Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie

[Flack]

My new book Commodork: Sordid Tales from a BBS Junkie is now available. The book is a collection of my own personal experiences that took place during the classic bulletin board era. After a brief introduction that romps through my TRS-80 Model III and Apple II years, the book takes you through my adventures as a BBS user. The first half of the book takes place during my Commodore 64 years, while the second half takes place in the IBM PC world. As you might suspect, the book concludes right around the time the World Wide Web takes hold and destroys one of the greatest hobbies of all time.

If you remember copyfests and busy signals, you will enjoy my tribute to the greatest computer experience of all time.

The first chapter of the book is available for free in PDF format on my website here, which also contains purchasing links. The book retails for $14.95 (US).

[DrumAnBass]

Hehe right on! I was right there with ya; ran a BBS out of my closet while in high school on my C64...! ;-) I look forward to reading it!

[ChadTower]

Then once out of the social crucible that is high school he took his BBS and came leaping out of the closet for all to witness.

[Havok]

Commodore... Humpf!

I ran an Atari BBS!

 

[gnateye]

atari 8bit BBS in the house!

we used to run one called "the dark side of the moon" back in 1982-5, ran it on a atari 800, with an audio coupler modem, my parents didnt even have a clue.

those were the days of the ascii art and the slow as mollassas downloads

[Havok]

Yeah!


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I'm going to have to pick up a copy of this book - I miss the days of shoeboxes full of floppies, and using the "disk doubler" to punch a hole in the disk so I could use them on both sides...

[SteveJ34]

A friend and I wrote systems that were based on TRS-DOS on Model IIIs and later moved to Model 4s which we operated for years.

For grins we also built and ran a small message system that operated all within the 32k ram area of the Model 100.

Ah yes, I remember when we hit 1200 baud...we thought we were in tall cotton back then.

Thanks for putting your memories into print which have spawned an opportunity this evening for me to relive mine.

[NightGod]

I'm going to have to pick up a copy of this book - I miss the days of shoeboxes full of floppies, and using the "disk doubler" to punch a hole in the disk so I could use them on both sides...

Scary part is, I still have my disk doubler, ran across it a few months ago moving around some boxes.

Good times.

[saint]

I ran the Sun Country BBS -- 2400 baud, *two* 30 meg hard drives, running RBBS and then QuickBBS. It was the hottest thing in town bay-bee! I even wrote a door for it that I found someone else using a couple of years later (was a graffiti wall)!

[Stingray]

Very cool Flack! I had no idea you were writing a book. I will definitely be picking up a copy.

-S

[Flack]

we used to run one called "the dark side of the moon" back in 1982-5, ran it on a atari 800, with an audio coupler modem, my parents didnt even have a clue.

I'm pretty sure every area code had a BBS called "The Dark Side of the Moon." I know we had (at least) one here in 405. It was kind like having a kid who went by "Metallica". I think everybody knew one.

I'm going to have to pick up a copy of this book - I miss the days of shoeboxes full of floppies, and using the "disk doubler" to punch a hole in the disk so I could use them on both sides...

As you will see in the book, I gave up on shoeboxes and now have everything piled into a milk crate. Makes it a ---smurfette--- to find anything, but it's much easier to store! I have been picking up old school disk boxes from thrift stores for a buck or two over the past few months. Although it takes up a lot more shelf space, I may end up moving everything from the milkcrate back into those disk boxes once again.

Oh, and I still have my old disk doubler too. I showed it to my dad recently and he said, "harumph. Real men just used a hole punch, and if we missed we just kept punching them until we got it right."

Ah yes, I remember when we hit 1200 baud...we thought we were in tall cotton back then.

I remember people arguing that 1200 baud was a waste because the messages scrolled by faster than you could read them at that point.

Thanks for putting your memories into print which have spawned an opportunity this evening for me to relive mine.

That's the whole point.

Very cool Flack! I had no idea you were writing a book. I will definitely be picking up a copy.

You would have known if you had been at OVGE this year! 

Sorry I'm so late getting back to the party --  the good news is, I've been busy shipping books! Thanks to everyone who's purchased one so far.

[Hoopz]

[

I'm going to have to pick up a copy of this book - I miss the days of shoeboxes full of floppies, and using the "disk doubler" to punch a hole in the disk so I could use them on both sides...

Oh, and I still have my old disk doubler too. I showed it to my dad recently and he said, "harumph. Real men just used a hole punch, and if we missed we just kept punching them until we got it right."

Just as easy and much cheaper!  I remember those days.   

[yuppicide]

I didn't read Chapter 1, but I'll maybe do it tonight. I was there with you as well, maybe even more so.

I ran up a $1700 phonebill dialing out on my Commodore 64. I learned to type in the dark so nobody would see me on the computer at night.. the result?! I type about 90 words per minute with only a combination of two fingers and no looking. I know when I make mistakes.

I used to have about 1000 3.5" 1581 floppies. I had a modified C64 with dual SID chip and a 4 watt amplifier inside. I had JiffyDOS.

I had acess to elite boards and to elite BBS programs that weren't released to the public. You had to know people to get them and only a handful of BBSes used the software, but man were they cool looking.

I went into the PC BBS scene as well. I did ANSi/ASCii art for a few groups. I remember a BBS right around the corner from my house got shut down for piracy.

There's a website online that you can download every old BBS program in one large zip.

[Ifko]

the commodore 64 days....over 20 years ago...

Load"name",8,1

wasnt directory
load"$",8     or something like that

Remember when the newest version of Fast Hackem X.X  came out....  you just had to get it ...almost like "the new phone books are here" in the movie  The Jerk.

Anyone remeber... ICE PIC...  it's not only allowed you to duplicate programs, but it made the copied programs boot up faster.

All I have to say is EA's  "One on One" with Dr J and Larry Bird was one of the Shiizzznitt games of all time.

My parents retired and moved away a few months ago,  they made me take all my stuff,  I still have everything..including the monitor,  and all the shoeboxes.

Scott
Detroit

[Flack]

While digging through C64 stuff over the weekend, I took this picture for you.



Final Cartridges (the blue and red ones) offered both Fast Loading as well as memory dumps, monitors, and other neat things. The Isepic cart allowed you to dump whatever was in memory into a bootable executable.

[Ifko]

Yesss     ,  I had that bad boy in the middle.   Man did I think I was the Shhhhhizzz nittt when I got that.  You plugged in the cartridge and then you flicked the switch on the side when you were loading the game--  when it was done you put in your blank Disk and it stored the program that you were originally loading on it, and cleaned it up to make it boot faster.


thank you,   Nice Pic
I grew up in a very small town, in south West Michigan.  We had at least 3 BBS's that you could dial into locally... one I remember was called Revelstone.
I talked a buddy into starting one for a summer... it was called the Dart Board.

the good old days,

Scott
Detroit