The old days, modem trading with dial ups and BBS

TrolleyDave

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How many people here were involved in the old days of modem trading using dial up modems (HST/V32 anyone?) and BBS systems?
 

cory1492

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Apple IIe FTW...
laugh.gif


Never got into trading per se, but I definitely remember how "forums"/usenet were pre-internet (edit: and how IRC meant you only chatted with as many people as the board had lines), not to mention the blazing fast 9600pbs speeds of the ultimate new modems at the time, and certainly can't forget the busy signals and auto-redialers of the times too
ohmy.gif
 

Rayder

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Commodore 64 and a 2400 baud modem. Those were the days. My friend had some kind of back door into some phone company and we downloaded loads of games and apps from Germany everyday. 5 1/4 floppies FTW. LOL.

I was known as X-Ray back then. We had so much stuff, it wasn't even funny. With all the stuff we had for C64, it would all fit on one DVD now. Ain't that crazy?

We had the various fast loader carts to snap shot games, special hardware in the 1541 disk drives to copy the V-Max protected games. We had it going on.

Of course now, much of the stuff is available on many sites and emulated on everything from the PC to the DS.
rofl2.gif


Ahh, memories.....
wub.gif
 

TrolleyDave

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Apple IIe FTW...Â
laugh.gif


Never got into trading per se, but I definitely remember how "forums"/usenet were pre-internet (edit: and how IRC meant you only chatted with as many people as the board had lines), not to mention the blazing fast 9600pbs speeds of the ultimate new modems at the time, and certainly can't forget the busy signals and auto-redialers of the times tooÂ
ohmy.gif



Awesome! I never had an Apple myself but a mate of mine did (back when I was a kid living in good old Burlington, On). The best versions of Choplifter and Lode Runner ever!

Commodore 64 and a 2400 baud modem. Those were the days. My friend had some kind of back door into some phone company and we downloaded loads of games and apps from Germany everyday. 5 1/4 floppies FTW. LOL.

I was known as X-Ray back then. We had so much stuff, it wasn't even funny. With all the stuff we had for C64, it would all fit on one DVD now. Ain't that crazy?

We had the various fast loader carts to snap shot games, special hardware in the 1541 disk drives to copy the V-Max protected games. We had it going on.

Of course now, much of the stuff is available on many sites and emulated on everything from the PC to the DS.Â
rofl2.gif


Ahh, memories.....
wub.gif

Damn, another 64 trader! I used to love my C64 and did alot disk trading back in the day. I've still got a bunch of carts and disks upstairs! Most of them are the double sided using the old "home-made notch" trick!

Used to use similar blue-boxing back door tricks when I was an amiga trader. Didn't have a handle during the C64 days (well apart from in school where I was "the kid with all the C64 games" but that didn't translate to a good handle! lol) but during the Amiga days I was now as SuicidalTendences or just Suicidal.

Not normally the nostalgiac type but was talking to some of my old trader friends earlier and realized I actually do kinda miss the old days!
 

larvi

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Was going through my box of old PC cards the other day looking for something for a computer I was building and found this badboy Courier

Dscn6948e.jpg


I don't even want to remember how much it cost me at the time.

I've also got a C64 and a Franklin (Apple IIe compatible) laying around the house but haven't booted either of them up in a while.
 

TrolleyDave

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Nice! I've still got an external Courier 9600HST upstairs. I'll have to dig it out and take a snapshot. I can't remember if it's a US Robotics or the UK rebadged Miracom version.

Had the Amiga at the time so couldn't use the card versions, which was a damn shame cos it would've saved me a third of the cost!
 

larvi

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Nice, at the time I wanted the external version too but as you mentioned the cost was much steeper plus my computer at the time didn't have the 16550 uarts to be able to keep up with it. My current modem however is an External Courier v.everything. Not that I use it much any more, only when my DSL is down and I need a backup to get into work.
 

dg10050

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rofl2.gif

I think I've spotted 5 or 6 hardware terms that I have never heard before in my life. Although, apparently my life has been much shorter than some of yours.
tongue.gif
 

Devante

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In Dallas, TX, I had a BBS called Maximum Meltdown.

I spent all my time tweaking that BBS.

It started at 2400bps, and it was actually pretty popular. In fact, someone actually donated a 28.8 modem because they were tired of it being 2400bps well past 14.4.

I think I even still have it on my old 486sx/33mhz.
 

TrolleyDave

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Nice, at the time I wanted the external version too but as you mentioned the cost was much steeper plus my computer at the time didn't have the 16550 uarts to be able to keep up with it.  My current modem however is an External Courier v.everything. Not that I use it much any more, only when my DSL is down and I need a backup to get into work.

