Bulletin board system

A bulletin board system or BBS is a computer system running software that allows users to dial into the builletin board system over phone lines.

A bulleting board system was in many ways a precursor to the modern form of the World Wide Web and other aspects of the Internet. BBS'es were more of a social phenomena and were used for meeting people and having discussions in message boards. The BBS was also a local phenomena, as one had to dial up to a BBS on their phone line and would have to pay long distance charges if they dialed a BBS out of their calling area. Thus, many of a BBS's users lived in the same area and it was common for a BBS to hold a BBS Meet, where all of the users would gather and meet face to face.

A typical BBS has:

• a computer
• one or more modems
• a BBS software package
• a sysop - system operator
• one or more phone lines

The BBS software usually provided:

• login screen
• welcome screen
• one or more [message base]?s
• file download? area
• file upload? area (sometimes)
• online games (usually single player or only a single active player at a given time)
• a doorway to 3rd party online games
• login/logout auditing capabilities
• multi-user chat (more common later in bbs'es later in the early 1990's)

Most BBS were run as a hobby by the sysop and not for commercial purposes.

BBS grew in popularity from the 1980s to the early 1990s and have greatly declined in popularity with the rise of the internet in the middle/late 1990s. BBS were so popular that a major monthly magazine "Computer Shopper" would carry a list of BBS along with a brief abstract of each offering.

BBS were painfully slow over 300 baud? (30 characters per second) modems, but speed was acceptable at with 1200 baud? to 9600 baud modems because all information was represented as characters and [ansi escape code]?s. In the early 1990's, modem speeds drastically increased to 14.4k baud and 28.8k baud modems.

Before commercial internet access became common, networks of BBSes provided regional and international e-mail and message bases. Some even provided gateways by which members could send/receive e-mail to/from the internet. Fairly elaborate schemes allowed users to download binary files, search gopherspace, and interact with distant programs, all using plaintext e-mail. Most BBS networks were not linked in real-time. Instead, each would dial up the next in line, and/or a regional hub, at pre-set intervals to exchange files. The largest BBS network was fidonet, which is still widely used outside of the United States.

Did BBSes make shareware a viable business prospect? Shareware was started via sharing software through BBSes. A notable example was Phil Katz's Pkarc. Also Wolfenstien 3d and Doom of ID Software. And all Apogee games.

See also:

• [ansi escape code]?
• bbs doors game -- is there a better term for this? (No, that's what they were called)
• fido and fidonet