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Hot take: I chose AOL over a local BBS in 1996 and I've been second-guessing it since
In the summer of 1996 I had to pick between a local Bulletin Board System run out of a guy's basement in Akron and an AOL trial disc that came in the mail. I went with AOL because it had chat rooms and a browser, and my parents liked the flat $19.95 a month. The BBS had a 28.8k modem bank and only 12 phone lines, so you'd get busy signals, but the guys on there actually knew each other and met up at a pizza place on Fridays. AOL gave me 400 free hours and a credit card bill after I forgot to cancel, plus endless CDs I used as coasters. I still wonder what happened to that Akron crew and whether they're all still trading files somewhere. Did anyone else ditch their local board for a big provider and regret it later?
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derekp7013d ago
The line about wondering what happened to the Akron crew really hits. Here's the thing nobody tells you, those local BBS guys usually didn't just vanish, they migrated to IRC or Usenet or eventually a forum somewhere and kept the same circle going for years. My advice if it still bugs you: poke around on the old BBS lists and textfiles archives, a lot of those boards have reunion pages now, and sometimes the sysop's handle is still searchable. Also check Facebook groups for vintage computing in your state, I've seen people find their old board crew that way more than once. Worst case you find nothing and you're only out twenty minutes, best case you find out the pizza place crew is still meeting up somewhere.
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