6 Months Of Final Zone BBS

I didn’t realize until the other day that I’ve been running a Bulletin Board System for the past 6 months! To be fair, this particular “version” of the board didn’t start until June 6th of 2020 – the previous few weeks the system was running on a Raspberry Pi as a “test” board, but in …
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Server Relocation And Dial Up Access Testing

I took a bit of time yesterday to do a long overdue move of my Dell PowerEdge server. It had spent the past 5 months or so in the living room, humming away, holding files and serving up Final Zone BBS. The server has finally been moved to a closet where it can now hum …
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Bits And Bytes – Program 12: What Next?

This is it – the final episode of the 1983 TV Ontario series “Bits and Bytes.” It’s been 11 episodes introducing the basic concepts of computer usage in 1983. This is an interesting one – it focuses on the future of computing, both logistically and practically. Things like people sitting for far too long at …
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Bits And Bytes – Program 5: Communication Between Computers

Alright, finally we’re getting to something that will feel familiar to everyone: networking! More correctly, the pre-internet computer networking methodology known as BBS’s, via literally dialing a number and putting a phone on the modulator-demodulator – a modem, if you are old enough to remember those kinds of things! This episode shows our friend Billy …
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Terminal Madness – 1980 Personal Computer Documentary

I stumbled across this gem of a video yesterday and thought it worth sharing – a 1980 documentary from Madison, Wisconsin, about the then-new personal computer scene. The video is a little dry in some regards but it proves to be oddly perfect in its predictions for computers in the future – as a kid …
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Finding The Perfect BBS For Me

Last week, I finally took the plunge into old-school computer usage by perusing various Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) via Telnet. Always fascinated by the early days of “modern” computer usage, I wanted to experience the pre-internet digital community as best as I can in 2016, and since then, have been hunting around off and on …
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Spending Some Time With a Good Old BBS

Before there was the internet, there were Bulletin Board Systems (BBS for short). These systems were basic, at their core, but could grow quite complex. The way they worked was simple: a user dialed the phone number of the BBS they wanted to access and, presuming the line wasn’t busy, they would connect directly to …
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