This month marks the 25th birthday of the bulletin board system, the old-school online network invented by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess.

As someone who began using a BBS in 1981 and claims to have invented the BBS door game, I could inflict all kinds of punishing remembrances.

You kids today got it good. Back then we transmitted our data over acoustic modems at 300 bits per second. And we were grateful!

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The memories ... I am in the BBS game since 85, although I had no modem at that time and had to visit the mailbox with an empty disc to exchange mails :-)

The weird thing: I still run a BBS. Old fashioned, connected with a Mode and ISDN. It's now about 10 years old, but still hopping along merrily. Although I only run it because it would be more work to pull it down than to let it run unattended. :-)

I started my BBS on Feb 15, 1980 and still run 3 of them today. One is still Dial up and it still gets calls. I recently converted the other 2 to telnet and the GameMaster's Realm hosts over 180 online games and over 135 are registered.

The BBS is not dead as every would like to think, it still offers a more personal community of players and of course some nostalgic games.

Drop in some time:

telnet://gamemastersrealm.com

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