On 8/24/20 1:52 PM, Matt Reynolds via vcf-midatlantic wrote:

I didn't grow up with them, but playing with BBSes on old schtuff for fun has been very interesting, and I can see how you could make friends with people on them. Way more personal feeling than today.

As someone who did grow up with them, I can tell you that this is absolutely the case. The Internet is presented to people as a "you can GET this, you can GET that!" "Get get get!" ...not "participate", not "communicate", but "get". In the BBS era, there was no small amount of file sharing, sure, so there was "getting", but it was more about camaraderie and community than "get get get". It's really more about the medium and how people are introduced to it, and also, in no small part, the KIND of people. Nowadays, the Internet is flooded with nontechnical people, which really wasn't so in the BBS era. That one major unifying factor is gone. When I was heavily into BBSes in NJ in the mid-1980s, there was a greater than 50% chance that anyone I would meet there knew how to solder. On the Internet in general, and Facebook in particular, it seems there's a greater than 50% chance that anyone I'd meet there is functionally illiterate. The great "filter" of "you need technical know-how in order to even approach this" is gone. Some people say that's a good thing, but I see evidence to the contrary every single day.

One of my laments of "today" is the dying of forums. FB Groups and things like that are really making it so easy to use that nobody wants to set up a forum, and membership drops off of existing ones.

They don't compare in my opinion, but for many there is enough of an overlap that the cons (trying to easily find past posts and content) are outweighed by the good (don't have to manage your own forum, etc.).

Hopefully it will backswing at some point.

Well, this does have the effect of increasing the signal/noise ratio on the forums and mailing lists. In my experience at least, the people who flock to Facebook, well, sorta belong there! ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

As someone who did grow up with them, I can tell you that this is absolutely the case. The Internet is presented to people as a "you can GET this, you can GET that!" "Get get get!" ...not "participate", not

Oh no way. There were leaches on BBSes too. Heck, they had their own protocol! LeachZModem. It would complete the entire transfer to disk then tell the remote side that the xfer wasn't successful, back up... back up... back up... abort. So user wouldn't get dinged for the download. The internet has a ton of people sharing information. I mean, look at youtube. How to fix cars, HVAC, build things, play musical instruments, etc. It far exceeds the old days millions times over. And only a small portion of the people in say the underground hacking community or BBS communities had specific skills. MANY were just end users. MS-DOS toaster operators.

Well, this does have the effect of increasing the signal/noise ratio on the forums and mailing lists. In my experience at least, the people who flock to Facebook, well, sorta belong there! ;)

A big problem with the stand alone forums is the spam bots and stuff. But many of them are still successful, although traffic is declining. I ain't gonna lie... Facebook marketplace is amazeballs. I've sold a few things on there already, I think it's going to take on eBay and Craigslist. Saw some deals but I missed them. Oberheim DMX for $350.. phew. I only have so much bandwidth though. Overloaded in modern times between IRC, Slack, Discord, E-Mail, Text... forums and the occasional facebook driveby. I think facebook has bad searchability but after the nekochan.org disappeared it showed the risk of ease of loosing long term knowledge pool. - Ethan

On 8/24/20 4:51 PM, Bill Degnan via vcf-midatlantic wrote:

Back then it was not out of the question to get a call from a sysop asking who you were, too. I remember once I signed up for a Star Trek-themed BBS as "Q" and when "Captain Picard" called my apartment phone to see who I was, my girlfriend took the call and called to me in a mocking tone, "um Captain Picard is on the phone looking for Q, nerd".

That sounds like a fantastic girlfriend litmus test to me. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA

On Mon, 24 Aug 2020, Ethan O'Toole via vcf-midatlantic wrote:

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As someone who did grow up with them, I can tell you that this is absolutely the case. The Internet is presented to people as a "you can GET this, you can GET that!" "Get get get!" ...not "participate", not

Oh no way. There were leaches on BBSes too. Heck, they had their own protocol! LeachZModem. It would complete the entire transfer to disk then tell the remote side that the xfer wasn't successful, back up... back up... back up... abort. So user wouldn't get dinged for the download.

I never heard of LeachZModem. On the Unix BBS I ran through the '90s, I enforced a file upload/download ratio. Leeches soon found themselves (automatically) unable to download until they uploaded something relevant. Users with favorable ratios got more daily online minutes.

