For many years, St. Louisans have been celebrating March 14 as “314 Day,” since our telephone area code was “314.” And that has even more resonance for old-school BBSers like me.

When I began BBSing in the early to mid-1990s, I was part of a wave of teens who hit the 314 scene. The price of computer hardware and phone service was dropping. The software was becoming more robust — and easier to set up. Bulletin boards proliferated across St. Louis.

When people look back on this time, they usually remember individual bulletin boards, but tend to forget an important aspect of BBSing: the networks.

Networking allowed one bulletin board to exchange messages with others. The biggest networks were international, making it possible for a humble BBSer in St. Louis to send messages to faraway places like Europe or South America.

By the mid-1990s, it was easier than ever for WWIV sysops to set up their own networks, so they did. Before long, new networks were popping up everywhere.

Around 1995, I was the cosysop of “Something in the Attic” BBS. I was always looking for ways to promote the BBS, to give it some advantage that might attract more users. As St. Louis-area networks multiplied, I began investigating to see if any of them might be worth adding to SiTA.

Anyway, 30 years later, I thought it’d be fun to celebrate “314 Day” by sharing a tiny — and very specific — tech time capsule: a collection of textfiles related to St. Louis-area BBS networks that I gathered back then.

The network application forms

To join a BBS network, a sysop had to submit an application to that network’s coordinator. The textfiles linked below are those applications. They were meant to be edited and sent back to the network coordinator.

Many of these are very similar — clearly adapted from templates. But each has unique touches, particularly Gavin’s CloudNet application, which has ANSI flair. At the other end of the spectrum, Lodestarr’s simple PIllowNet app looks like it was thrown together in five minutes.

Another fun thing to look for: the myriad ways the network names are capitalized. For example, SPORKnet and StupidNET took the exact opposite approaches.

Please note: Though most of the files below have the .APP file extension, they are not “apps” in the modern sense. They are plain text files. You should open them with Notepad, TextEdit, BBedit, Sublime Text, or whatever text editor you prefer.

• 314LINK.ZIP
• ALIENNET.APP (File corruption caused some truncation)
• CLOUDNET.APP
• EMAILNET.APP
• PILLOW.APP
• SPORKNET.APP
• STUPID.APP
• TAZNET.APP
• UMBRANET.APP

Message board lists

I preserved several lists of “sub-boards” (aka “message bases,” “message boards”, etc). The first one was for Something in the Attic BBS, and it includes both local subs as well as subs from several networks. The other two are lists of subs available on two St. Louis-based networks: GizmoNET and SPORKnet.

You’re going to see all sorts of 1990s teen BBS awesomeness here, such as excessive exclamation points or trailing “z” (Attic Programerz!, Hugz!!), or fun titles like TheNoSpaceSub or The School SUCKS Sub.

• SUB_SITA.TXT, Something in the Attic BBS’s subs
• SUB_GIZM.LST, GizmoNET subs
• SUB_SPRK.LST, SPORKnet subs

About the networks

314Link

• Network coordinator: DANL
• BBS: probably DanL’s Midnite Chat Wave
• Phone: 314-349-0978

AlienNet

• Network coordinator: TazBoy
• BBS: The Alien Workshop BBS
• Phone: 314-394-7484

CloudNet

• Network coordinator: Gavin
• BBS: Cloud Nine BBS
• Phone: 314-865-3258

EMAILnet

• Network coordinator: Ronda
• BBS: Ronda’s Riverboat BBS
• Phone: 314-291-6436

PIllowNet

• Network coordinator: Lodestarr
• BBS: Pillow Pavillion BBS
• Phone: 314-631-8828

SPORKnet

• Network coordinators: Led Zeppelin, Snakes
• BBSes: Stairway to Heaven BBS, Circle of the Snake BBS
• Phones: 314-225-4332, 314-968-9785

StupidNET

• Network coordinator: Mr.Stupid
• BBS: Land of the Fat BBS
• Phone: 314-936-1873

TAZnet

• Network coordinator: ALPHA
• BBS: Phoenix Fire BBS
• Phone: 314-291-4474

UmbraNet

• Network coordinator: Snakes
• BBS: The Circle of the Snake BBS
• Phone: 314-968-9785