Were you all node sysops, or did your region just not have that last part — the point?
Zone:Net/Node.Point
But then later I became a Boss and got my own Node address 2:463/1161
An interesting aspect is that it was impossible to obtain an address without providing some service or newsletter on a specific subject to the sysop in return, so it was a privilege to have your own FidoNet address.
Huh? Not when I joined in my region. I didn't have to provide anything.
I was 14, but the BBS owner and mostly old guy heavy metal user base only found out when I later showed up at their annual user group meeting - and we had lots of fun (and drinks) together! They even took me clubbing later with a fake ID, and I woke up heavily wasted in the BBS owner's student apartment and we had microwaved frozen pizza together. Fun times.
I don't think that was just a fluke of random luck. I suspect early 8-bit hobby computing (especially outside universities) was an almost perfect gating filter. Nothing was very easy, little was well documented and frankly, it wasn't yet all that much fun. While there was some fun to be had, there were always bits of barbed wire and broken glass to crawl over first, whether typing in BASIC listings from a poorly printed 'zine (inevitably with a few misprints to debug), or figuring out at which volume level software might load from finicky cassette tapes. And even when you got something to finally work, the fun came in short bursts before the next cryptic barrier would arise.
The experience never quite lived up to what we'd imagined owning a hobby computer would be like while we were saving up our pennies to buy our own. But we persevered, driven forward by the sunk cost, brief interludes of fun and faith that tons of 'awesome' lay just ahead. The lack of relevant information beyond a few monthly magazines forced early hobbyists to find each other in ad hoc user's groups and then via BBSes. When I got my 4K, 800 Khz, 8-bit personal computer in 1981, no other person in my entire extended family's social circles knew anyone else who owned a computer at home. Even the concept sounded as strange as owning a "personal cement truck". The first question was always, "A what...?" followed by "Why?" So, despite being just a teenager, my desperation for information forced me to start a user's group simply for lack of there being any in my area. And it quickly grew to several hundred members despite my ineptitude and lack of experience at... well, anything. It turns out, the hearty souls both enthusiastic and naive enough to buy a computer for a hobby in those days, then persevere through failure and continue to connect with other lost users - ended up filtering for some unique qualities.
While the instant global connection (and gratification) of the web is amazing and immensely powerful, one thing we've perhaps lost along the way is that kind natural filter.
Now you can have crippling health issues and still post on the internet. In fact, you're probably more inclined to spend time online if interacting with the offline world is so tough. This was much harder from '85-05.
İ developed a Netmail server for Hitnet called HitBase in 1995 or so. It allowed people to discover others around their city to meet. Possibly the earliest thing that resembles Facebook. Similarly, it was a privacy nightmare too, luckily short-lived.
HitNet introduced me to great people some of whom I still see today. It was such a tight-knit friendly community.
The advent of Internet killed it but some communities are still active on other platforms.
It was quite popular in Turkey in the 90's.
You can try it out in DOSBox here with some random HitNet packages: https://github.com/ssg/wolverine/releases/tag/2.32
Respect for the file_id.diz (2)! I thought mine was the last one on GitHub.
1. https://github.com/ssg/fatalvision
2. https://github.com/ssg/fatalvision/blob/master/file_id.diz
Later on of course some nodes started distributing over the Internet so setting up a node became much easier (and I think there was a way for the node to allow multiple users read/write without even setting up a node/point at all).
We got fidonet in Zimbabwe in the early 1990s. It was utterly revolutionary for us - more than the internet that came later really. For the first time we could communicate with my two brothers overseas without paying for extremely exorbitant international telephone calls that lasted a couple of minutes at best.
Our modem was 2400bps (8-N-1 IIRC). We used the zmodem protocol. It was after I learned about computers but I learned a HUGE amount from this about protocols etc. Our phone system was terrible so error correction etc were of great importance. Working out how to dial slowly was also important for our terrible phone exchanges.
It let me keep in touch with my pal, K, who emigrated to South Africa and as a result he ended up sending me 21 1.2MB floppy disks with SLS Linux on them and kernel 0.99 (I think). The journey began! :-)
(previously all transfers, Xmodem/Ymodem, were one-way with CRC checks on each block slowing things down)
And yeah, Zmodem was mind-blowing for us.
I used it in like 2021 to transfer some data over serial from some really old laptop (386sx). Was faster than txp/ip over plip/slip
[0] Notes & Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays: https://nostr.com/
Whenever I hear about this new fangled AT protocol all the kids are jazzed about, I get all wistful for the BBS era.
FidoNet & PC-Relay were pretty fanfastic. For the time, obv.
Source: Was sysadmin for a hub.
What I miss most is the local community aspect. In my teens and early 20's I met several friends through BBSes.
[1] https://archive.org/details/20021102-bbs-herring/Mark+Herrin...
No AI slop, luckily. And a lot of fun.
I used to run 2:230/149 on Fidonet. Can't remember my AmiNet address.
A lot of stuff I would typically associate with the internet like pirating, forums, mail, large scale multiplayer games actually predates it
But yes, people did all of that many years before it was done on the World Wide Web.
(There's some complexity as to whether Usenet was an Internet thing early on, as it did the whole dial-up-over-PSTN thing, that Fidonet did, quite a lot before settling on mainly NNTP.)
More so that you think. Piracy was not actually most of it. There was a whole thriving shareware system, which in Fidonet was done via FREQs. Tens of thousands of nodes pushing archived shareware softwares, many long since forgotten, around the globe.
Do you know of any good articles, books or blog post written for outsiders to read?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBS:_The_Documentary has an episode entirely on Fidonet (creative commons, freely available online)
Memories of being amazed to see messages from all around the world arriving to my hometown's local BBS, merely days after they were posted.
I lived near Los Angeles at the time and still remember meeting some guys in New York City entirely via free FidoNet messages. A few months later, for other reasons, I happened to make my first ever trip to New York and actually met up with those Fidonet friends and hung out with them. Good times.
I sometimes think there will be a renaissance for Fidonet-like networks, when our politicians have banned encryption, implemented complete surveillance and generally destroyed the internet.
It would be a great irony, if we then went back to the networks of our childhood in order to be free.
I guess the other option might be i2p or something similar, but that is probably too easily accessible to remain free when the authoritarians in power lock down the internet.
BBSes with fidonet are still available to connect to today (see the Network column in the previously linked list).
youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7nj3G6Jpv2G6Gp6NvN1kUtQuW8QshBWE
Nostalgia may be a form of depression, I've been told, but a little touch of it once in a while is good for the soul.
