Back before BitTorrent or LimeWire or Kazaa or Napster or FTP or before the Internet for that matter, existed the Bulletin Board System (BBS). If you wanted porn or pirated software this is where you would go. The best BBS’s were private and you had to “know a guy” who “knows a guy” in order to get access.
But if you could get access, OH BOY, the goodies you would find. No crappy shareware like you would find on the public BBS’s, no, only genuine full copies of the newest games.
Unfortunately, with a 2400 bps modem and a single phone line shared between the whole family, there is only so much you could download. Luckily, after about 9 PM, I was allowed to take over the phone line and then the downloading would commence.
Ahhhh, good times. I remember a game like Doom, sitting at around 5 MB would take over 5 hours to download. Can you imagine that?
Anyway, times were good while they lasted, but by around 1995 most everyone was moving to the Internet. I believe BBS’s peaked around 1996 and died off quickly after that. I’m just glad I was around to see it.
ComputerAbuser