A big problem with the stand alone forums is the spam bots and stuff. But many of them are still successful, although traffic is declining. I ain't gonna lie...

There are some newer platforms such as Discord, which are promoting real-time conversations. I belong to a TRS-80 Discord which has some of the most technically knowledgeable TRS-80 users around. Some of them even used to work for Tandy. The support and advance of the technology there is incredible. The ClassicCmp Discord is another good one, with many technical users and varied interests. Discord supports image and file uploads, as well. Mike Loewen mloewen@cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/

I follow the Tandy Discord too. bill On Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 8:45 PM Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:

Seconded on the TRS-80 Discord. Very high signal to noise ratio, invite only helps that greatly.

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There are some newer platforms such as Discord, which are promoting real-time conversations. I belong to a TRS-80 Discord which has some of the most technically knowledgeable TRS-80 users around. Some of them even used to work for Tandy. The support and advance of the technology there is incredible.

The ClassicCmp Discord is another good one, with many technical users and varied interests. Discord supports image and file uploads, as well.

The article mentioned TPUG, the Toronto PET Users Group.  These days, they exist in part as a Discord group (however, I'm sure someone like Leif Bloomquist can speak to the nature of their current existence better).  I think that's pretty cool.   The bulk of my interaction these days with vintage computer enthusiasts is done on that platform (though the VCFed Discord is rather... quiet).  The youth of the hobby have found a home there, either on smaller manufacturer-specific servers, or larger generalist servers with plenty of cross-pollination between minis, micros, homebrews, etc. of a variety of makes and models. The SNR varies between servers of course, which can be jarring.  Regardless, you find good people there who have never interacted with the other areas of the hobby, and are mostly unaware of the existence of the established groups such as ours.  They're busy hacking away on fascinating projects and sharing their repair progress.  I agree about the ClassicCMP server being a good place, compared to its mostly desolate IRC counterpart.   In a few years, I'm sure we may migrate to the next big platform, but for now?  Discord.   -Alexander 'Z' Pierson On Monday, August 24, 2020, 9:17:42 PM EDT, RETRO Innovations via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote: On 8/24/2020 7:45 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic wrote:

Seconded on the TRS-80 Discord. Very high signal to noise ratio, invite only helps that greatly.

Third on Discord.  If you liked the message bases in BBS days of old, Discord will feel very familiar.  IRC did as well, but Discord has the advantage of allowing gfx/videos/files to be interspersed with the conversation to add context or support the discussion. There's 3 TRS-80 servers I'm aware of:  CoCo, TRS-80 (all models), and Model II and friends. A sprinkling of CBM ones, Classic COmputing has one, as does the TI, and the Vintage Apple folks are on there. Jim

I never heard of LeachZModem. On the Unix BBS I ran through the '90s, I enforced a file upload/download ratio. Leeches soon found themselves (automatically) unable to download until they uploaded something relevant. Users with favorable ratios got more daily online minutes.

I remember sitting in the room over the garage with some geek friends in the late 90s. My BBS was up and running, and a local user was connected downloading some files. At that time I was probably running the beloved Telegard, which used external software to handle all the transfers. The Zmodem thing that was running would go full screen and had progress bars to show the total que transferred and the current file. We're sitting there talking about something and I notice out of the corner of my eye the transfer screen running. The files progressed to the end, then the bar would turn red. Then it would go to the next file... at the end, it would turn red again saying cancelled and move to the next file. Aghast, I cancelled the transfer, broke into sysop chat and scolded the user then hung up on him. A year later we were friends, at some point he was a roomate for a year or two as well. Still see him on IRC from time to time. I think he might actually own an Atari Falcon 030 and an Amiga 1200 at this point. Too funny. LeachZmodem WAS cool I'm not going to lie. Funny idea.

There are some newer platforms such as Discord, which are promoting real-time conversations. I belong to a TRS-80 Discord which has some of the most technically knowledgeable TRS-80 users around. Some of them even used to work for Tandy. The support and advance of the technology there is incredible. The ClassicCmp Discord is another good one, with many technical users and varied interests. Discord supports image and file uploads, as well.

Yep! The small local community gave way to the small global community. We can all still be friends, even if you use leach Zmodem on my BBS. :-P - Ethan