Don't mind me blowing my own horn a bit.. This old stuff is still way cool.

BBS callers today.

My first bbs was ran on an old IBM 286/12 Clone. It's MFM hard-drive was as heavy as a brick. Since day one Wildcat bbs software was its platform 2.55 in the beginning 4.X was the last DOS version. Used to multitask 4 dos nodes under Desqview and QEMM.

In 1997 Wildcat came out with version 5 a true 32bit client server package that ran under Windows 95. It ran but crashed regularly. A friend gave a Win NT4 server cd and it ran several days before dying with the famous NT blue-screen of death. Windows 2K pro was stable and the bbs ran for months without crashing. It's running now on Windows 7 pro 64 bit. Same bbs software since 1997.

In 1998 i ditched the dial up lines and went total internet. To get the callers i spammed every Fidonet conference (over 500 at the time) with a single Internet bbs ad. That went over like a fart in church. Fidonet conferences had an owner / moderator. And they were screaming bloody murder as the ad was off-topic for the conference. I also wrote to the Fidonews editor who published this article. More info is in this blog post.

It's been a fun ride but it's not over yet. Even with it's text only interface bbs calls are up since Facebook and privacy started making the rounds. Now is the opportune time for forums to make a comeback. Especially Simple:Press that's light-years ahead in security and privacy.

It's my belief Facebook is deeply integrated with the USA Federal government (CIA NSA) who uses Facebook to funnel our everyday activities to them. Google also plays a big part in this. It may come out eventually though i doubt will officially. People who do not want to be tracked will flock to forums!