BBS: The Documentary

BBS: The Documentary

Long before the Internet escaped from the lab, connected the planet and redefined what it meant to use a computer...
....there was a brave and pioneering band of computer users who spent their time, money and sanity setting up their home computers and phone lines to welcome anyone who called. By using a modem, anyone else who knew the phone number of these computers could connect to them, leave messages, send and recieve files.... and millions did.
They called these places "Bulletin Board Systems", or BBSes. And their collections of messages, rants, thoughts and dreams became the way that an entire generation learned about being online.
When the Internet grew in popularity in the early 1990s, the world of the BBS faded, changed, and became a part of the present networked world.. but it wasn't the same.

Wow. This page took me waaay back. I don't know that I would buy the documentary, but it has some really great links. Check out the BBS Timeline and the BBS software list. He also runs a site called textfiles.com that has ALL of the old text files that made were in circulation during the BBS boom.