Fossil resources on the Internet
Once upon a time, the Internet was rationed. And by the minute. And then he wasn’t there either. There was FIDO, there were BBS. The Legend of the Red Dragon. I thought all this was long ago and firmly gone – but no. It so happens that I have already accumulated a handful of fun resources (and some useful ones) that I want to share. For fun or nostalgia. But not only that 🙂
SDF
This multi-user *nix server – I found it myself when I was looking for some online resource for a friend to practice with Linux commands. Well, actually, FreeBSD turned out to be there, but that’s not the point. What can he do?
at the free level you can host small websites, use it as a small storage (ssh, ftp), communicate in bboard (like the internal forum of oldies and geeks), you can write CGI scripts but only in ksh and a small number of tools, there is also mail and what something else
for a one-time bribe (36 bucks, in my opinion) you get a slightly more privileged level – outgoing ssh, telnet, requests in general, and an insane number of languages for CGI, PHP also works
Here it is necessary to clarify that the “free” level can be confirmed or unconfirmed. You can confirm it either by asking someone you know, or by sending something like 1 dollar, either by paper mail or by any electronic means. In the current situation it may be a little more complicated but it's probably worth asking on bboard.
But that's not what's important! It turned out that the important thing is that on bboard they often discuss all sorts of other real fossil resources online and offline that we have never heard of. Somewhere the PDP-10 will be launched with general access, otherwise the conversation will turn to old MUDs or BBSes that are still available online.
BBS
Actually, from a discussion on SDF, I once learned that some enthusiasts still have BBSes. True, basically everything is accessible via the Internet (probably a modem for a telephone is now a rare thing, like a wired telephone). The first one I found was Mutiny BBS – it, like some similar ones, has the ability to be used directly through a terminal emulator on a web page. Come in, log in, play dragon!
When you log out from Mutiny, a link to SynchroNet appears – and that’s how I learned about the existence of a large list of similar BBSs. True, you will find that the traffic there is several connections per day.
As for the dragon. Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD) – a cult game of those times, although a primitive multiplayer RPG. But there are funny messages when killing monsters, you can crush each other while breaking into a hotel at night, you can flirt (and even marry) the waitress. Well, you can also marry each other. And give birth to children (I don’t remember what their function is).
In general, there are a lot of games – in the Asylum (Lunatix) or in space wars – and much more.
Unfortunately, on most BBS you will find that local Dragon is played by one and a half people and this does not give fun. Unless you bring friends. But there is a government for this!
It turned out that about 10 years ago the BBS-ok network (BBSNet) was created – primarily to provide access to common games. So on most BBSes connected to this network you will find a menu item in the spirit of “play LoRD on BBSNet” – that’s where the sausage and meat are maintained in the good old spirit!
UseNet
On BBSs, in addition to games, you can find message sections – these days they are almost dead (no wonder spies don’t use this!) – but usually there are also sections connected to public networks. Quite a lot of such networks arose in those days. One of the quite popular ones is UseNet.
I found several of her newsgroups on the same Mutiny BBS. I tried to write to alt.bbs – a group dedicated to the activities of the BBC – with a question about where you can get access to a larger number of news groups. I thought the message wouldn’t go away or they wouldn’t answer.
And they answered. So I soon found NovaBBS (novabbs.com) and eternalseptember – two sites that provide access to an extensive list of groups. It's easy to register – and you can write and read directly from the site – or by connecting a suitable reader (many old email programs can do this).
Unfortunately, many groups look dead – but in some, communication is lively. I was pleased to discover that in the electronics group they respond very actively – and very smartly, for example.
MUDs
Text quests are now perceived as something archaic, and perhaps in vain. What is the difference between a book and a movie, for example? In the movies, we are shown a picture – the hero is skinny, blond – and without thinking we perceive all this as shown. There are few or no pictures in the book – and our imagination strains – we automatically imagine what the characters look like, the world in which they live, and so on. This is probably why some people like to read books more, others less – it just depends on how developed the imagination is (but nothing prevents you from training it).
So – text quests have the same advantage – you read on the screen that the hero ended up in an old mill, where only spiders and bats live – and, willy-nilly, you imagine this picture in your mind. Maybe your coolest video card will render it more vividly than you can. Therefore, fans of “Interactive Fiction” exist in groups even now – although for the most part all good games (or interactive stories) are in English.
One of the first – and still very famous – quests is Colossal Cave (Adventure 350). At first, playing may seem difficult – remembering or writing down where the curved transitions lead and choosing the appropriate words. But when you figure out how to kill the dragon (he, a parasite, is sitting on a valuable carpet that needs to be obtained) – you will be delighted. If you want to play a little game, find Lost Pig – it's easily accessible online, it only has 7 rooms – and it's really funny.
As an evolution of text quests, multiplayer games and MUDs appeared. Here, lovers of the Russian language are in luck – one of the most extensive virtual worlds of this type is called “Epics”. Take a look at bylins.su – arm yourself with telnet or a more advanced client… and in general you can hang out there for years. There are probably more than a hundred thousand rooms in the game already. I mastered the route on foot from Kyiv to Novgorod, it seems, only after a few years. And there is a frog in the swamp, which demands to kiss it, and then swears, “Damn zoophiles!” But this is a retreat.
I recently found one of the earliest MUDs – and possibly the oldest – currently available online. From the late 1970s – so old that it was written in BCPL (its code is on Github – in fact, I learned about it after becoming interested in this language – but I will write a post about this separately). A certain enthusiast Viktor Toth once rewrote it in C and made it available on british-legends.com – I’ll warn you right away, it’s more like Colossal Cave than modern MUDs. However, probably a separate post is also needed about this game and how it was made.
WorldOfSpectrum
And this refers to the “pre-network” era – for those who vaguely remember ZX Spectrum computers. In our country, they seemed to be most popular in the category of “home computers” such as the Apple-II and BK-0010 – when very few people had yet seen the IBM PC.
So, the site worldofspectrum.org contains an incredible amount of programs for the Spectrum – in the form of tape images loaded into emulators, memory snapshots (for the same emulators) or disks (for later versions). Emulators, of course, can also be found here (and there are now plenty of online ones). It seems that among similar platforms of those times (Apple, Commodore, etc.) this archive is the largest.
You can happily download games that you played as a child, perhaps from friends – Death Star, Sheriff, Kokotoni, Heads over Heels – and play to your heart's content. The keyboard may probably turn out to be unusual, but the ability to save and restore snapshots gives you a chance to finally beat games that you once couldn’t handle.
I’ll probably stop here, I wanted to be more concise, but maybe I got a little carried away. I see that I would like to describe some topics separately later. I hope to get started soon.
