For me BBSing coincides perfectly with my years in high school (1987-91). Prior to high school, I had no modem. After high school, I was in college and rarely touched my computer. But during high school, BBSing was a great way to spend the evening & not do homework. ;-) My main equipment was a Commodore 64 (later Amiga 500) using a 1.2 or 2.4 kbit/second connection. Because of the slowness of the connection, everything was pure ASCII text. (There were a few graphical sites, but they would take two or three minutes to load.) In my hometown of Lancaster PA we had more BBSes than I can remember. It seemed everyone with a computer wanted to take a turn at creating a BBS, discovered it was too much work, and then pulled it down. (One guy even made me a moderator. The site was empty and devoid of users, but hey, I was a mod!) That said there were a few BBSes that stand out in my mind: - LABB - This was mainly an IBM PC site, and it charged money which I did not have, so I largely avoided it. There were some neat features there, such as online games. I remember one called Tradewars where people flew around in spaceships trying to trade goods and become rich & powerful. I never really cared for it, prefering to spend my time playing the same game, but with graphics, called Elite. - TUSK - This was aimed towards Commodore & Amiga users, and was my main source for downloadable files. Persons with hundreds of dollars in their wallets would acquire files from long-distant BBSes, download them to their computers, and then upload them to Tusk (example: SI Swimsuit cover 1989) for the enjoyment of local users (another example: cracked copies of games). I gathered a huge collection (~1000 disks) filled with photos, songs, and primitive movies/demos. It was a lot of fun downloading these programs onto my computer, which prior to my attainment of a modem, had next-to-no software. TUSK also inspired the creation of a local club for Amiga users, so I had a chance to meet the people in real life. - Bit Bucket - This fantastic site introduced me to the rest of the world. By providing FidoNet & Usenet, this BBS allowed its users to participate in nationwide forums where we discussed such important topics as "Who is the better captain? Picard or Kirk?" In fact, you can still find my messages archived at Google Groups under the rec.arts.startrek newsgroup. Well that's about it. There were a few other neat BBSes, each specializing in a different arena. I recall one such site was a "real time forum" where posts appeared so quickly, it was almost like chatting live to the other people. Soon I started trading CDs, tapes, and illegally-copied games (shhh) with people I had met online. It was a great experience. WORLD WIDE WEB - 1994 In 1994 after having left my computer lay stagnant for a few years, I discovered something called "Mosaic" that connected to a strange entity called the world wide web. The web provided new experiences that BBSes could not provide. Places like midwinter.com or scifi.com or vidiot.com allowed me to read, learn, and find TV-related news & schedules for all my favorite shows. Plus, the web still had all my favorite downloadable files (music and swimsuit covers), plus there was the ever-reliable Usenet heirarchy where we could discuss such world-changing topics as "Who is the better captain? Picard or Sisko?" And ultimately that's what brought down BBSes. The world wide web still supplied the files, and the community atmosphere of forums, but it ALSO had vast amounts of information from National services so you could find out what's on TV, or buy books online, or whatever. The world wide web was essentially BBS 2.0. It had all the features of a local BBS, plus lots of extra bonuses only available via national providers. As such, there was no longer any need for me to continue BBSing, since the Mosaic/Netscape/Firefox browsers let me go directly to the national source. CONCLUSION BBSes were a lot of fun, and very eye-opening for a young high schooler, as well as letting me meet lots of new people, but ultimately the local nature of the BBS was limited (which is probably why my computer collected dust between 1991 and 94). The local BBSes provided free music and photos, but only if one of the "local guys" had a copy. If not, you were out of luck. And there was no such thing as a Sci-Fi Channel BBS or Amazon BBS, so that we had to rely on primitive technologies like printed tv guides or libraries. In the same way as the Model T served as the foundation for the mass-produced car industry, BBS forums and file-sharing served as the foundation for what later became the world wide web. BBS 2.0. I have a lot of fond memories of the Lancaster-area bulletin boards, but would I want to go back to that time of pure text, slow 2.4 kbit/second connections, and limited availability of information? No. I would miss my bit-torrent, my wikipedia, and all the other things I have come to rely upon. All good things (BBS forums, BBS file sharing) must come to an end, so that they can be replaced by better things (web forums, file sharing, national websites).