In June 1978 BYTE passed on a phone number. Two members of a Chicago computer club, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, had built what they called a Computerized Bulletin Board System “over a weekend”: an 8080 computer with a floppy disk and a modem that answered calls 24 hours a day, “just to see what happens”. A caller with a terminal and a 110 or 300 bits-per-second modem dialled in and then typed a few carriage returns, slowly, so that the system could work out how fast the terminal was. After that, it prompted them through reading and leaving messages. It had been running since early that year, and people were calling “from all over the country”. BYTE warned that readers might get a busy signal “because of all the other people reading this notice who are trying the same operation”. The board had one phone line, so it could take one caller at a time.
Fifteen years later the same board, CBBS, was still answering. Boardwatch Magazine listed some 605 bulletin boards in the Chicago area alone in March 1993, and noted that CBBS’s fifteenth birthday party was booked for a local pizzeria on 16 February, with both founders attending.
Fast facts
- First board: CBBS, Chicago, running from early 1978 (February, according to Boardwatch).
- Equipment: a computer, a modem that answered automatically, and a phone line, usually just one.
- Peak: the early to mid 1990s, when networks such as FidoNet linked tens of thousands of boards.
- Uses: messages, email, file downloads, online games, and on pirate boards, cracked software.
- Decline: from the mid-1990s, as boards and their users moved to the internet.
One caller at a time
Christensen and Suess are usually credited as the first. Boardwatch called CBBS “the first bulletin board system online running on a personal computer”, and 80 Micro wrote in 1985 that “many folks call Ward Christensen the father of BBSes”. By then CBBS ran on a North Star Horizon with a hard disk, and the pair had described it for other hobbyists in a BYTE article, “Hobbyist Computerized Bulletin Board”, in November 1978.
A bulletin board was a home computer running a program that answered the phone, so anyone with a spare line could run one. The owner was the system operator, or sysop. Callers logged in, read and wrote messages, sent private mail to other users and downloaded or uploaded files, then hung up so the next caller could get through. Most boards were local, because long-distance calls cost money. AmigaWorld warned American readers in 1994 that a regional service meant “a toll call unless you live nearby”.
The software came from many hands. Commodore 64 owners could buy C*Base, advertised in Compute! in 1990 at $50 with its BASIC source code and add-on modules including the games Empire and Murder Motel. On the PC, BBS Magazine’s advertisers in the early 1990s named the big packages of the day: TBBS, The Major BBS, Wildcat!, PCBoard, Searchlight and WWIV. Games that ran inside a board’s software, called door games, were a draw of their own; see BBS door games.
FidoNet
A message on one board stayed on that board until FidoNet. Amiga Format told the story in 1995: in 1984 Tom Jennings, who ran a board in California, was frustrated that his users’ messages “would go no further than his own BBS”. He agreed with a neighbouring board that each night one would call the other and pass on the day’s messages. Other boards joined within months, and several hundred across America within a year. Each board had to call only one other, so there was no central computer and the phone bills were shared out. A message could cross the world in a few days.
The network carried “echoes”, discussion areas each devoted to one subject. Amiga Format pointed its readers to Amiga UK and to Amiga Mags, where people argued about Amiga magazines, and said that the network had spread around the world to “somewhere in the region of 30,000 Bulletin Boards”.
Public domain, shareware and pirate boards
Boards were how much free software moved. In 1995 Urban Müller, who ran the Amiga archive Aminet, said that “many BBSs, mostly in Germany” carried its files, and he counted their operators among the 200 or so people who kept Aminet’s copies correct. Shareware and public domain programs spread the same way.
Other boards carried cracked games. In January 1988 AmigaWorld’s public domain columnist, David T. McClellan, wrote that a USENET message had just listed “ten or twelve pirate bulletin boards”, where people uploaded new commercial programs with the copy protection removed, “sometimes only a day or two after they hit the market”. By 1991 the head of the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), Bob Hay, told Amiga Computing that British cracking crews were in touch with groups in Europe and America “on a network of dozens or even hundreds of pirate bulletin boards”.
Getting onto one was a test. In 1994 Amiga Computing followed a man it called Jim onto a pirate board. To be let in, he said, “you have to give three names of people you know” so that the sysop could check them with other sysops. This board’s operator was a teenager still at school, and “his mum used to answer the phone”. It ran on a ratio: “the more data you uploaded to a bulletin board, the more you could claim back”. Once his name was known, cracking groups began calling him. Amiga Shopper’s writer, trying the same thing in 1993, found that “no sooner do you get a lead on one than it changes number and closes down”, and described hidden areas that only “elite” users could reach.
