Forgotten Technologies – BBSes, Amigas, IRC, etc

Today I spent about an hour or more showing Scott what an Amiga A-4000T is all about. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any disks with me to show him the awesome 80s & 90s graphics. Nor did I get it online to show him what that machine was used for.

What was it used for?  I’m glad you asked! It was used to run Amiga Connection (AmiCon.Net) BBS for years and years. At the time that I pulled the plug on it about 2005, it was likely the oldest CNet Amiga BBS still online. I hope to be bringing it online again in the coming weeks, and let it live out its life serving up those wonderful ascii/ansi graphics via a telnet connection. Don’t worry, I will announce the grand re-opening because I know you want to see messages and uploads that posted 10 years ago.

AmiCon has over 800 registered members still that have not been weeded out (I turned off the “weed” for inactive users to preserve the database). Some awesome people used this board over the years, maybe they are still alive?

While I’m on the subject of forgotten technology, what about IRC? It’s around still, in fact, there are thousands of IRC servers and if you log onto some of the larger networks, you will find thousands of people online, however, if you ask 100 people if they know what it is, a dozen will have heard of it, one might still use it. I still run an IRC server at irc.SuperHosts.Net, which was part of the irc.ExodusIRC.Net network until we lost all the other people. Want to join in the fun? No problem, shoot me an email, I’ll tell you all about it… IRC is actually pretty fun. You can find live discussions going on just about any time of the day, in any language, and on any subject.

Maybe I should leave out my OTHER forgotten technology…. Ham Radio…   Uhmm yeah, I still use that too!

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