The Internet Before the Internet- the Commodore 64 and the BBS Days
I remember the day the Commodore 64 became a big part of my life.
It was January of 1985, I was in 8th grade in Corpus Christi, Texas and my best friend at the time, “The Mic,” had just gotten one for Christmas. His Dad bought it at a long defunct retailer called Best Products, where you went into the showroom, looked around, told the salesperson what you wanted, and a few minutes later, your product rolled out on a long conveyor belt
.The Mic wanted a Commodore 64 complete with a cassette drive, and that’s what he got. Better yet, he had two other things every 8th grader was jealous of: he had his own room, and he had his own phone line. We had no idea how useful that phone line was going to be a few months later. At the time, it wasn’t used much because we sure as hell weren’t talking to girls.
I went over to his house to spend the night, and a whole new world began to open up. This wasn’t a video game system like Atari or Intellivision or even my Colecovision. This was a real, live home computer you could program, write from, even print from. But we spent most of our time playing video games…at first.
We started with cartridges, just like Colecovision. You spent $50 on a game, plugged it into the back of the computer and got better sound and graphics than just a console. We had a James Bond game that was great, and a Ghostbusters game that was really fun. But the best game we had was on a cassette, and that’s where we started to figure out just how different a real, live personal computer was from a cartridge fed gaming console.
It was called Telengard, based on the Dungeons and Dragons games that were popular and ridiculously controversial back then. You created a character, then explored a dungeon looking for treasure, artifacts, magical weapons, and armor. You encountered and fought characters like skeletons and zombies and (maybe) orcs, increasing your hit points and character level. Every now and then you’d run into a dragon, and that would be the end of you UNLESS he spoke those magic words:
“He Likes You! He gives you a <precious artifact>”
Telengard was addictive because it went on and on, and your character got more and more powerful. But then we discovered real magic. We discovered we could get into the programming code and alter it. Telengard was programmed in BASIC, and the Mic had a copy of the huge Commodore 64 Bible, The Programmer’s Reference Guide. We taught ourselves basic BASIC and went to work altering the important parts of the code.
We found a way to change a - sign into a + sign, and lo and behold, our hit point always went up, instead of down. We found out how to get the high level monsters to like us so they would give us cool things like mighty swords and rings of power. We could actually alter the video game. We were in control, not constrained by some cartridge.
In August of 1985, The Mic turned 15, and for his birthday, he got what every kid who loved the Commodore 64 desperately wanted.
A floppy disk drive. The Commodore 1541 disk drive to be exact.
A cassette drive was fun, but it was limited by how fast the cassette tape could spin, and how much memory was on it, in this case 100KB per side. Yep, you could store data on both sides of a cassette tape, and I remember flipping it over to access the other side.
But a disk drive was different. It was faster. It didn’t have to spin tape to the point where the specific data was written, it was random access. And while each floppy disk held 170k worth of data, you could easily get a ten pack and store a hell of a lot of games.
We knew the real reason we wanted a disk drive, though. If you had a disk drive and knew the right people, you could copy the best games for free. We didn’t have to pay anymore. A disk drive opened up the world, and in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1985, there were a lot of kids happy to copy each other’s games.
Oh, sure, there was copy protection, but there were great programs like Mr. Nibble to bust even the best of it. You could buy a copy from the back of PC Magazine. Or just copy one from a friend who’d busted the copy protection.
As soon as The Mic got his disk drive, we became members of SMUG- Saturday Morning User Group. It was a group of much older computer programmers who met every Saturday morning at CCSU (Corpus Christi State University, now TAMU-CC, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi) to wax poetic about PEEKS and POKES and other obscure programming terms. And while the Mic had become a pretty good programmer, we weren’t there for the programming.
We were there for the games. The games no one else in Corpus had, but that the “adults” would buy. Games were currency. If you could get Flight Simulator or F15 Strike Eagle, you were a righteous dude- and you controlled who you shared them with.
