Connect to a 1980s Atari Bbs Through the Web
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Retrocomputing
Bbs
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The story shares a web-based connection to a 1980s Atari BBS, sparking nostalgia and discussion among retrocomputing enthusiasts about their experiences with BBSes and related technology.
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Oct 26, 2025 at 5:31 AM EDT
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Oct 26, 2025 at 11:34 AM EDT
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2 months ago
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ID: 45710366Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 12:50:41 PM
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I had an Atari 800XL as a kid but had absolutely no access to a dial-up data line. BBS for Atari 8-bits sounds like a nice future-retro to me. The guys who had access to this were very lucky.
I've been wanting to get a generic door service with versions to at least support DOS as well as Commodore 64 (to start) doors with connections over WSS. I'm so green on Commodore emulation though, so that will be fun by the time I retire in a couple decades, I might have something working.
Accessed my first Atari 8-bit BBS as a kid in 1985 with my Atari 800 and 300 baud modem, lucky to upgrade to an Atari 130 XE soon after (also 8-bit). It was a whole different world.
Aside from the glacially slow connection speed, virtually every BBS back then was single line. This meant constant busy signals and endless redialing (pulse dialing, not touch tone!) in an attempt to get through and connect. Daily login time to each BBS was limited so that others could get on. Most BBSs used an upload to download ratio for files/warez in order to block leechers. Phone calls were very expensive back then too! Even calling numbers within your area code (which was subdivided into sections with different rates) carried a per minute charge. The more selective boards required referrals and/or references to have your account accepted.
It was the Wild West back then and truly a great time.
Visiting BBS's that run on actual or emulated hardware can be a nice trip down memory lane for those who were part of the 8-bit BBS community in times past.
IIRC, a large number of single digit constants were stored as variables to save memory since each use of one took up more memory than referencing the variable, and further it used something along the lines of Peano numbers and the fact booleans were represented as numbers to create them. Something like:
10 LET D0 = 0
20 LET D1 = (D0 = D0) <== some boolean that evaluated to true/1. I may have this backwards
30 LET D2 = D1 + D1
40 ...
I forget the details, but when all was said and done, when you ran the BBS there was zero free memory; not a single byte.
ATASCII animations FTW!