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Comment by Jemm | Hacker News Reader

BBSs are still alive; mostly accessed over amateur radio.

And... over the internet. Quite a few internet connected BBSs around still, many of which are even part of FidoNet. Speaking of which... FidoNet is still alive too, along with several other similar BBS mail networks. :)

I ran a Utah BBS in the late 80's on a phone line I "found" in my childhood bedroom. I've thought, a bit, about setting up a "BBS" hosted on any computer connected to any WiFi access point. Here are my initial ramblings about the idea.

https://blog.joeldare.com/wireless-bbs/

Thanks for posting this! I ran across this post a while back and couldn't for the life of me find it again - I liked the idea the last time I saw it.

The first thing that came to mind was a wireless BBS running on a solar-powered Pi Zero, left in some remote location.

Well, that kinda surprised me. I write a lot of random stuff but I typically think most of it goes into the void. I've never seen this page show up in any of my top page reports and I don't think I've ever mentioned it before, but maybe I did. Glad you liked my ramblings.

I've got a spare Mac Mini and an extra wifi router. I think I'll try to set this up for my neighbors soon. Most people probably wouldn't guess the password so I might have to go unencrypted.

What was the name? I remember Raistlins Castle and stargate but I can not recall the names of the others. I spent a LOT of time back then playing barren realms elite.

Mine was called PoiZoN BBS.

Another popular name I remember was Love BBS, which was run by two brothers with the last name "Love". They showed up not long before I gave it up and I remember thinking it was one of the best I had tried.

Lower Lights was very big at the time. I think they had 12 lines.

I’m brand new to amateur radio, but loved my BBS back in the day. Can you tell me more about this?

Packet radio, I'm guessing.

I'm getting back into packet radio. SDRs are making this lost art a cheap reality.

There's a decent community of BBSs connected over telnet as well. The ESP2866 makes it easy to "dial in" from an 8-bit machine.

What is there to do in the BBSs currently connected to the internet?

message boards, email, games, usenet, files

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