Welcome to Delta BBS
Delta BBS? That's a strange name, isn't it?
Well perhaps. Delta is as good a name as anything else really, and the
'BBS' stands for (or rather stood for) Bulletin Board System.
Bulletin Board, don't you post notes on one of them?
Exactly. Before the Internet really took off there were loads of
BBSs dotted all over the place with large file bases (for users to
download the latest files from) and message bases to send email and
participate in general discussions with other people. Many were free
to use - often being just a hobby of the owner (System Operator - AKA
SysOp).
Hey, you said before the Internet took off.
Yep, you're probably using a modem to connect to the Internet at this
exact moment aren't you? Well, back then you dialled the BBS direct -
literally calling someone's house on a different line (some BBS had
many many dialup lines, FlightPath had 30 at its peak (Gary, where are
you now!?).
So free to use, and the BBS cost the SysOp money to run? eh!
Indeed they did. It's how it was - running the system and chatting online
with the users gave you a Good Feeling (TM). It was also hard work - the
users always wanted to download the latest files but many couldn't be
bothered to upload anything. As a result, we SysOps used to send
archive tapes all over the country to swop for stuff we didn't have, to
keep the file areas updated and fresh. Several local SysOps ran WAPOWnet
for a fair while, it was basically a distributed filesystem on the back
of a network email system. It was quite cool since it allowed a user of
any of the BBS in the network to request a remote file and have it
delivered a few hours later.
And now?
Delta BBS's last line finally closed for business in 1999 after 16 years
of operation. Since about 1994 the dialup lines have been terminated one
by one as demand fell when people started to discover the Internet. It is
now just another domain name, plus the host to a few non-commercial websites.
Webmaster: Steve Brown
|