The boards were the cracking scene’s meeting places. Jim had found his board through a cracked game: its intro named the group that cracked it and gave “a list of bulletin board numbers”. The same modems carried the demo scene’s productions: Amiga Format in 1997 described one British board, Digital Candy, as “the demo scene’s most popular bulletin board”.
Raids
Boards were raided. In September 1993 FAST’s Bob Hay told Amiga Shopper that his priorities were “mail order pirates, pirate Bulletin Boards, and car boot fair piracy”, and that “we closed down a pirate BBS just last month and criminal charges are pending”. In February 1995 Amiga Shopper reported a raid by the Crime Unit of the European Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) on the Birmingham-based Krypt bulletin board, where “users uploaded games and in return received other pirated games”. More than £3,000 of equipment was confiscated and the operator fined £500.
The internet takes over
By the mid-1990s the boards were adding internet connections. In January 1994 AmigaWorld reported that “a growing number of bulletin boards and commercial services now offer full Internet access”, and in 1993 the ONE BBSCON conference, advertised in Boardwatch, offered a session on “Connecting Your BBS to the Global Internet”.
The internet also took over the pirates’ role. When the US Justice Department announced Operation Buccaneer in December 2001, which targeted groups including Razor 1911, it described groups that released cracked software “to hundreds of Internet sites worldwide”. In April 2004 its announcement of Operation Fastlink, which named groups including Fairlight, described release groups as “first-providers” whose work went “in minutes to secure, top-level warez servers” and from there to IRC and peer-to-peer networks. Neither announcement mentioned bulletin boards.
Some sysops held on. At Christmas 1998 a reader running a board in Cumbria wrote to Amiga Format: “The BBS scene is dying and it should be revived, along with FIDONET.” The magazine agreed that it deserved attention, but said that when it had asked sysops to send in their details for a list, “the response has been underwhelming”. In May 2000 it was still printing readers’ boards, among them Quest BBS in Wakefield, with “over 30,000 files online, including the latest seven Aminet CD-ROMs”.
Sources
- BYTE vol. 3 no. 6, June 1978, p. 103: clubs and newsletters, the Computerized Bulletin Board System (Christensen and Suess, CACHE, the phone number, 110 or 300 bps, the carriage returns, “since early this year”).
- BYTE vol. 4 no. 9, September 1979: reference to “Hobbyist Computerized Bulletin Board” by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, November 1978.
- 80 Micro, July 1985: BBS listing, CBBS Chicago (sysops, hardware, “the father of BBSes”).
- Boardwatch Magazine, March 1993: Chicago-area BBS list (605 boards, CBBS the first, the 15th birthday); ONE BBSCON 93 advertisement.
- Compute! issue 122, October 1990: C*Base advertisement.
- BBS Magazine vol. 3 no. 5, May 1992, and vol. 4 no. 3, March 1993: advertisements naming TBBS, The Major BBS, Wildcat!, PCBoard, Searchlight and WWIV.
- AmigaWorld vol. 4 no. 1, January 1988: David T. McClellan, “Users’ Choice”, sidebar “Piracy vs. the public domain”.
- AmigaWorld vol. 10 no. 1, January 1994: internet feature (toll calls; bulletin boards offering internet access).
- Amiga Computing issue 41, October 1991: piracy feature, interview with Bob Hay of FAST.
- Amiga Shopper issue 29, September 1993: piracy feature (Bob Hay; pirate bulletin boards and their “elite” areas).
- Amiga Computing issue 76, August 1994, pp. 44–46: “Software pirates” (getting onto a pirate board).
- Amiga Format issue 68, February 1995: comms feature on Fidonet (Tom Jennings, echoes, about 30,000 boards).
- Amiga Shopper issue 46, February 1995: news, the ELSPA raid on Krypt BBS.
- Amiga Format issue 76, October 1995: interview with Urban Mueller of Aminet (BBSes carrying Aminet files).
- Amiga Format issue 97, May 1997: competition, Digital Candy BBS.
- Amiga Format issue 118, Christmas 1998: letters, “The BBS scene is dying”, and reply.
- Amiga Format issue 136, May 2000: readers’ BBS list (Quest BBS).
- United States Department of Justice, “Federal law enforcement targets international Internet piracy syndicates”, 11 December 2001: https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2001/December/01_crm_643.htm
- United States Department of Justice, “Justice Department announces international Internet piracy sweep”, 22 April 2004: https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2004/April/04_crm_263.htm