it as it was decommissioned. It was a long legacy starting with M-Net and a really interesting part of Internet (and pre-Internet) history!
For anyone interested, there is a history hosted on a legacy website with information about M-Net and Grex: https://grex.org/history.xhtml
Thank you for sharing that history - it was quite a trip down memory lane! popcorn, Marcus, Steve, John, Larry and others did heroic work in those days. I was acquainted with the parties involved...
Thank you for sharing that history - it was quite a trip down memory lane! popcorn, Marcus, Steve, John, Larry and others did heroic work in those days.
I was acquainted with the parties involved through Stilyagi Air Corps (more de-anon, but I digress...). My attention wasn't on all of the noise around M-Net vs. Grex since I was wrapped up in grad school through most of it. Also, I had some memorably unpleasant interactions with kite, as did quite a few others. In the end, I drifted away to go do real world things. I still hear about the people through various channels. It delights me that M-Net is still around, but the cautionary tales about sound proprietorship, money, governance, community, and politics remain true as well.
Back when I was religious, I enjoyed participating on the Renewing Your Mind ezboard forum for Ligonier Ministries. This would no longer work as I am no longer Christian and ezboard is several...
Back when I was religious, I enjoyed participating on the Renewing Your Mind ezboard forum for Ligonier Ministries. This would no longer work as I am no longer Christian and ezboard is several levels removed from existence. The community was a pretty strong and tight knit one, and even after Ligonier pulled the plug on their board, the members simply created their own and continued talking for some time until ezboard finally died with the shift to Yuku.
Not so much colloquial BBS, but the systems they eventually evolved into, yes. eBaums World/Nation forums, for sure. I think that's when reddit just started out. When I think of "BBS," I think of...
Not so much colloquial BBS, but the systems they eventually evolved into, yes. eBaums World/Nation forums, for sure. I think that's when reddit just started out. When I think of "BBS," I think of the incredibly simple text-based forum systems of the 90s- not sure if that's the actual definition .
The original Xbox forums, called "the green forums" at the time.
The original WoW forums.
In the early 2000s I got really into forum theming/styling for different forum systems, primarily Invision Power Board and phpBB. There was a forum host called InvisionFree that had its own theming community, called Invision Free Skin Zone, that I was very, very active on.
InvisionFree was a pretty cool service. They ran a customized version of Invision Power Board (IPB) 1.3. Used to have a small board there. Then I moved the forum onto my own site, and self-hosted...
In the early 2000s I got really into forum theming/styling for different forum systems, primarily Invision Power Board and phpBB. There was a forum host called InvisionFree that had its own theming community, called Invision Free Skin Zone, that I was very, very active on.
InvisionFree was a pretty cool service. They ran a customized version of Invision Power Board (IPB) 1.3. Used to have a small board there. Then I moved the forum onto my own site, and self-hosted IPB 1.3, skinned with the newer, way prettier, backported IPB 2.0 skin.
Invision, for a very short period released IPB 2.0 as a free download (literally a week), before replacing it with a limited version of IPB 2.0 that limited the number of posts, users, and a few other things. That meant anybody that wanted to self-host with the IPB software, still generally stuck with IPB 1.3. Thinking back to those days, I imagine it had so many exploits, because it wasn't getting security updates. It's a wonder my self-hosted install, or the (much larger) board that I frequented (also on IPB 1.3) weren't compromised more (I think the larger board had a couple of hacks).
My guess though, is that InvisionFree was doing their own patching, because there's no way they could keep up a service running completely on IPB 1.3. In fact, I seem to remember that they had a unique version number "1.3.1," so maybe they had a license from Invision to host, and update their code?
Impressively, my board at InvisionFree lasted (unused) until they completely died.
"Cleveland Free-net". This idea really didn't take off, but it was by far the best idea of the early internet that I experienced. It didn't have door games, etc. but it was 100% free (after you...
"Cleveland Free-net". This idea really didn't take off, but it was by far the best idea of the early internet that I experienced. It didn't have door games, etc. but it was 100% free (after you went through a very brief screening iirc). I'm really sorry more people didn't get to experience it. https://www.nectec.or.th/net-guide/bigdummy/bdg_122.html#SEC125
The Establishment back in the Commodore 64 days was awesome on the west coast of Canada, but I graduated to Shoreline BBS once I got my hands on a PC. 4 phone lines meant you could actually chat...
The Establishment back in the Commodore 64 days was awesome on the west coast of Canada, but I graduated to Shoreline BBS once I got my hands on a PC. 4 phone lines meant you could actually chat to someone in real time - a big deal at the time.
rationalskepticism.org for discussion on science, religion, beliefs and some general discussion religiousforums.com for learning about different beliefs, practices, worldviews, and religions. I've...
rationalskepticism.org for discussion on science, religion, beliefs and some general discussion
religiousforums.com for learning about different beliefs, practices, worldviews, and religions. I've had a lot of interesting conversations there over the years
I used to spend an irrational amount of time on Thorney's, which was a random Synchronet BBS. I don't know what made me so interested in it. Perhaps it was because at the time it was already...
I used to spend an irrational amount of time on Thorney's, which was a random Synchronet BBS.
I don't know what made me so interested in it. Perhaps it was because at the time it was already incredibly archaic, which made it especially novel to me. AFAIK it never had a phone line; it was always via IP only.
