Category: Uncategorized

  • Telnet to a BBS using a PC terminal program within the DOSBox emulator

    Telnet to a BBS using a PC terminal program within the DOSBox emulator

    A few months ago I wrote about my experiences trying to telnet in to Atari BBSes using an emulated Atari on my Mac. Basically the solution boiled down to this: Use tcpser4j to change a telnet connection to a serial connection, use socat to pipe that serial connection to a file, and set the Hatari…

  • Kids drawing on computers, then and now

    Kids drawing on computers, then and now

    Today was “Parents get to watch dance class” day. In the afternoon my daughter Ludi and I went to see my oldest daughter, Jadzia. The “public” part of the class came at the end, so Ludi and I were waiting for a bit. During the downtime we played a few games on the iPad, and…

  • Emulation is time travel

    Emulation is time travel

    Some say time travel is impossible. But they are wrong. You don’t need Doc Brown and a DeLorean; all you need is an emulator. Lately I’ve been using DOSBox, an awesome cross-platform IBM PC emulator, to try some old BBS utilities from the 1990s.

  • BBS door games + microtransactions = Zynga

    It takes going back to BBS door games to make you realize that Zynga's whole empire is built on BBS door games with microtransactions. — Jeff Gerstmann (@jeffgerstmann) February 26, 2013

  • Video: “The Joy of ASCII with Bob Ross”

    Video: “The Joy of ASCII with Bob Ross”

    This awesome new YouTube parody is like nostalgia squared. It imagines the late painter Bob Ross … if he had been an ANSI artist instead (though the video calls it “ASCII” art). If that whetted your appetite for more ANSI, then check out 8BitMUSH an intruigingly retro virtual world.

  • BBS doors: innovative social games?

    I came across a fantastic essay written by Andrew Chen in 2009: BBS door games: Social gaming innovation from the 1980s He makes the case that BBS door games pioneered many techniques used today by social games. I think he’s right on, especially in this passage: You may notice from all of these screenshots that…