Detroit BBSing Nostalgia
Welcome! I've gone thru my old hard drive to find ANSI's and fun stuff. If you have anything, PLEASE send it my way, ( contact ) I'd love to put it online. Either screen capture the ANSI while it's being displayed and send me the JPG/BMP or just send me the ansi.
Before the information super highway could cruise at speeds capable of displaying graphics and photos as you hyperlinked around, there was another way to electronically communicate. Bulletin Boards Systems running on the CPUs of System Operators (SysOps) all over the place were programmed to answer the telephone with the modem.
In Detroit, you'd find BBSes with a 313 area code using Horst Mann's list. Back then, we were all 313. It was the popularity of BBSes, pagers and cell phones that made them expand the area codes.
BBS
Callers could login and leave messages for each other, play online games
and transfer files.
The modems were slow. 1 megabyte would take 3 hours to transfer on my first
modem. The graphics were simple and ASCII based. As the modems got faster,
graphics called ANSIs were developed. (See below.) Technology was moving
forward, but still, picking up the phone or receiving another phone call
would have disasterous effects on the connection.
It was a time when talking to someone far away meant that they weren't close
enough to ride a bike to. It introduced me to folks from neighboring town
high schools. We established message networks as friends moved far away.
Sending packets of mail back and forth over the miles was worth the phone
bills for the satisfaction of making online friends outside the Detroit
suburbs. This is my homage to the days of BBSing. When chatting online was
more social. When people live blocks away from you, its easy to get together
(We usually chose bowling parties and BBQ's.) I tip my hat to the days of
old.
