Known as the Father of BBS systems (co-created with Randy Seuss who died in 2019) Together they created and ran the first BBS - Bulleting Board System in the US.
Also the man who invented the Xmodem protocol.
In 1978 I was still in school and had only just started my career in computing and even a few years later with the proliferation of BBSs, living in the UK meant that they were virtually impossible to reach due to regulation of the phone system and the sheer cost of making even a local call at that time. Eventually in the UK we had the Prestel system (Ran by the phone company; BT) and from there the momentum started.
Anyone have any good memories of those early BBS days in the US (or elsewhere?)
(TIL that a Bulletin Board is neither more nor less than what I would have called a noticeboard - just a difference of dialect.)
I may have noted this before, but the one and only time I used a BBS, here in the UK, was to get hold of a TCP/IP networking library for my Amiga, so I could connect to an ISP. The board I found had a policy of needing an upload before one could download - a sensible precaution against leeches. I had nothing to upload, so I contacted the sysop and talked my way into getting a download credit. I never connected again, which was of course not what was supposed to happen.
There’s an HN discussion here on the death notice, which includes amongst other things a link to Jason Scott’s 100 favourite files from BBS land.
Also a link to the mentioned 1978 BYTE article (8 page pdf) by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, about the computerised bulletin board system.
My objective was to get the most functions at the least cost. I started with my IMSAI 8080 processor card, having replaced it with a Cromemco Z-80 in my personal system. I found an old Vector mother board for free and two reasonably priced 4 K byte memory boards at a computer store. I also bought a Poly Morphics video terminal interface (VTI) card. We burned a monitor for a memory board to support the video terminal interface. Add- ing an SwTPC keyboard completed the local console for the system. We are now running an 8 K Vector Graphic memory board and two 8 K byte boards designed by Forrest Duston (a local hobbyist and design engineer), which were donated by Lloyd Smith and Bill Bassett of DMA Inc. A floppy disk was necessary for storing the messages, so Ward bought a Tarbell con- troller board and Innovex drive from DMA, who graciously offered it at 40 percent off. I put these components into a chassis and home-built card cage and started testing the system.