The Major BBS Forums

"LIVE! From Coarsegold, CA! You have 7200 credits!"

That was what used to greet you when you logged into the Sierra Online Support BBS, setup to provide information on their software titles, but quickly it became popular as a multiuser chat system when people wandered into their Teleconference. After all it was the first option on the main menu. I was hooked. I was a kid... maybe 12 or 13 max. It was my first Major BBS that I dialed into. I think it was running version 4.x. No games or anything, it didn't matter. I had to find more running this system! Ashton-Tate had a support BBS, but there was never anyone on it. It had an empty feel compared to the energy of the Sierra system. Then there was Medcom, in Placentia CA. WOW. HUGE HUGE number of lines, every game that was available in the v5.0 era (so many they had an Annex that you "dialed out" from the main BBS to). That... was incredible. Cemented my interest in Major BBS and led to me cajoling my family to buy me a starter license and dev kit and I learned C trying to write my own games and utilities.

Finding Galacticomm's demo system one weekday after school I wandered into THEIR tele only to find a user "Stryker". Didn't realize he was the computer science genius who invented this. He talked to me - despite knowing I was a teenager - like a regular person.

Finally, I started my own board. Really only one line, but hey. I ended up the first system in New Jersey, and this led to me being brought on to SysOp and modify/maintain a new system that had changed over from DLX -- The Forest (tm) Information Systems in Caldwell, NJ.

But it never stopped being a thrill seeing that LIVE! message when you first got online (especially if it took forever to get on!) ... v6.x and later didn't really use credits and didn't include that line, sadly, but by then I was hooked.

I don't know if I can fully describe it... but there was this feeling of... i dunno.. freedom, in having a credit count on the BBS that I frequented as a teen. As a kid who'd never really had any money of my own it was like... i dunno, its hard to describe. I'll just say, I understand what you're saying. Thanks for sharing!

I wonder if my kids feel the same when I buy them Robux.

Gangrif wrote:
> I don't know if I can fully describe it... but there was this feeling of...
> i dunno.. freedom, in having a credit count on the BBS that I frequented as
> a teen. As a kid who'd never really had any money of my own it was like...
> i dunno, its hard to describe. I'll just say, I understand what you're
> saying. Thanks for sharing!
>
> I wonder if my kids feel the same when I buy them Robux.

bro thats because at least the systems i was on charged you 3600 credits per hour.
i was 19 i had an 8 user system at the time and i had 4 telephone lines and 4 "telnet"
lines and allowed people to telnet out and play Mutants on the developers bbs and
it was like printing money.

Yup. Credits were internally referred to as "ticks" in the old code. Why? Because they were literally seconds! Each credit was a second. But that's why casino, lotto, and other games were so much fun because people won additional online time, and as Dan points out back then that was gold! With an 8 or 16 line system that was popular, you wanted to be online more and it was hard to get on.

Questman wrote:
> "LIVE! From Coarsegold, CA! You have 7200 credits!"
>
> That was what used to greet you when you logged into the Sierra Online
> Support BBS, setup to provide information on their software titles, but
> quickly it became popular as a multiuser chat system when people wandered
> into their Teleconference. After all it was the first option on the main
> menu. I was hooked. I was a kid... maybe 12 or 13 max. It was my first
> Major BBS that I dialed into. I think it was running version 4.x. No games
> or anything, it didn't matter. I had to find more running this system!
> Ashton-Tate had a support BBS, but there was never anyone on it. It had an
> empty feel compared to the energy of the Sierra system. Then there was
> Medcom, in Placentia CA. WOW. HUGE HUGE number of lines, every game that
> was available in the v5.0 era (so many they had an Annex that you
> "dialed out" from the main BBS to). That... was incredible.
> Cemented my interest in Major BBS and led to me cajoling my family to buy
> me a starter license and dev kit and I learned C trying to write my own
> games and utilities.
>
> Finding Galacticomm's demo system one weekday after school I wandered into
> THEIR tele only to find a user "Stryker". Didn't realize he was
> the computer science genius who invented this. He talked to me - despite
> knowing I was a teenager - like a regular person.
>
> Finally, I started my own board. Really only one line, but hey. I ended
> up the first system in New Jersey, and this led to me being brought on to
> SysOp and modify/maintain a new system that had changed over from DLX --
> The Forest (tm) Information Systems in Caldwell, NJ.
>
> But it never stopped being a thrill seeing that LIVE! message when you
> first got online (especially if it took forever to get on!) ... v6.x and
> later didn't really use credits and didn't include that line, sadly, but by
> then I was hooked.



Nice story! Someone with clear credentials like Stryker humble enough to take his time and talk to a teenager. Quite open-minded, I think.

Not trying to be too philosophical and make links, but Ghandi himself would advocate to listen to children, talk with them,
as you can learn back what you've let slip through and forgot through those years of adult responsibilities and so-called productivity.
Young ones are simple by nature and know the true point of playing. You can learn from old and young. Just need to filter properly!

PS: I guess this is well known, but just in case, Stryker experimented with multi-user computing way back in the 70's:
https://archive.org/details/byte-magazi ... 5/mode/2up

YES! Flash Attack - which was the inspiration for the Flash protocol and the Galacticomm Flash Attack game. He also did Fazuul before Galacticomm, too.

A genius, really.

Questman wrote:
> YES! Flash Attack - which was the inspiration for the Flash protocol and
> the Galacticomm Flash Attack game. He also did Fazuul before Galacticomm,
> too.
>
> A genius, really.

YES, facts. i played Faz back in a time where text games ruled. not real-time interactive games like tele-arena and majormud but games where you had to look and examine everything in a room. i remember a text game called Museum, god if i could find that today. text games rued the day.

daniel_spain wrote:
> Questman wrote:
> > YES! Flash Attack - which was the inspiration for the Flash protocol and
> > the Galacticomm Flash Attack game. He also did Fazuul before Galacticomm,
> > too.
> >
> > A genius, really.
>
> YES, facts. i played Faz back in a time where text games ruled. not real-time
> interactive games like tele-arena and majormud but games where you had to look and
> examine everything in a room. i remember a text game called Museum, god if i could
> find that today. text games rued the day.

Yes Fazuul does not have rpg elements (gold, levels, hps, etc.), so more on the side of interactive fiction but a MUD as it relies on several
players/terminals collaborating to solve the puzzles.
ie: To escape the planet, you had to needed 3 players running at same time dong some actions

For Museum, maybe it's here?
https://ifdb.tads.org/search?searchfor= ... arch+Games