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. For you computer illiterate folks,
in terms of your 57.6k bps modem, that means text would fly by on the screen
as you logged in at 1.2k 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. Not
that I would really know because, I started talking to people on the computer
in 1987 when I was 11 years old. It was then I first installed that 1200bps
modem that would come to change my life.
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 Mark Samp, Pat & Mike Murphy, Mark Geralds, Michelle Lober, Katrina Ham, Mike Cyrulnik, Melinda Joseph, Chuck Firment and a slew of others whom I still hold dear 6 and 7 years later. I continue to meet cool people online, such as Sarah Fulka, my Macintosh Soulmate.
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.
