Visitors
Nostalgia knocked on the door today, and I invited her in. Taking me to remote corners of the Internet we read about the Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) of the old days. The journey was limited to PCBoard, but years ago the experience stretched from Renegade, to VBBS to Wildcat! software.
Network 23 BBS was popular for the live chat - up to five could spend 59 minutes per day messaging in real time, then you were disconnected opening the phone line to the next computer calling in. Castle BBS had a lot of popular door games, Sound and Sight BBS a lot of files. Above the Rim was a warez community with Sysops a couple years older than most callers, thus a very cool place to hang out with the older kids - those with relationship and ‘real life’ problems we’d have traded our modems for.
Leaving home for the lake was more difficult the first year after joining the BBS world. The week long adventure came only a couple months after I had connected my first modem (US-Robotics, 14.4 Baud, 16550 UART) to my first PC.
Eventually, calling in turned to receiving calls with the start of my own BBS, Ghost in the Machine (GITM). The phone technician looked puzzled when asked to put in three phone lines, side-by-side, all with a unique number and a sole outlet in the basement. I met and stayed virtual friends with Jan-Ice, Dennis, Katherine, Kubes, Sue, Xavier, Brad, and others, none of which are around today but for that space where memories are kept. GITM BBS received over 54 thousand phone calls, with the daily reaching 111.
These early stages of computering led me eventually behind the scenes of the young Web and the Internet. And while I miss the days of searching for a better init string, adding new files for download, being Sysop paged, and making a new Main Menu… I think the PCBoard disks and manual will stay in the box on the top bookshelf, where they’ve been since the mid 90s.
August 19th, 2008 at 16:47
I have absolutely no experience with this little parcel of 1990s history, but the feelings described can work with any bit of nostalgia that is stumbled upon - whether hearing an old favourite song, or coming across an old magazine, even finding an old website that one hasn’t visited in years. Or digging through old boxes and “rediscovering” old books and photos and bits of scrap paper upon which high school gossip was hastily scrawled. (Which is the particular version of nostalgia that crept up on me today!)
Funny how you call nostalgia a “she”; why is that so many feelings and phenomena relating to the body and mind are described as female? Totally unrelated to the article, I know, sorry… :)
August 20th, 2008 at 13:25
I perceive the word “nostalgia” to be feminine. The word is about the same in all languages I know, and although I am sure between all it’d be masculine and feminine, feminine sticks for me in this case.
Cleaning out old stuff often results in the formation of a new “treasure box”. I know mine is overflowing, and I need a new one. And then I can’t help wonder who’s treasure box I am in - here thinking of Rebecca whom pulled out a bunch of things from her’s, things I had given her years ago and since forgotten. Funny how something simple as a sticker can have so much more value to me in her hands than it would still belonging to me.