Yeah I know what you mean, my old man had a Goldstar 286 (wow, now that is ooold!) and couldn't overclock the serial port so my Amiga writing to floppies actually had a higher download speed then his PC writing to the HDD! I used to make fun of him because I used to get those extra few bytes a second! Don't sound like much now though but at the time it was like Wow! Look at the speed of that!
wink.gif


Haven't used any dial-ups now in around a year thankfully! DSL finally hit the barren hills of the Welsh countryside around then!
 

TrolleyDave

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In Dallas, TX, I had a BBS called Maximum Meltdown.

I spent all my time tweaking that BBS.

It started at 2400bps, and it was actually pretty popular. In fact, someone actually donated a 28.8 modem because they were tired of it being 2400bps well past 14.4.

I think I even still have it on my old 486sx/33mhz.

Nice! I never ran a board myself, phone lines in the UK were waaaaay too expensive at the time and running a part-time scene board just never would've work. That was the thing in the old days with the BBS community as well, alot of the users didn't mind donating hardware and stuff to help improve it. It's that really that I miss from the old days. Although when it start getting filled with the "I aM An eLeET tRaDEr, I hERe fOR mUcH WaREz" kiddies it was time to jump ship! lol

Were you affiliated with a group? I was never really associated with a group although I knew lots of the guys in Anthrox and THG, even went to a few THG UK parties.
 

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How many people here were involved in the old days of modem trading using dial up modems (HST/V32 anyone?) and BBS systems?
I remember BBS on my C64, didn't understand it though I was only about 5 I think.

Dial up was an total arse, and I had it until 2002. Waiting ages just to download a small GBA game that turned out to be awful. We are spoilt now, now we can grab 360 titles within a couple of hours on our torrent programs, sometimes less depending on game size.
 

flashermac

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I wasn't involved myself, but a lot of my friends had Amiga/Atari ST's, andused to trade games on disks.

The intro's, chiptunes etc were fantastic, wish there was more of that in the DS scene. Anyone remember the Pompey Pirates?

|fmc|
 

Hadrian

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The only trading I did was just borrowing disks from mates and using Xcopy to copy them. Tapes were the best, just using a double deck to copy them and then photocopying the password protection book at the same time.
 

TrolleyDave

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I wasn't involved myself, but a lot of my friends had Amiga/Atari ST's, andused to trade games on disks.

The intro's, chiptunes etc were fantastic, wish there was more of that in the DS scene. Anyone remember the Pompey Pirates?

|fmc|

The Pompey Pirates were great, the fierce competition between them and LSD/Was (Not Was) was worse then anything I ever remember seeing on the Amiga/PC. A mate of mine actually new Was, the guy was a certified computer genius (the real Neo?!?) who worked at the Greater Manchester Post Sorting Office! He actually saw the guy code an intro using proper machine code, like non-assembler, an actual hand coded 0E 1A FF etc. file! Amazing!
 

Blebleman

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God, I remember those days, dialing a BBS with my 14.4, playing LORD and uploading whatever I could to get enough credits to leech those awesome NES roms...

Hahaha, we would upload fake files that were 200MBs but actually were extremely small....ahh....the fun.

I miss LORD and LORD2.
 

TrolleyDave

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How many people here were involved in the old days of modem trading using dial up modems (HST/V32 anyone?) and BBS systems?


+1
I used to sell copies of tetris and doom on floppies to ppl at school

tetris on 5 1/4 floppy for 3 bucks FTW!

lol I gotta admit I used to do the same thing when I was growing up in Canada. At Lord Elgin High I used to make around 100 bucks a week selling C64 disks. It was awesome. Go in in the morning get a bunch of orders, pop to Zellers on the way home and buy the blanks for a buck fifty a pop (damn those old 5 1/4" were expensive!) and sell them off at five bucks a pop. Although I was generous and if a game was on 2 disks I used the old double notch trick so you did get both disks for the price of one!

Wouldn't do it now but when you're young and poor and it's easy money you can't resist!
 

Strag0

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I loved BBSs I would spend my days on them playing Door games and downloading random crap.

I do however, remember a story when my friend's father got a super fast mega expensive modem. When I first got to use it I was amazed! We downloaded a trainer for Ultima 7 in under 3 minutes! However, now the modem isn't that much money nor is it fast enough to keep up with half of the things done on the interent. Farewell $400 28.8 modems... I sure do miss you and your 2.5 minute downloads of a 738kb program.
 

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