Heck, I was a moderator for a FidoNet channel!

I was on a lot of 510 and 415 area code BBSes in the late '80s and early '90s. Sometimes I find myself wishing that those days weren't gone, as the Internet is a little too...something. Impersonal? Garish?

Not that I would really want to be downloading files over 1200bps modems ever again, mind.

Huh, sisterhavana...I can hardly remember. It might have been 'melyna', or it might have been 'doe', I totally can't remember.

I was a co-moderator on a Compuserve board in the early 90s, but I don't suppose that counts. *sigh* Always late to the party...

Charlottesville, VA had a booming crop of BBSes when I was growing up. Waffles After Midnight, The VINE, and many more. I posted this in the MeTa thread, but I actually became friends with one of the late-night BBS runners years later without realizing who he was.

Ah, the days of Tradewars, ANSI color, and modems.

My crazy Freshman roommate was on them back in the early '90s (in Columbus, OH, and probably back home in Conn.). He would sit in our dorm room for hours chatting with people online. I thought he was nuts.

And now here I am...

Wait...ISCA still exists? Wow.

me3dia: lol. I remember when I discovered the BBS thing...I felt like a complete freak. I mean, I'm not a techie at all, and very far from a geek. But I love communicating. And I was enthralled that there was this interactive community that was all about ideas and conversation, and attracted some really bright and interesting people. As you can see, I still do love that.

But did I feel like a bizarro freak trying to explain to my friends why I was sitting at a green terminal in a computer lab during the wee hours of the morning? Yes, I did. It scared them a little, I think.

Yeah, 301 (now 410) -area BBSs in the early 80's... Sinclair ZX80 and a tape drive (or maybe we had the Atari 800 by then)... good times.

Also, in the late 70's and early 80's, my brother got hold of a CB transmitter and we would play songs (mostly BÖC, Kiss, and stuff we recorded off of DC101 and 98 Rock) on a Radio Shack tape player while holding down the transmit button, taking turns when our hands got tired.

Our "call signal" was WATR -- All Tape Radio.

My high school wanted to be technologically advanced so it gave all the US History AP students TRS-80s. Somebody spread the word that we could use the 300 baud modem to dial up to places where we could gossip all night to each other while appearing to be studying. Most everyone else was on 1200 by then, so I remember being in full chat rooms, typing three words, and then waiting four minutes to see them. Oh the days! At the end of the year we turned in the laptops and most of us stopped visiting BBSes.

Let's see... I was in 818 (some of which is now 626), on WWIVs and two MajorBBSes. I never did get the hang of Tradewars (I'm no good at TW). Meets were fun. My handle was Feyd until college (OMG so awful a Dune reference), and I've been halonine ever since.

"Depriving 15-year-old boys of the cake Nine Inch Nails handle since 1995."

I wonder if I can still identify modem handshakes by ear...?

I was on ISCA as well from '92 to '95...

cmonkey nailed it; as fun and innocent the internets were then, I cannot ever imagine going back to anything with a transfer rate with less than 7 digits.

I was a BBSer with a Mac Classic, until the folks saw the first of two $80/month phone bills.

I'm realizing how great it was to be on a college system. We didn't pay for the long distance.

I also played a MUD in college as part of this experimentation. WE used to get furious lag. I remember being in horrendous fights with slathering orcs and stuff, you'd see your screen freeze, and then just lean back and wait for it to catch up five minutes later to see whether you were dead (again) or not.