Stories from Computing History Ch. 4

Chapter 4: Modems and Bulletin Boards

Before about 1994, the general public didn’t know anything about “The Internet” or “World Wide Web”. The most techno-savvy among us had a 28.8k modem and made physical phone calls to computer systems known as Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes for short). These were isolated computers in homes and businesses around the world that were made available for the purpose of conversing, sharing files, and playing turn-based games. These systems were not graphic-based. You navigated via a command line interface, browsed directories, and downloaded files to your computer. Any graphics you saw were generated with primitive ANSI code.

When modems first came around in the early 80s they consisted of two little rubber cuffs that you slipped your phone’s handset onto. Your phone sent and received organized noise (modulated/demodulated = modem) to communicate.

I had a 300 baud modem on my Commodore 64. It was so slow that you had to wait for text to appear on the screen. From there, the modem speeds increased as technology improved like this: 1200, 2400, 9600, 14.4k, 28k, 56k. The signal limitations of POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines prohibited advancements further than this for standard modem communication.

You could buy magazines (basically BBS yellow pages) that were full of different BBSes you could call. Most numbers didn’t work, and when you did get a bite you could look forward to waiting 10 minutes to download a low resolution graphic of the USS Enterprise to show off to all your friends.

BBSes were virtually unmonitored and operated outside the law, unlike the Internet. For example, I knew of one BBS in Florida that would allow you to download freshly pirated games for a month in exchange for a $20 bill mailed inside a blank greeting card. Not that I ever did such a thing…

The first massively multiplayer online RPG I ever played was not Ultima Online or Everquest. It was called “Club Caribe”: A LucasArts game for the Commodore 64. Built on a modified “Maniac Mansion” engine, you walked around this virtual world and interacted with other players. It was extremely expensive to play in a small town like Ada, Oklahoma, since you had to dial a long distance phone number in addition to paying the game’s monthly fee. My friend James had it, but we didn’t get to play it much. The concept, however, really blew me away. This wasn’t a leveling treadmill or an endless dungeon crawl. You talked to people and maybe played an occasional game of checkers. The simple novelty of interaction via computer was enough to keep people fixated.

Comments

[mwest]

I remember playing Legend of the Red Dragon and Risk that way... Everyone try to login at 11:45 pm and then again at 12:01 am in order to get two turns with no opposition.

[Wayne]

Heh heh, yeah, If you remember, I actually ran a BBS there in Ada for awhile. Great fun.

I remember Club Caribe very vividly as well David. I was just talking about this to a friend here in Guam. Funny the timeing on that.

[Patrick]

I miss Wayne's World.

[SuperPope]

We all miss Wayne's World. I knew Michael would mention Red Dragon and Global War. Fun times, fun times.