When I was young, I got an Apple //gs with a BlackCat modem, and that machine basically decided the next decade of my life. First it was calling other people's boards. Eventually that wasn't enough, and I did the thing a certain kind of kid did back then... I ran my own board. I've struggled to find much about the software, but it was based on ACOS, which was a language for the //gs.
Running a board was a weird mix of janitor and mayor. You were the sysop, so every message-based squabble was somehow your problem, and the phone line situation was definitely a single-user experience. I loved every minute of it. Watching that user list grow one handle at a time... nothing since has felt quite like that. Not followers, not subscribers, none of it.
Classic memory: I thought I was the man because I had it show usernames when it checked to see if a new user was available. It was too fast to be readable, but it was a flex. And then I learned firsthand that IBMs didn't carry the same emulation that my //gs did. Fail. Hah.
Anyway, years later I stumbled onto one of the old BBS list archives, and there it was. My board. Listed. I tried to explain to my family why this mattered and got polite nods, heh. Figured this might be the one place on the internet where someone gets it. Any other former sysops in here who've found their board preserved somewhere? submitted by /u/TechHistoryDude [link] [comments]