published Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 8:00 AM by
admin
I Was.. 
I was always fascinated with Electronics as a young boy and hung around a local TV shop after school. Back in those days (60′s) we had vacuum tubes and the components were soldered together using terminal strips. Then soon came the Transistor and IC.
Fast forward to the very early 90′s and I acquired an old IBM clone 286/12 PC. (no thanks to AL Jacobs) That thing was as heavy as a cinder block and slower than a snail. It had an internal 2400 Baud Modem installed and a terminal program for dialing up other computers. I soon found a number for a local BBS and dialed it up. It was interesting to see messages others had left, and to download shareware computer programs that would run on the old 286.
One of the files i had downloaded was a test drive of Wildcat Bulletin Board Software V2x. I had another phone line installed to receive calls and Doc’s Place BBS was born in 1991. And that is what this posting is about. Doc’s Place BBS still lives on to this day, though the dial up nodes are long gone.
In 2000 I converted it to run off the Internet dialing up to an early MSN Internet Service. It accepted both Telnet and HTTP connections. It was pretty much dead 1n 1999 when most callers started exploring the Internet. But taking the BBS to the Internet brought another 10 years of life to a dying hobby. Word soon spread that Fidonet was still available on the Internet and the old time users flocked to it from all over the world. However I’m sad to say that it is dying again.
Calls are way down and i see vultures flying overhead. I guess the old days of text based and ansi are finally becoming extinct. But here is a video archive of the BBS days and how they became. If your an old timer like me, Reminisce back in time to these early personal PC days. And if the BBS was before your time, have a look and see how we did it 20+ years ago.
This set of videos are for sale at www.bbsdocumentary.com If you appreciate the work involved to document this place in our Computer History please purchase your set.
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