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Comment by AndyNemmity | Hacker News Reader

I was a 12 year old bbs sysop. Was it really that weird?

I guess it's cool people care about it now. If I told someone when it was happening, they wouldn't have cared at all, or knew what it meant.

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I also started a BBS when I was 12. When I got my first PC with a modem I ran a telephone extension cable from my room all way across the house to the kitchen. It hung about 2 feet high. After 2 weeks of my parents tripping over the cable every morning, they decided to get me my own phone line in my room.

From that point forward, I ran a BBS for many years. I can still find my name in those old BBS listings from textfiles.com.

I have many interesting stories from that era.

So was I. The SysOps I remember ranged from 14 to middle age. 12 is uncommon age outside of hn.

Lol same here! I wrote a barebones BBS in QBasic when I was in 6th grade = 11 year old. Only had like 5 users all of whom were friends, still good times!

Are you me. My qbasic bbs was only for one friend though.

LOL! Same here. The initial version of my home brewed BBS was written in QB 4.5 (I believe), which I later ported to GW-BASIC because it allowed me to compile the BAS file to EXE (binary). Those were formative years for me that solidified my commitment to technology, which is going strong to this day…

I never got into BBS because Europe but I had a similar experience (or origin story). My first quest to find another programming language came when I figured out I needed something that could produce .exe instead of .bas. I went to a local store and browsed the computer books section and picked up a TurboPascal 7.0 (iirc) book that came with the compiler on a floppy disk. I selected the book and thus my second language after Basic (which came on the computer, no idea how I ever "found" it) by a great process. It was the biggest book so it must be the best. Oh kid logic :D

And why did I need to write some .exe...well I wanted to write a password protection for the computer that I could load in command.com so that I could lock out my sister from useing the computer. Nobel causes and ideas indeed that brought me to where I am these days. I'm still baffled how I figured all of this wizzardry out in the first place (the guy who sold us the computer must have mentioned command.com...I cannot recall how I even know it existed).

We got a computer super late and noone I knew was remotely interested in this stuff. There was no internet (or BBS) because we didn't have any connections to anything. I still remember how thrilling it was to go to the library and browse the computer books and learn there's evene more programming languages.

Amazing :D - it's quite similar to my experience. I think many folks naturally ended up moving to Turbo Pascal after Basic. I believe many of the BBS systems were initially written in Turbo Pascal (v4?). I know for a fact that WWIV, Telegard, and Renegade were all in done in TP, and then later moved to C++ because of the limitations associated with running Door games.. ah, the good 'ole times

I could never figure out things like FOSSIL drivers, I bought a Pascal compiler because I heard that's what door games were written in.

But what I did do was write a QBASIC BBS simulator, and a few kids in our computer class would 'log in' to it and we'd leave stupid messages for each other, and play blackjack and a few other games but I don't remember what they were.

The best part was one of us quickly figured out the random number generator wasn't seeded properly and would create the same cards every time you played, so they quickly got the high score.

I wonder if any other kids found it later on.

It depends on how good of a story teller you are.

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