I bet a few other Gerontocrats might get a kick just from checking out all those old BBS names.

This new-fangled innernet thing is all purty & colorful, but them was the days when hardcore geek was, well, harder cored. My first modem required a standard Bell handset to connect, but it got me on my local BBSs, and Fido and friends kept the bits moving nationwide.

p.s. I do wonder if "Stardock Island" was an early Frogboy project.

Indeed. I think the effort and patience required to use a BBS over a 300 baud modem all by itself somehow made the scene more special than all this flash-and-dazzle broadband yada-yada.

And why am I not surprised to learn that Frogboy was a swell host "back in the day..."

It was.  That was from my mom's house actually.

And Marvelous was around then too. I think, if I remembe right, he was a "sub-op" on the BBS. It was great fun. One of the smartest guys I ever met.

 

A BBS is (was, probably) a "bulletin board system." The Wikipedia article should give you the historical context.

Basically, think of something like a very primitive web site where color was only available through language skills, the only "graphics" were based on the keyboard characters, speeds were so slow you spoiled youngsters will need to work to imagine them, and the whole thing was based on the volunteer efforts of hobbyists.

That's right--I was a sub-op. I also had my own BBS briefly that was from 9:00pm until 6:00am (or something like that) and it used the home phone #--I was too broke to get a dedicated line. I remember all day,the phone would ring and my dad would answer and get the modem noise. Then, it would ring again and someone would say, "Is this Castle Aurora?" Hahahaha. Drove my dad to drink!

I had a list of local BBS #'s--lets see. Dark Side of the Moon--didn't Pat's brother run that one? Also, PC Main, PC 2, PC Royale, etc. But the one I always treasured over the others was Stardock (actually forgot about the "Island" part over the years...) Frogboy--did you sit behind the computer all day? It was funny--it seemed that no matter what time I called, you were always there to chat--we had some great conversations and I could never believe that you were 15, or so. Very mature for such a young age. I also remember that you had "President of the BBS" or something like that and for a time I was signing my posts...

Marv for Prez

Hahaha! What memories!

It was always fun meeting people in "real life" that you had known for months, or even years--on the BBS. I remember gaining "crushes" on girls that I had met online via posts and discovering to my sadness that they were either fake users or nothing like described--guess that still goes on. I, of course, remember meeting Frogboy "live" when he worked at B-Daltons Bookstore at the mall. Kinda funny--I looked (knowing that you had a job there) and saw a guy and said, "That looks like Macros" and you looked and said, "Marvelous?" It was a pretty interesting conversation that we had (I still remember it...) I remember by that time I was heavily into Amiga computers (Stardock Island was on a Commodore 64 by the way and Amiga was the next "logical step" in Commodore evolution) Well, to make long stories short, I was telling him about how he needed to "get into" Amigas. He told me that he was going the PC-route. I remember thinking, "What a mistake!" Wow--was I wrong.

So who was smart? hahahaha.

Ah--I could go on for hours!

Marvelous