30 years ago—on November 25, 1992—I started The Cave BBS in Raleigh, NC

I was only 11 years old, and after a devastating hack, I began to hide my age online

I wrote about my BBS for Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/my-secret-life-as-an-11-year-old-bbs-sysop/

@benjedwards I used The Cave!!

@benjedwards Maaan I miss BBS'ing....back when 'cyberspace' was new and nice and exciting....

@benjedwards I was taken aback by reading your BBS article. Brought back TONS of memories. I posted a few on the Ars forum. Would love to chat more about it, sometime.

@benjedwards I missed out on the BBS world in its heyday, due to not having a phone line where the computer was at the time.

@benjedwards
I ran a BBS back then, and still run one today!

warensemble.com

Telnet, ssh, http(s), ftp, gopher, nntp, and a bunch of other protocols..

Oh, it also has a dial up line. :)

@kd9qhq Awesome

@benjedwards Great article! Have you read Kevin Driscoll's The Modem World?

@benjedwards loved the story! Thank you. Brought back memories of working construction jobs with my dad to get enough money to start and then maintain my BBS Lithium City serving the El Paso area.

@benjedwards

I enjoyed this story a lot. Thanks!

@rxc awesome

@benjedwards great read!

@benjedwards I forgot to touch on the bad stuff you experienced as a young sysop. I can definitely see how something like that would happen. Glad you've been enjoying yourself for so long now.

@benjedwards I see SO MUCH of myself in your article. What an amazing time to be alive and growing up along side such an incredible advancement.

I need to look around for Seattle/Bellevue BBS lists from back then. The only name I remember clearly was #TheLizzardDen and I remember going to a meet up once as a young teen and meeting the sysops. I helped out with some RIPscrip graphics — graphic drawing in your terminal. Blew my young mind.

Look at things now! 🤯

@benjedwards Nice! I used to run a few #Commodore C64 boards, and later 'The Live Wire" in the (403). #yeg

I highly recommend a read of Rob's (@Commodork) excellent book: COMMODORK: SORDID TALES FROM A BBS JUNKIE (2006) to get a feel for the #80s and how it really was. #RetroComputing #BBS

@benjedwards I read your piece on @arstechnica loved it. Brought back memories and now searching for the list of BBSs I was connecting (in french in Montreal) back in the days.

Thanks for the ASCII graphics reminder as well.

@benjedwards this is great 😊

@boiglenoight Thank you!

@benjedwards
Terrific story!

@benjedwards

That was a fantastic, thank you.

I missed a lot at that time because I had a different technical hobby, amateur radio. I got my full ham licence in 1982, and I wasn't into games, so for me a BBS was generally a local AX25 packet radio node which I connected to over VHF radio, at 1200 bps, not something I dialled up.

Now though I've been connecting to a few different ones, all because I joined Mastodon and it reminds me of those days. I'll check yours out!

@Siceloff Thanks!

@benjedwards Would you want to come talk about this at a local hacker con?

@CackalackyCon

@benjedwards I vaguely remember hearing about this BBS since I lived in NC and I was active on BBS's '94-'97, in my teens. I think I never dialed in because I lived north of Durham and it would have been long distance.

@digisho @CackalackyCon hm, maybe!

@benjedwards @digisho @CackalackyCon please do, the cybersecurity community older folks mostly cut their teeth on BBSs

@benjedwards so many memories! And a few friends still with me since then!

@benjedwards this list brought back memories for my wife. She was friends with the guy who ran Online’s place. And she was friends with BC. Small world.

@brianwilson Very cool! What was her alias?

@benjedwards mirage

@benjedwards she said she thought she remembered red wolf.

@brianwilson that sounds familiar

@brianwilson very cool!

@benjedwards I used to call that BBS!!

@N4BUT Cool, what was your handle/alias back then?