Tag: bbs
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April Fools’ Day prank on Dark Force BBS
Dark Lord, sysop of Dark Force BBS, tries hard to keep his users engaged. Yesterday for April Fools’ Day, he surprised them with a fun prank. He changed the board’s logon sequence to make it look like a powerful AI calling itself “The Wraith” had taken over the board. But that wasn’t all. The BBS…
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A time capsule for 314 Day: St. Louis-area BBS message networks
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…
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Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 6: Legacy
This is the sixth part of a multi-part series. The Instant Graphics and Sound format reached its zenith in September 1991 when artist Steve Turnbull published two psychedelic animations on a messageboard on the CrossNet network for Atari ST bulletin boards. Both were built around large triangles: a pyramid in one, a volcano in the…
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Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 5: Point and click
This is the fifth part of a multi-part series. Thirty hours into his “world tour,” Jon Clarke was discombobulated. His business trip had begun on July 19, 1991, with a scary false alarm: during takeoff from his hometown of Auckland, New Zealand, the oxygen masks had suddenly deployed. He spent much of the rest of…
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Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 4: The artist and the community
This is the fourth part of a multi-part series. Steve Turnbull’s world couldn’t have been more different from that of Larry Mears, creator of “Instant Graphics and Sound.” Mears was a shipping clerk in the Deep South. Turnbull worked in showbiz and lived in sunny Laguna Beach, California, in a yellow beach cottage with turqouise…
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Instant Graphics and Sound, Part 3: The adventure begins
This is the third part of a multi-part series. User groups were the lifeblood of any Atari community, bringing together hobbyists to have fun and help each other. Consider ST-JAUG, the “ST Jacksonville Atari Users Group,” a computer club full of active-duty and retired military in the Jacksonville, Florida, area. On May 21, 1988, many…
