CONNECT 1200n's BB

Take a trip back... before the commercialized internet. n Boujoulian's BBS - Strawberry Fields BBS - Dans BBS - Detroit Michigan BBS - Detroit BBS - 313 BBS
 
 

Click to enter 313BBS.COM

Why did I launch 313BBS.COM?I once ran a T.A.G. Bulletin Board System just outside Detroit called

The Strawberry Fields BBS
looked like this when you logged on:

Strawberry Fields was a Bulletin Board Service (BBS) I put online in 1993 at a blazing 1200 bps.. My BBS was on my crap PC Compatible 8086 4.777777777 mHz supercomputer. This thing was so slow sometimes, you could go get a cup of coffee while waiting it to display all the text of what your friend wrote to you yesterday.
  It was fun waiting three hours to download a megabyte onto the 40 megabyte hard drive. (Don't worry, Leisure Suit Larry was less than half a megabyte large.

Running the BBS actually taught me to type. My mother would see me downstairs in the basement (i.e. saw the lights on) and would yell for me to go to sleep.
I would turn off the basement lights and continue to play online, either calling Castle Aaugh, Bedlam Bridge, Alcatraz, ENGLiSH ACiD... wherever. Perhaps even chatting with people on my own board. Typing in the darkness meant not being able to see where the keys were so  I learned where keys were without sight.

When you talked to people back then, they weren't all over the world. They were in your local dialing area, after all, we were all area code 313 back then.
Your most frequened Bulletin Boards were usually around your nearest 4 cities, except in rural areas. If you were bored all day long, you didn't just chat. You went on adventures bowling or at the mall or wherever else we found ourselves. You'd chat with someone all night only to figure out you live in the same subdivision, only houses away.

Because of my computer,  I met many awesome people.

These days, I'm using an iMac to get my work done for me instead of the dreaded PeeCee. I made the conversion when I was ready to come out of the closet about my Macintosh tendencies. Sometimes Mark and all those fools rip on me for that shit, but one day they will all understand... I hope.