Of course the “adults” loved their video games too, and we always showed up with “cracked” games the adults weren’t even aware existed. So the Mic would barter for the best games, we’d copy them after the meeting, and return home as GODS with our treasure. And that was more fun than the games themselves- we were power brokers!
We didn’t actually play a lot of the games. They were fun, and while we did play some, the real fun was in bartering with friends, making deals, and being cool. We hoped that would help us get girls, but it didn’t. Perhaps we should have actually talked to some, but that was scary.
School started up again in September of 1985, and we were 9th graders, entering our final year at Baker Jr. High, right down the road from Hamlin Jr. High, where Farah Fawcett went to school a decade earlier. Back then Jr. High was 7th, 8th, and 9th grade, and high school was 10th, 11th, and 12th. Now there’s a ridiculous Middle School of 6th, 7th, and 8th, but it ain’t the same. As 9th graders, we were on top of the school, heading to real High School the next year.
Not much else happened on the computer front until Christmas of 1985. The Mic did get a printer- an OkieMate that printed in color on thermal paper, and while that was a great accessory to have, we didn’t have anything to print.
And then came Christmas of 1985, and that’s when the world changed forever. That’s when the Mic got the final, and most important accessory to the Commodore 64:
The Commodore 1650 300 baud modem.
For the first time, we could connect to other computers remotely, via dial up, and communicate with other users we’d never met. We were about to enter the secret world of BBS- Bulletin Board Service, with The Mic’s own phone line so we could dial in whenever we wanted, anytime day or night.
I can’t quite remember what software we used- it wasn’t Q-link (since you had to pay for that), and none of the other software listed for that modem at that time sounds familiar. I keep thinking it was something called Intellisoft, but I can’t find any reference to that software. It might have been a program someone local had written by that name.
We had a Commodore 64, we had the 1541 disk drive, we had the 1650 300 baud modem, and we had a dedicated phone line. The only thing missing was a phone number to dial in to a local BBS. And that’s where our video game trading currency paid off.
Back then, there was no way to get a list of BBS phone numbers to dial into. It wasn’t public knowledge, and it wasn’t just private.
It was underground.
People “in the know,” didn’t pass around those phone numbers. They didn’t want a bunch of random 12 year olds dialing in, and neither did they want a bunch of adults. They only wanted people who were “cool,” like them, people who truly appreciated the magic of a BBS system.
Furthermore, BBS Systems were broken out by computer- Atari, Apple II, and Commodore 64. There might have been an IBM PC (or God forbid a PCjr) out there somewhere, but no one had any emotional connection to those. You were either Atari, Apple, or Commodore, and you staked your claim based on that. These were all separate tribes, and some of the nastiest in person arguments I remember were over which computer was better. Commodore people were much more laid back, but Atari and Apple people were ready to fight. We wanted none of that, which is why we loved the Commodore.
By that time, the Mic had horse traded for a lot of video games and software programs. While he loved the trading, he also understood that the more he had, the more information he had access to. People in the computer world started coming to him not just for software, but for information. And he started to trade information. That’s how he was able to put together a list of local bulletin boards in Corpus Christi, Texas in January of 1986.
I remember the night we first dialed in. Out of the list, half the numbers were bad. They were disconnected, answered by an adult, or just rang and rang. We were starting to get disappointed, and then we dialed the number for a BBS called “Thieves Guild.”
We typed in the number, hit return, the modem dialed it and we heard the sound of a modem on the other end for the very first time. The cursor on the software moved- and it moved without us typing. Then the magic words appeared:
“Initiating handshake.”
The two computers were talking. They were really talking to each other, as if they were alive. We looked at each other in awe, and then the screen simply said:
Connected.
We were in.
For a minute we just sat there looking at the screen, taking in the moment. We knew the world would never be the same, and we were at the forefront. It was a surreal, eerie feeling I’ll never forget.
The cursor sat there blinking, waiting for our command. The only question was, what do we do next? After all, we had no experience with this, and very few people did. We had just taken our first step into a larger world, but what was the second step?
