Back in the day, there were boards. Bulletin Board Systems. BBS's. No Net, no Web, no cyberspace, nothing. Just boards, and their ugly stepchildren, D-Dials. All strung together with phone lines, hand-rolled software, and 8-bit computers. No backbone, no hubs, no routers, no DNS tables. Just one computer picking up the phone, calling another, and having a little chat. Back in the day, phone prefixes mattered. Flat rate local calls meant the boards in your local zone were free --- not phree, which was different. I had a list of them posted on my wall, for a while, but soon enough I never really needed it. I knew my zone. 992, 667; 665; 464 --- they were my 'hood. Sometimes when I was feeling adventurous I might go beyond, out to the outer reaches of (201) --- none of that (908) crap back then --- but rarely farther. Go beyond (201), man, and you might, like, fall off the planet. None of that 908 crap?!? What is this guy talking about?!? 908 is where all the board were! It had the biggest local calling area in the United States! There were some good boards in 201, but 908 was where it was at.. All the boards I called were in 908, even thou I was in 609. Everything was local. This guy missed the real party. His "hood" was lame. 908 was the center of the BBS world, thats were all the non-pd boards were.. I know, I called everywhere in the state. 31337 908 4 3v3r! When 300 baud was the bomb |
