Break Into Chat

Josh Renaud’s blog about BBS history, retro computing and technology reminiscences.

  • Barneysplat! memories

    Barneysplat! memories

    As a teen, I encountered the show enough to develop a hatred of it: saccharine songs that would lodge in your head; giggly, dopey-voiced dinosaur characters; a “one-dimensional world where everyone must be happy and everything must be resolved right away.” It’s no surprise that Barney spawned a backlash. Barney bashing, “anti-Barney humor and parodies…

  • From newsletter to magazine

    From newsletter to magazine

    Today I had an article published in an Atari-related periodical for the first time since 1994.

  • The FBI’s Atari files

    The FBI’s Atari files

    Did you know Atari was investigated by the FBI over a scheme in which they imported Japanese DRAM chips to the U.S. from their plant in Taiwan and resold the chips at greatly inflated prices? Neither did I, until tonight, when I stumbled across an awesome website called AtariLeaks.

  • 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.



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