In 1986 I started to

In 1986 I started to BBS. The school I went to had a DEC PDP 11/44 mainframe that ran RSX-11M+ and one of the students had written BBS software for it. That student was Brian Reynolds. He helped code a little game you might have heard of called Civilization II. (I need to get him to sign the BBS source code I have printed out.) The BBS really opened my mind as to what you can do when you start connecting all these computers together.

Back in those days we had silly terms like Sysop (pronounced SIS-op not SIGH-sop) and Co-Sysop to describe people who ran them. I devoted a DOS PC (well sometimes I ran Desqview) to running WWIV BBS software. That was how I met my friends Hymie, Porovaara, Otopico and Randy. Over the years I’ve lost touch with friends like Alex Rayborn, Darkstar, Falcon Hunter, Shade, Plaid Ninja, Alchy Anarchist, Knight O’Vaxdom, Jim Scarborough, Raphael, Klaus, Dragonsbane, Wes Wilson and others that I can’t remember at the moment. Oh the wonderful stories…

It had a darkside too…one that I didn’t comprehend at the time. I’ll never forget my conversations with mister multiple personality syndrome Showman/Dave/Karen/Jennifer. Showman would buy used little girl’s underwear. Another guy I knew at the time, L. H., just wanted to play with the boys. I heard through the grapevine he was in jail for possession of pictures of kiddie porn. Eventually I learned how to filter those people out of my life quicker.

It was a remarkable time and for those of us that were there we blazed trails that the rest of the world would follow a decade later with the Internet. If you remember the good old days then you might be interested in a BBS documentary the textfiles.com guy is making. (Link from Consolation Champs)

1987 started me down the networked path with my Amiga 1000. I feel this tremendous gratitude to folks like Dave Morse, Dale Luck, RJ Mical, Dave Haynie and Jay Miner for inventing the Amiga and with it uttering the new words that would dominate computing for the next decade.