How does one connect to a BBS?

Answer 1

Wow, it seems that the term BBS is coming up a lot recently. I have had many people bring up in conversations "the old days" of BBSes and being a Sysop. Now a question that I get to address here in Answers.com

For those who are unaware, the Bulletin Board System (BBS) was the precursor to what we now might refer to as a website. It was a computer into which a person dialed with his computer and a dial-up modem so as to post on bulletin boards (nowadays, these are called forums or discussion boards), send messages (emails) to other users or even to other people across the country/world, play games, and more. When the internet came about and all one had to do was establish a connection to the Internet so as to access the same types of services anywhere in the world easily and for free (no long distance charges to dial up a BBS that had what the user wanted), the BBS era came to an end.

So, to answer your question of how you connect to a BBS nowadays, if one is still in operation, you would need a dial-up modem to attach to your computer, a terminal emulation program such as HyperTerminal (the software that was included with each version of Windows through Windows XP) or PuTTY, and the right configuration to use for the connection (most often, it was No Parity, 8 data bits, and 1 start/stop bit, often abbreviated as 8N1 or N81). If you want to check out various terminal emulation programs, go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terminal_emulatorsand see what might work best for you.

Back in the days of MS-DOS 6.22, the program I used was Telix but I am certain that is no longer around in any form. If you find it in a modern Windows version, however, I would suggest using it as it was a wonderful simple and trouble-free program.

I hope this helps. If you have any other questions, feel free to drop me a line.