Pioneers of the First Computerized Social Media ( BBS ) Bulletin board system - I was a Owner/Operator

• Before the Internet, Computers communicated on BBS- Bulletin board systems, I owned and operated 1 ( Divers World ).
  If you used these: You are a Internet pioneer-->
  

• I had a good friend that paid $2500.00 for a Radio shack ( Tandy ) computer XT model with 20 Megabyte hard drive.( top of the line )at the time.
  20 megabytes was a lot of memory back then. But this was a year or two later and close to redundant, But It was Christmas and he ( supporting a big Family ) was short on funds so I paid way too much just to help him out ( my Christmas gift to him ) I now had a BBS capable computer ! Lets do it :-)

• We communicated on Modems plugged into telephone jacks. Just geting these modems to talk ( handshake ) was a specialty field in itself. and the first one's where Slow 1200 & 2400 baud (bits per second ),
  But so were the computers that ran on the DOS operating System ( original computer launguage )
  PC World - slide show history of modems
  you could actually see the commands on screen executing ! and depending on the quality of ( say a picture ) would take over a hour to transmit it !

• So we dealt with many busy signals, as most only had 1 phone line, Some of the pay sites had Multiple lines and charged for the Login rights to pay for it.

• My trick to get through on Popular sites was to try when Star Trek was on ( geeks are all treky's ). Because the owner would use the line when he was at computer ( beep beep beep ) when calling.
  I eventually got a second dedicated line ( just for callers ) and used my main line to call out ( or actually use the phone to talk on ).

• I was a member of SuperNet ( a protocol program ) that was world wide. I lived on Vancouver Island and at 2:00 am in the morning, my computer would call the Vancouver hub ( automatically ) if busy keep trying till connected. pick up my mail ( and my clients ) and send our mail there. Vancouver at there set time sent all mail to Florida ( world hub ). And all regional ( around the world ) BBS hubs used them as gateway. The first E-mail system ! And if all timing hit just right... Maybe get a reply the next day ! probably more like 2-3 days.

• I eventually upgraded to 14,000 baud modem ( the fast available ) and a 1.2 Gig hard drive ! It was the talk of the town ( hard drive envy was rampant ), as they where $5,000.00 at the time, But I got a good deal, and in store credit ( to pay it off in time ).

• I hope you had a enjoyable read, learning or reminiscing about these very cool days gone by.
  I had fun writing it. And would love some feedback. maybe you ran a BBS yourself ?

• Right now I have 7 new puppies starting to cause trouble, and I'm a few hours away from finishing their dog run, Plus lots of history on these topics is already written, this was just my take on things :-)

Hope to hear from you soon, read your blog etc..

Thanks for your time :-)