Break Into Chat
Josh Renaud’s blog about BBS history, retro computing and technology reminiscences.
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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.
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Amit Patel, creator of “Solar Realms Elite”
In 1990, Amit Patel created the BBS door game “Solar Realms Elite.” In his other life he has worked with programming languages, scientific equipment, data analysis, visualization, geological exploration, simulation of complex systems, economic modeling, maps, trend analysis, artificial intelligence, and web software. He’s now working on interactive reference materials for game developers.
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Solar Realms Elite memories
What made SRE magical was the number of people who were playing at the time I encountered it. These games were not meant to be played solo; they were meant to be social experiences as you tried to dominate other players and build the mightiest empire. And when I began playing, SRE was a popular…
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BBS Documentary clip: TradeWars
Here’s a short segment from the BBS: The Documentary where folks discuss TradeWars (There’s also a mention of Legend of the Red Dragon.) I am a big fan of Jason Scott and of the documentary. It was very thorough on many topics, and included wonderful chapters about the artscene and Fidonet among other things. One…
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VT-52 demo: Beat Nick Part 2
Since I began telnetting into Atari ST BBSes again regularly, I’ve gotten interested in VT52 which was the Atari ST’s native terminal mode. The Atari supported 16 colors in low-resolution, and 4 colors in medium-resolution (80 cols). If you know BBSes, you can think of it this way: VT-52 was to the Atari ST what…
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