Hmm. Just looked it up and aparantly Synchronet is still updated! It finally got support for nonbinary genders as of last year, as well as integration with NTVDMx64 so it can run 16-bit doors on 64-bit systems.
My favorite BBS forum is PTT (in Chinese). It's one of the largest forums in Taiwan (yes, even now!). There's a "board" (equivalent to a "group" here on Tildes or a "subreddit") for almost every...
My favorite BBS forum is PTT (in Chinese). It's one of the largest forums in Taiwan (yes, even now!). There's a "board" (equivalent to a "group" here on Tildes or a "subreddit") for almost every topic.
So I know I'm Ancient of Days, because my home BBS was M-Net. M-Net is still around, as are some of the old names like Marcus Watts, whose home page is one of those deep Internet history pastiches you can spend days browsing.
I'm probably doxxing myself, but I met and married another M-Net user back in the '90's - we're both still hanging in together.
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever met an M-Net user. Are you familiar with Grex? Grex finally sailed off into the sunset earlier this year. I was one of the more recent sign-ups on Grex and among a handful of people who saluted it as it was decommissioned. It was a long legacy starting with M-Net and a really interesting part of Internet (and pre-Internet) history!
For anyone interested, there is a history hosted on a legacy website with information about M-Net and Grex: https://grex.org/history.xhtml
Thank you for sharing that history - it was quite a trip down memory lane! popcorn, Marcus, Steve, John, Larry and others did heroic work in those days.
I was acquainted with the parties involved through Stilyagi Air Corps (more de-anon, but I digress...). My attention wasn't on all of the noise around M-Net vs. Grex since I was wrapped up in grad school through most of it. Also, I had some memorably unpleasant interactions with kite, as did quite a few others. In the end, I drifted away to go do real world things. I still hear about the people through various channels. It delights me that M-Net is still around, but the cautionary tales about sound proprietorship, money, governance, community, and politics remain true as well.
Back when I was religious, I enjoyed participating on the Renewing Your Mind ezboard forum for Ligonier Ministries. This would no longer work as I am no longer Christian and ezboard is several levels removed from existence. The community was a pretty strong and tight knit one, and even after Ligonier pulled the plug on their board, the members simply created their own and continued talking for some time until ezboard finally died with the shift to Yuku.
I even found the remnants of our refugee forum: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/abettercountry/
Not so much colloquial BBS, but the systems they eventually evolved into, yes. eBaums World/Nation forums, for sure. I think that's when reddit just started out. When I think of "BBS," I think of the incredibly simple text-based forum systems of the 90s- not sure if that's the actual definition .
The original Xbox forums, called "the green forums" at the time.
The original WoW forums.
In the early 2000s I got really into forum theming/styling for different forum systems, primarily Invision Power Board and phpBB. There was a forum host called InvisionFree that had its own theming community, called Invision Free Skin Zone, that I was very, very active on.
InvisionFree was a pretty cool service. They ran a customized version of Invision Power Board (IPB) 1.3. Used to have a small board there. Then I moved the forum onto my own site, and self-hosted IPB 1.3, skinned with the newer, way prettier, backported IPB 2.0 skin.
Invision, for a very short period released IPB 2.0 as a free download (literally a week), before replacing it with a limited version of IPB 2.0 that limited the number of posts, users, and a few other things. That meant anybody that wanted to self-host with the IPB software, still generally stuck with IPB 1.3. Thinking back to those days, I imagine it had so many exploits, because it wasn't getting security updates. It's a wonder my self-hosted install, or the (much larger) board that I frequented (also on IPB 1.3) weren't compromised more (I think the larger board had a couple of hacks).
My guess though, is that InvisionFree was doing their own patching, because there's no way they could keep up a service running completely on IPB 1.3. In fact, I seem to remember that they had a unique version number "1.3.1," so maybe they had a license from Invision to host, and update their code?
Impressively, my board at InvisionFree lasted (unused) until they completely died.
I used to be active on imho.ws way back in 2006.
While forums (and IRC) still exist, it doesn’t feel the same. Or maybe I just changed.
"Cleveland Free-net". This idea really didn't take off, but it was by far the best idea of the early internet that I experienced. It didn't have door games, etc. but it was 100% free (after you went through a very brief screening iirc). I'm really sorry more people didn't get to experience it. https://www.nectec.or.th/net-guide/bigdummy/bdg_122.html#SEC125
The Establishment back in the Commodore 64 days was awesome on the west coast of Canada, but I graduated to Shoreline BBS once I got my hands on a PC. 4 phone lines meant you could actually chat to someone in real time - a big deal at the time.
rationalskepticism.org for discussion on science, religion, beliefs and some general discussion
religiousforums.com for learning about different beliefs, practices, worldviews, and religions. I've had a lot of interesting conversations there over the years
I used to spend an irrational amount of time on Thorney's, which was a random Synchronet BBS.
I don't know what made me so interested in it. Perhaps it was because at the time it was already incredibly archaic, which made it especially novel to me. AFAIK it never had a phone line; it was always via IP only.
Hmm. Just looked it up and aparantly Synchronet is still updated! It finally got support for nonbinary genders as of last year, as well as integration with NTVDMx64 so it can run 16-bit doors on 64-bit systems.
My favorite BBS forum is PTT (in Chinese). It's one of the largest forums in Taiwan (yes, even now!). There's a "board" (equivalent to a "group" here on Tildes or a "subreddit") for almost every topic.