Old school BBS

MBSE BBS

Those of a certain age will remember a time before the Internet, before this blanket of pervasive data we all now live under. In the decade prior to the world wide web, if you wanted your computer to communicate with other computers, you did it on a 1:1 basis across a telephone line. You dialed a number and another computer answered before proceeding to negotiate a stream of ASCII going back and forth down the line. There were many popular "online" services that you could pay to access, but perhaps the best use of this technology was the humble bulletin board system (BBS). These were portals for files, messages, and games that were usually run from a home computer with nothing more than one or two phone lines that became available in the middle of the night.

The Internet killed the BBS scene, but it's now having a slight renaissance, partly for nostalgia, but also because the web has become hugely distracting. These new BBSs, and even the old ones restored from backups, are accessible over a simple Telnet connection (and sometimes SSH), and you can even become the sysop of your domain. MBSE BBS is a modern BBS you can install that's still being updated, although it takes some setting up. There's a 192-page user guide, and you need to build the packages and navigate a /opt-based installation that needs a demanding set of privileges, but it's perfect running on an isolated computer such as a Raspberry Pi. Your users will then be able to create accounts and log in, leave messages, download and upload curated files, and chat with each other. You can even allow as many concurrent users as you need. All of this accessed via a simple terminal and text.

Project Website

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mbsebbs/

Fulfill your teenage dreams by becoming the sysop of your own bulletin board system.

Accelerated terminal