Luckily, The Mic had an answer- we needed to create a screen name, what was called a “handle” in the CB Radio days of the 70’s. That was an easy one, it was sitting right in front of us.
One of our favorite places at the time was a gag gift shop in Sunrise Mall called Spencer Gifts. Sunrise Mall is sadly long gone, but Spencer Gifts is still around. Spencer Gifts was a great place to go for teenagers because it was racy, and bordered on the edge of “dirty,” but it never quite crossed that line. They had great Iron Maiden posters, and even better Samantha Fox posters. Hey, naughty girls need love too.
That’s where The Mic found Phineas P. Phart. Phineas was an odd looking rubber character with feet and a large nose. He was also a pale green color, and when you squeezed him, he farted. As soon as we saw it, we had to have it. The Mic bought it, took it home, and put it on his computer desk, right by the Commodore 64.
And so our screen name became Phineas P. Phart.
From what I remember, Thieves Guild had a public bulletin board where you posted messages for all to see, a directory of members (all by screen name), and a private way to send messages to other members. Today we call that “email.”
We started with the directory, looking to see if there was anyone we knew. The listings were by screenname, but if you read carefully, you could find clues. We were able to identify two people we knew from trading games, but we expected them to be there. The rest, maybe 30 or so names, were a mystery- and that’s what made it fun.
Most of the members were our age, and we knew that we knew some of them. They might be at Baker with us. Later on that year, we knew some of them were at Carroll High School with us. But you didn’t know who. You could walk right by them in the hall, not knowing you both were part of a secret universe, and you might exchange messages that night. We started to be on the lookout for certain sayings and codewords that would identify someone as a fellow member of a BBS.
The next thing we did was leave a message on the public bulletin board. It was simple, and it was cryptic: Phhhart. Phhhhhhaaaaart. Phhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrt!
The SYSOP (the kid who ran the BBS service) didn’t like that, and he warned us to stop. But he didn’t kick us off because everyone else thought it was funny and stupid at the same time. So every time we logged on, we left the Phineas P. Phart message before logging off.
Things didn’t happen instantly on the BBS systems. You dialed in, left your public posts, sent your private messages, then you logged off. And you waited. Others needed time to dial in, day or night, and leave or read their messages.
The Mic and I had a routine. If I was spending the night at his house (Friday or Saturday night), we’d log in as soon as I came over, read any messages we had, see what else was going on, leave our messages, and then sign off with a Phhhart. Phhhhhhaaaaart. Phhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrt!
We’d get something to eat, then walk outside into a world we now knew was larger than most people understood. But we had no desire to sit in a room, connected to a computer, waiting for a response from the ether. We wanted to go outside, get away from our parents, hang out by ourselves, and see who else we could meet in person. And hopefully a girl would talk to us.
The Mic lived on the “poor side” of a subdivision called Country Club Estates. That meant well to do middle class, whereas the “rich side,” on the other side of Wooldridge was really rich. But our side had one thing they didn’t- St. Andrews Park.
I’ll write an entire episode about St. Andrews Park because I have some great memories from there, but for now I’ll briefly describe it. It was an old field turned into a park with tennis courts, gazebos, picnic tables with long-gone grills. It probably stretched a mile and a half, maybe two miles end to end. When you walked out into the middle of it, you felt like you were in the wild.
It’s still there, and I visited as recently as 2023. The old gazebo still exists, weather worn, but still standing. Other structures have decayed and collapsed, but the remnants are there. It’s a strange feeling for me to look out over a place I loved 40 years ago. The memories at first seem dead, but then they begin to rise and swirl, the residue of a better time and place that no longer exist.
The Mic and I would leave his house, walk ten minutes to the border of St Andrews, then walk around to see what friends may come out. And someone always did. We may have stepped into a digital world, but that wasn’t our life- real connections with real people in the real world were. The digital world was just a cool, secret addition.
We’d stay out a long time, no curfew for us. When we got back, we’d dial into Thieves Guild and see if someone had responded to our messages. It was always a thrill if you got even one message, because you had no idea who it was from. It could have been from someone you met at St. Andrews park, and you’d never know.
