Check out this website: Historical List of BBS’s in the 604 Area Code.
I started logging on to BBS’s when I was 14 way back in Grade nine (1989). I bought a $50 2400 bps modem without letting my parents know. It was my first foray into rebellion and independence. (Heh, yeah right… too chicken to let my parents know that I wanted to spend $50 on a computer part).
Anyway, It had it all – Cardz, Prototype Generation, Dreamscape, trade Warz, Shoreline, 1040 MIDI bbs, Mindlink… Those were the days. We could play online games, download files anime files (and other images), get MIDI music sequences and chat with our friends.
Cardz was the place where I met a lot of my first real group of high school friends. We were all geeks, well, mostly me I guess. But we all Chatted on Cardz, went out to meet people that we only met online – something that is so taboo these days for a 14 year old. But they were my friends. I only see a couple of them every few years. The rest? Well, they just drifted away to do their own thing. I wonder how we all turned out?
Wow… These days, we have email, web, and MSN Messenger. In my high school days, we had echomail, RABBS and Cardz chat. Time really flies, and I wonder what we will be using in the future.