Recovered German BBS Archives from 1985-1986 - Fully Integrated into ATDT and Available in English + 3D-Printed Acoustic Coupler Parts
I recovered a large collection of my original German BBS archives from 5.25" C64 floppy disks, including posts, messages and discussions - including hilarious sysop beefs and other flamewars - dating back to 1985 and 1986.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPNXpaYHPy0
Also featured articles (boardzine) that reveal how people in the mid-1980s envisioned the future of BBSes and what they thought the perfect bulletin board system would look like.
With the help of Ariel's excellent ATDT software all this historic content has now been imported and integrated into a fully working BBS. Instead of being trapped in old disk images, the posts are now part of a living system again.
https://quipzz.bplaced.net/krs/
For a quick look:
Handle: guest
Password: guestguest
To make the archives accessible to the international BBS community, I transformed the entire system into a bilingual German/English BBS and translated all important content into English. Visitors can easily switch languages and explore 40-year-old messages from the German mailbox scene (that's what BBSes were called over here) without needing to know German.
The archives contain discussions written while people connected for example via 300 baud modems using Commodore 64s, C128s and early PCs, etc. In many ways it feels like a time capsule from the "Internet" before the Internet.
The video also features a small hardware project: I present custom 3D-printed parts for my Dataphon S21-23d acoustic coupler
Many thanks to Ariel for creating ATDT, adding custom import tools for my archive and helping bring this piece of German BBS history back to life.
BTW: If you're impatient, you can boost the default 1200 baud to light speed with a single keystroke (any key *g*) while reading messages.