madp0e7ix BBS

2025-01-08

When I was 14 or so years old, I discovered the world of BBS, mIRC, and the internet outside of the controlled access via a web service. I modeled this part of the site after the old BBS (Bulletin Board System) sites that people would host on their own computers, at home. To use one, you'd have to not just know it existed, but also the person's telephone number. You dialed in directly to their system to use the site. If someone else was using it (or they were talking on the line), you couldn't access it and got a busy signal.

It's amazing to think that is how folks connected with each other for years when they wanted to do so via computer. There were services like Prodigy or America Online that acted as portals to the internet, but they didn't offer the same open feel and connection that I found through BBS. They were more sanitized, more polished, and more restricted. "Polished" doesn't sound like a bad thing, and it often wasn't. I spent hours and hours and hours on AOL, burning through the free trial CDs. (You used to get like 10 hours free, and after that they started charging *per hour*! At one point, something like 50% of all compact discs produced were for AOL free trials.)

But they were also pretty limited. You only had access to what they offered through their portal. There was some shopping (though not much back then), some news, and some games and other things that were amazing to discover (after all, this was the first time a computer could do any of this stuff). But, for me, it got old fairly quickly.

Except, of course, for the chat rooms. Even though this was 5 years or so before the release of AOL Instant Messenger, the AOL chat rooms were very active with folks from everywhere. From there, I discovered mIRC, the internet relay chat client that lived outside of the AOL portal. mIRC opened up a world of people ideas, software, and skills that I didn't really have any access to in my small world. Many of the things I learned there (basic coding, how computer systems worked, how to build things -- both helpful and malicious -- and connect with people), I still use today in my career and hobbies.

This site will follow that same path, I hope. Not just in the look, feel, and keyboard navigation of those old sites, but as a place for me to share the things I'm learning and my interests around computing and development. I'm no expert. I won't be sharing polished projects and how-tos built by someone with the expertise to do amazing things. There are plenty of other sites for that. Here, I'll be working through mistakes and n00b-level attempts at dev boards, hacking, retrogaming, and whatever else I get interested in.

I'm looking forward to see where it all takes me!