The author, presumably a heavy Reddit, TikTok and Facebook user, seemed to
have never heard about existence of computers before internet, nor about
On Thu, 24 Oct 2024, Joseph S. Barrera III wrote:
Y'all are ignoring CompuServe and that is hurting my feelings :-)
dialog (1966), Compuserve (1069), The Source (1979, so a tie), and
Community Memory (1973, but not dialup), and probably a few lesser ones preceded CBBS.
BUT, CBBS did have a few things to distinguish it.
no SUBSCRIPTION charges
a peer culture, without major corporate management and control
Of interest only here: run on a Z80 (8080?) miscrocomputer
encouraged others to do the same (absolutely not the case with the commercial
ones)
For those unable or unwilling to pay for a subscription, and for those who
just wanted to casually try it withno committment, CBBS made it possible.
THAT got quite a few people started.
So, CBBS was extremely important, but not "THE FIRST" bulletin board system.
(and, of course, XMODEM was not "THE FIRST" file transfer protocol)
(thank you, to our newspaper people, for clarifying why XMODEM was barely
mentioned)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred [email protected]
