BBS: The Documentary
Dennis lent me his copy of the DVD “BBS: The Documentary”, a 3 DVD documentary history of BBS, sysops, etc. Watching it brings back amazing memories of my early days as a Sysop, running the “Spatula City” BBS out of my parents basement.
Even crazier, they’re now talking with people about “the first time they ever logged in” to someone else’s BBS. In my case, I vividly remember this, mostly because I had to sneak it. 
We had a Vic20, or perhaps we were even up to a Commodore 64 by that point… that part fades with time. What stuck is that we had a 300 baud modem that was so wonderfully advanced that it it wouldn’t autodial the phone. In fact, it had a handset jack to plug into the phone, rather than the modular RJ11 jack that you see on all modems now (to plug directly to the wall plate). At least it wasn’t an acoustic coupler!
Anyways, back to the story… so I didn’t even have a list of local BBSs… I only knew of one, started a few weeks or months earlier by my bud Randy. (ironically, this same BBS is still around today, albeit running different software then when I first dialed it, with a different name, and available primarily through telnet vs dialup!). So I dragged the phone downstairs from the kitchen to my bedroom (had to get a telephone extension cord to make it reach). Prepped the computer to “be ready to originate” a call. Then I manually dialed — and we still had a dial telephone here — the telephone number. Waited for the screech. And finally, unplugged the handset from the phone and crammed in the modem plug instead. Whew. Connected. And slowly.
What makes this story so funny to me is that it’s somewhat of out its time. Now, to be certain, when I started it wasn’t wildly common to be on BBSs or anything, but I was still way behind the technology. This was probably about 1990 timeframe here, and there were way more advanced things available — IBM PCs and Macs were both somewhat common at this point, there were at least 1200 baud modems commonly available, and probably even 2400 baud modems were relatively affordable (ie – a high school student could by one for <$100). Heck, even touchtone phones (vs rotary) were fairly common, depending on where in the country you lived.
Growing up in tiny Sheboygan, WI I was just glad to have local systems to dial up (there were probably 4–5 by the time I started). When I started my own system in around 1992 or 1993–ish, there were probably 6–8 other systems I shared the local calling area with.
Ok, enough for now. Perhaps I’ll be inspired for more details as I keep watching this documentary! 
