Skip to main content


I found this backup tape while sorting through boxes — the final resting place of Sound Bytes BBS.

Turns out I can still fire it up in DOSBox and browse through everything as a time capsule.

Though the farewell message suggests the BBS would return in summer of 1996, the world moved on quickly, and the BBS scene — as it was — disappeared just like *that*.

By the time 1996 did roll around, we were busy building our area's first dial-up ISP, and there was no turning back.

#bbs #retrocomputing
DC2120 computer backup tape with sticky note label: Sound Bytes BBS 8/19/95 offline ANSI graphics screen with a message announcing August 18, 1995 as the end date of Sound Bytes BBS.
Screenshot of the T.A.G. BBS software's waiting-for-caller screen for Sound Bytes BBS, captured here running in DosBox from a very old backup.

reshared this

BBSing got better and better with each year until suddenly it wasn’t there anymore. And then the Internet got commercialized, and somehow wasn’t there anymore either. Only just recently is there starting to be hints of local community outside commercial spaces on the Internet, where I live.
@nobletrout @thegibson
I've been very tempted... but I'm not sure if a BBS would actually work in todays age.
@binder @nobletrout @thegibson Maybe not, but I bet some of the ideas would translate well to something new. And already have, to some degree, with the community we're building here on our local instances.
I ran a BBS people would "dial in" to via SSH and used it to do comma for a Shadowrun game

Worked fine
@nobletrout @silverwizard @binder @thegibson Open this in a new tab for an appropriate soundtrack. :)

https://youtu.be/xalTFH5ht-k
I did have an idea for storing an SSH key on a record that you played into a microphone to convert it to data

Could enforce this
@nobletrout @silverwizard @thegibson
"MOM! I'm on the computer...hang up the phone!"
@nobletrout @silverwizard @binder @thegibson I mean, you could totally set up a relatively modern SynchroNet BBS with a web telnet client and stick a wav file on the page that modem-screams on connect
@nobletrout @silverwizard @binder @thegibson oh my god, that video has subtitles. That has absolutely made my day!
wow, this is incredible! You should put this on archive.org, there isn't much of this about. Seems like it'd be right up @textfiles's alley.