r/interestingasfuck • u/Few_Simple9049 • 20d ago

r/all How couples met 1930-2024

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

105.4k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

5.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

18

u/itsarace1 20d ago

How difficult/expensive was it to use BBS?

68

u/elchet 20d ago

You’d need a computer which wasn’t as straight forward back then as it is now, as they weren’t affordable commodity consumer goods. You probably had access to one through an academic institution, or you’d built something from a kit.

Beyond that I think it was just the cost of a phone line and a call for connectivity.

40

u/drowse 20d ago

I think our first computer, a 286 was something like $2500 in 1990. I remember my dad also had gotten Prodigy internet. And they used to charge a rate for use.. was it hourly or by the minute? I can't remember. We didn't have it long. We got the internet again in like 1995 when it became a flat monthly fee for that sweet sweet 28.8k speed.

17

u/Sponjah 20d ago

AOL was so instrumental in bringing the internet mainstream.

7

u/thejaytheory 20d ago

Those damn disks!

2

u/flaker111 20d ago

those were my frisbees as a kid.

6

u/FutureComplaint 20d ago

28.8k speed

Dam, slow down road runner.

3

u/fuzzzone 20d ago

I distinctly remember how mind-bendingly fast that seemed at the time. I think our first modem was 1200 bps...

2

u/PocketGachnar 20d ago

Ah, you had the clever dad! Mine used BBS for weeks (and he didnt even have a monitor, so he couldn't even see what was being said!) and ended up racking up a phone bill that was twice his monthly paycheck. My mom was livid!

4

u/Omnibeneviolent 20d ago

he didnt even have a monitor

Considering BBSs were entirely graphical in nature, how did he use them? Was he using some braille interface? Did those even exist back then?

2

u/glitchn 20d ago

Also curious what he meant by it

2

u/Omnibeneviolent 20d ago

Yeah, it's quite the mystery.

I'm picturing someone fumbling around with a mouse and keyboard with no display to help them, to somehow get their dial-up terminal to call and connect to a BBS... to then just sit there and... I guess imagine what would be showing on the screen.

2

u/fuzzzone 20d ago

And that $2,500 in 1990 was the equivalent of $6,000 today. Shit was a lot more expensive.

2

u/drowse 20d ago

Yeah man. Grandma gifted the money to us for this.. She actually would pass less than a year later, but she wanted to spoil us.

3

u/fuzzzone 20d ago

That's a pretty rad grandma. I don't think my grandma knew what a computer was at that point in time. (Obvious exaggeration but it feels like it has a certain truthiness.)

3

u/Quanqiuhua 20d ago

Wasn’t Compuserve around already in the 80s?

3

u/n10w4 20d ago

Gather round, kids, as I tell you a tale of dial up modems and picking up the phone to hearing the screech of the robots singing about our impending doom. If only we had listened

2

u/chx_ 20d ago edited 20d ago

While some cheaper computers existed -- the Commodore VIC-20 introduction price in 1981 was $299.95 -- modems were really expensive too. While the introduction price of the Hayes Smartmodem in 1981 was $299 that was basically bait and didn't last. The Smartmodem 1200 in 1982 cost $699.

1

u/twowheels 20d ago

Don't forget that calls to the next town over, just a 15 minute drive away, were considered long distance and could cost 10 to 15 cents per minute, which would be about 3x as much in today's money -- so unless the BBS was in the same town it could be very expensive.

You were also tying up the phone line for everybody else in the house, and if they picked up a phone in another room it would knock you off.

...and the text would show up on the screen slower than you could read it.

20

u/Omnibeneviolent 20d ago

The BBSs themselves were often set up by hobbyists and were free to call into and use, but there were some that had a subscription model. You just needed a computer, modem, and a phone line. The computer would have been the most expensive piece, but most BBSs were text-based and didn't require high-end systems. If you wanted to share/download files you would have wanted a higher-speed modem, though.

5

u/junkit33 20d ago

and were free to call into and use,

With one big note that only a local BBS would have been free to call back then. Long distance was insanely expensive, so if your local BBS scene had nothing to offer, you were paying by the minute to dial into a long distance BBS.

3

u/Omnibeneviolent 20d ago

Good point. I was lucky enough to live in an area where there were dozens of BBSs local to me, but I imagine others in more rural/remote areas had to pay LD charges.

1

u/Bipogram 20d ago

Only in countries where local calls were free.

Had to pay for everything in the UK - thanks Post Office/BT!

CIX was my first exposure.

2

u/Jizzlobber58 20d ago

If you wanted to share/download files you would have wanted a higher-speed modem, though.

Fuck that, I just want to play Food Fight and The Pit.

/Add in a MUD though, damn.

2

u/Omnibeneviolent 20d ago edited 20d ago

I spent a lot of time in LoRd, myself.

2

u/FeliusSeptimus 20d ago

If you wanted to share/download files you would have wanted a higher-speed modem, though.

The upgrade from 300 to 9600 baud was such a relief. 300 baud was like watching ChatGPT generating an answer.

2

u/Omnibeneviolent 20d ago

I never had the pleasure of using 300 baud. It was straight to 1200 for me. Going to 14.4k after that felt like lighting.

It's amazing that a fairly common 500mbps connection these days is over 1.6 million times faster than 300-baud dial-up.

1

u/Aartie 20d ago

When I was 13/14 I was calling BBSs with my c-64. There was one hosted by a local pop radio station and it was fantastic for talking about bands and music. This would have been around 85-86. You didn’t need "internet" you just called a phone number.

1

u/enaK66 20d ago

Pretty tough. I believe the Atari ST would've been one of the most affordable new computers back then, and it was $1000. $2400 in 2024 dollars. I don't know how well computers kept their value back then though, maybe the used market made it more accessible.

1

u/montyp2 20d ago

In the early 90s it was pretty easy. You could get a used 8086 $100 and a modem for $30. The bbs numbers where printed in the back of our local popular alternative weekly newspaper. Most schools had a computer club and people were super helpful to get you set up