thank you @acn128 for setting up the world's first globaltalk FirstClass BBS! it is amazingly functional, and even has a Usenet feed via eternal-september

(apologies for the terrible photo - my phone grabbed the aperture grille by accident)

for those unfamiliar with FirstClass, it was one of the *very* few fully graphical BBSes of the 1990s, with a point and click graphical client. it predated larger systems like Lotus Notes by a decade

back in the early and mid-90s, getting on the net meant you were a university student, or had corporate access through a big company. getting online wasn't easy.

worse, even if you had a dialup number and login, there was no such thing as a tcp/ip stack built-in to Windows 3.1.

even if you *did* have a winsock stack, you'd still need a file downloading protocol, gopher client, world wide web client, ftp client, email client. just getting your machine off the ground was nearly impossible unless you could grab these from a local BBS

to make things simpler, universities began offering dial-up internet software packages to their students and staff.

in 1994, my mom was an undergrad student at the University of Alberta. our family had just bought an IBM PS/1 with a 2400 baud modem, and i was abusing the hell out of our single phone line at night visiting local BBSes.

she somehow found out that the university was selling internet dial-up software for $10 to students, and brought home the diskette pack with her. along with a USR Sportster 14.4k modem, she gave me the install diskettes as a valentine's day gift.

it had a slick setup program that enabled SLIP using Trumpet Winsock, and provided a local (free!) dial-up number for access.

after 25 years, i finally tracked down a few versions of those diskettes. i've imaged them and uploaded them all to IA.

the first version of the dial-up package in 1994 was called WinSLIP. it had no PPP support yet, but contained some really cool shareware internet utilities like HGopher and NCSA Mosaic. this would have been the earliest programs offered for Windows 3.1

WinSLIP/MSKermit 1994/95:
https://archive.org/details/ua_winslip

The second version of the software was renamed to NetSurf. It stripped out most of the obscure shareware sadly, and replaced them with Netscape 2 and Eudora Light. The new version of Trumpet Winsock offered PPP which was a huge improvement:

NetSurf 1996/97:
https://archive.org/details/ua_netsurf_96

Now well into the Windows 95 era, the 1997/98 software was shipped on a CD with a hilarious "multimedia" installer/help program designed in Macromedia Director:

NetSurf 1997/98:
https://archive.org/details/netsurf-97-starter-kit

I hope this brings back some memories for fellow U of A alumni :)

just found a treasure trove of extremely obscure BBS history stashed away on IA

thank you hard-working book scanners for preserving this rarity.

if you're familiar with BBSing in the 90s, you'll remember just how fast the vast majority of boards disappeared in 1995. it went from multinode 24/7 bbses to disconnected phone numbers in just a few months

this book accounts for the very small number of BBSes that made the transition from telco-only to "telBBS" or telnettable/web-accessible boards

3/4 of the book is a carefully curated list of 500 boards with screenshots of their homepages and bbs login/title screens. most importantly, the URLs of these boards is preserved so we have a chance to look them up on WBM some day.

https://archive.org/details/internetbbss00rich

M-NET the oldest running Public Access UNIX has arrived! The original Altos ACS68000 will be on display next weekend at the Interim Computer Festival. M-NET is now under SDF.org Vintage Systems care. Thanks jfk, cross and tod! #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #community #bbs

ABC shut down FiveThirtyEight, once an amazing site for data-driven journalism and sports analysis.

I loved incorporating 538's data into old-school #retrocomputing and BBS projects, like my ANSI "Elex Forecast" BBS door. It used data from their 2016 and 2020 Election Forecast visualizations.

https://breakintochat.com/blog/2016/10/04/who-needs-svg-when-youve-got-ansi/

https://github.com/Kirkman/elexforecast

Refreshing my #introduction for new folks!

I run #Chinwag and provide free and open communication tools for everyone.

I have #ADHD and a bunch of issues around #anxiety and a dash of #PTSD just for fun!

On the less serious side, I have been know to perform stand-up #comedy and do a fun quiz show with @ThePingMachine and my kid.

I'm an older guy and was a #BBS sysop back in the 90s. I was once described by a millennial as "like, 40 but not creepy at all."

If you want more, see my profile!

Hi, I'm Jordan, and this is my #introduction. I'm a #xennial #nonbinary #Chicago area dad who does #Linux stuff for a living and for a hobby. I've worked lots of places, but the one you've probably heard of is #GitHub. I don't work there anymore. At one point in the past I wrote some articles for #LWN and I still write an occasional tech blog post or two.

Previous iterations of me have been a "gifted child," an #arcade rat, a #BBS kid, a fry cook, a #furry, a library assistant, a #comics nerd, a #goth, an art student, a delivery driver, and a PhD program dropout. Sadly, I am now too old and saddled with responsibility / glorious purpose to be cool with any regularity.

Politically, I would say that I lean pretty far to the left, but mostly I am too tired from parenting and living through a slow-motion apocalypse to think political thoughts much deeper than "please stop killing people and the planet."

I mostly read #scifi and a bit of #fantasy. Recent favorites include the #LockedTomb series by Tamsyn Muir, the #Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, the #Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, the #ImperialRadch series by Ann Leckie, and the #MachineriesOfEmpire by Yoon Ha Lee. I am a big #Dune nerd and have been known to make a lot of stupid Dune memes. My favorite band of all time is #GWAR and the band I saw most recently was #100gecs.