I don't think any 1980s DOS computing experience is complete without thinking about Bulletin Board Services and the "big" online services.
If this was 1988, we'd be talking on a FIDOnet echo, or there would be a "FreeDOS BBS" whose number we'd get from a text file list of BBSes we'd download over XMODEM. Speaking of XMODEM, I remember well when I decided to "take the plunge" and download ZMODEM...it was a long download at 2400, but made things after that so much faster. That tells you something about bandwidth in those days: did I want to tie up the phone line for a few hours to make the "time investment" in ZMODEM. I ran a Telegard board for a little while. I dearly miss the BBS culture, because it was fun to login to new and interesting communities, see all the custom extensions/doors/etc. people had programmed, discover new downloads, swap messages, etc. Social media of 2023 is just not the same, and even traditional internet forums don't have the same charm. There were also online services. I never played much with CompuSERVE but was a longtime GEnie user. GEnie's TUI interface was Aladdin. What these services did better than BBSes was the huge chat (or "CB") rooms, where you'd be on talking with dozens/hundreds of people around the world. That was amazing in the early/mid 80s. GEnie would have thousands of concurrent users in the late 80s. On a different note, Sidekick and its TSR ilk are also an important part of DOS lore. -- andrew fabbro and...@fabbro.org
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