Messages on Thieves Guild were a long, drawn out conversation lasting weeks. The topics were what you’d expect- the best computer hardware, bits of software you could download, where to find “cracked games,” and the search for “The Big Pirate Board.” And yes, for those of you who remember, there were also lists of “good” MCI long distance codes you could use to call long distance free. We called them “LDS.” And their usage was legally dubious.
While you could download digital images, some software, and some sounds, those were limited by the size of the SYSOP’s disk drive. The “Big Pirate Board” was rumored to have a 60 MegaByte hard drive, with an unlimited number of the best games, software, and images to download.
But the number to that board, if it ever existed, was a well kept secret. If it got out, thousands of kids would run up their parent’s long distance bill, the board would be slammed, and no one would ever get in. Plus, if you wanted to download, you had to have something to upload, something good.
I wish I could tell you we found it, got in, and downloaded some dark, nefarious software. But we didn’t. We never found it. Later, in the 1990’s when I was at the University of Texas, I met some people who did know of one in San Antonio, Texas that was operational in the 80’s. But we missed it.
The most exciting thing that happened in 1986 were the BBS fights. Users and SYSOPs staked out their territories, and declared war on other boards. The weapons were what we could call MEMES today, brutal images, games and software about how bad the other boards sucked.
One SYSOP created a game where he drew an image of another SYSOP’s face, put it on top of a naked monkey, and the object of the game was to get the monkey to whack himself off as fast as possible.
He called it Mr. Meatjoe.
He created it, posted it on his board, and encouraged users to download it and spread it around. We did, one floppy disk at a time, and the war was on.
The target of Mr. Meatjoe struck back. He created an animated MEME called The Wall of Shame, depicting the enemy SYSOP peering into the asshole of another enemy sysop. He called them out by name, saying, “Look at these two Ass Crack Spreaders, SYSOP1 and SYSOP 2, sitting around all day examining each other’s assholes.” He won the day with that one.
There was nothing more brutal- or hilarious- than a good SYSOP fight, and that was the best reason to keep dialing in- to see the responses that were posted. One might call it anti-social media.
In December of 1986, I got the news that my family was moving from Corpus Christi to San Antonio, Texas, the worst news any 10th grader with close friends could get. The only good that could come out of it was access to new BBS systems where I could dial in without paying long distance, download games and software, then physically mail them to the Mic. Before I left, we found a huge list of San Antonio BBS’s, and I promised to dial into them all.
When I got settled in San Antonio, I dialed into a few, but it wasn’t the same. In fact, it sucked. I was alone, sitting in front of a computer, sending messages to people I would never know, and any replies were meaningless. The excitement was gone.
That’s when I realized that what made the BBS’s so exciting was dialing into them with good friends. It was something we did in person, connecting with people we might meet in person. It was the personal connection, the potential of meeting like minded people in person that made it so much fun. Take that away, and it’s as lame as chatting with strangers you will never meet on Facebook.
The BBS days enhanced our personal connections, and deepened our relationships. That was the real magic. You didn’t enter a secret world alone, you entered it with friends. You created a lasting bond with existing friends, and friends you met on the boards. You had something in common that few people understood existed. You didn’t go into the digital world to get away from people. You went into the digital world to be around people.
I’ll never forget the first time I dialed into a BBS, but I can’t come close to remembering the last time. Sure, I met a few new friends in San Antonio, but they didn’t care about the BBS’s. So we did other things, and the BBS days faded into memory.
As time passed, the hardware became obsolete, then a museum piece. The BBS’s, which were local networks, not connected to each other, mostly died when the internet arrived. If you weren’t there, you’ve probably never heard of them.
But there is one thing that survived, brighter than ever in this dull new digital world we live in- the memory of how it felt to step into a hidden, secret world with your best friends in 1986. That feeling will never fade, never diminish.
And it’s the best thing I ever downloaded from any BBS network.
Phhhart. Phhhhhhaaaaart. Phhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrt!