MistyA bit back I asked if anyone had used a FirstClass BBS back in the day. Now I've got another question: anyone out there who's used a FirstClass system *on the internet*? I know they moved into corporate groupware for internal networks, but how many people used the internet version of FirstClass for non-corporate forums?
Julien Goodwin@misty no, but I was personal IT support for someone who did, but that's 20 years ago, and now I'm going to need to drink away those neurons
Tea time.
moralrecordings@misty My high school used it in the early 2000s; my vague memory is I downloaded the Windows client, tried to connect over dial-up and soon gave up over how byzantine it was.
Jeroen Wiert Pluimers@misty does xs4all First Class internet count? They have been my isp for close to 30 years now.
https://wiert.me/2012/01/15/15-years-of-xs4all-internet-provider-membership/
@wiert Thanks! To clarify, FirstClass is the name of a specific BBS system. Did xs4all run a FirstClass BBS/group?
@misty I didn't know FirstClass was also the name of a BBS system.
xs4all did not run BBS systems but we're the first ISP that allowed for mere mortals outside of the academic scene to get dial-up internet. They originate from the Hack-Tic scene (a hacker magazine similar to 2600) closely related to CCC and at the foundation of Galactic Hacker Party which turned into a quadernial hacker convention that still exists (latest was WHY2025).
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrennial_Dutch_hacker_convention
@misty back to the BBS era: I ran a dual-line Remote Access setup behind FrontDoor (hello @joho) with USRobotics HST Dual Standard modems, a Novell NerWare 3.12 server, and nodes first running on DOS under Desqview with QEMM-386, later Windows 95 (which didn't multitask quickly enough) and finally Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0.
Task synchronisation of the nodes and FidoNet handling was in hand written. batch files.
For more information, just ask or see my blog posts at https://wiert.me/category/history/bbs/fidonet/
@misty @joho I never really mentioned in public about why I stopped after running the node from 1991 till 2000.
As usual events like this have multiple causes. The final Novell NerWare 3 version was incomparable with they year 2000, migration to version 4 a headache because of architectural difference, I did t have enough resources to migrate the 2 gigabyte of data and backup scheme to Windows NT 4.0 and at the personal side
1/
I was pressed for time as my spouse had some unclear hip issues while her mom was getting treated against cancer metastasis and my mentally retarded brother just moved from a care home to his own apartment with ambulant care.
Later the hip issues were diagnosed as sarcoma of which her brother had died when the was barely a teenager. She survived with suspicion of a genetic disorder, her mom passed away in 2004 shortly after my dad suddenly died
2/
@misty @joho because of a ruptured abdominal aorta aneurysm which we now know was most likely genetic.
Basically life after 2000 never really stopped being a roller coaster, I was speaking in both the USA and Europe on Borland/InPrise/Codegear/Embarcadero Delphi, FidoNet and BBS declined in favour of the Internet, had full custody over my brother in a declining health care environment, my (then spouse but since 2002) wife has lifelong leg movement issues and
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@misty @joho in 2017 my brother broke half his face in a single sided unexplained bike incident, in 2019 our narcissistic mom got forced to a care facility because of dementia, which the general practice already suspected in 2014 but never told us causing her to abuse my brother in order to (regrettably successfully) hide her dementia causing a mental meltdown while my brother (mentally aged 3) was bicycling.
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@misty @joho in 2020 while the world tried to handle Covid-19 when I spend lots of time in hospital: the rectum cancer for which I had radiation treatment in December 2019 appeared stage IV with liver metastasis so I got extensive treatment and looked death into the eyes while my wife took all the responsibility for my brother's care and was yet again "close one" for a cancer patient.
5/
@misty @joho Early 2023 when I was partially recovered from yet another treatment in 2022, we managed to get my brother into a care facility and found us an apartment with elevator investing part of my pension in itb as it is unlikely I will reach that age.
My wife still works, I am the house man and in my (still twice but planning on once a workday) blog I am now covering more of my history and amend most of the links with Wayback archived versions which gets harder as
6/
@misty @joho a vastly increasing number of sites make it harder or even impossible for the Wayback Machine to archive their content.
I'm very much interested into that archiving technology and hope one day part of it will be hosted in the EU as that is where I live and I might be able to assist there. Traveling to the USA is prohibitive because of their government and my energy levels.
7/7
rustcellar@misty I initially used the Atlanta Macintosh Users Group first class BBS over dialup but I have a vague memory that eventually I started connecting over TCP/IP somehow (was it Telnet under the hood??) through my home PPP connection. Does that count?
@rustcellar Oh cool, that's helpful! Thank you!
Danielle Crawford@misty can’t speak to first class, i just know that my local university developed this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISCABBS
The grey beards are actual grey beards now.
vga256@misty yes! a few years ago @marisaG from the macgarden forums set up a FC bbs
afaik, it's still online. it's a retro-project, and not a corporate board - but last time i tried it, it worked great over the net.
https://macos.retro-os.live/index.php/firstclass/first-class-server-access
grawity@misty I've only encountered one public Internet instance (and can't say that I've "used" it) – our local FirstClass distributor still runs a public server to this day (firstclass.lt), though it's practically empty aside from generic FC news.
(We did have an inter-FC email exchange set up between it and our internal instance...)
@grawity Wow, still active today! Now *that’s* a rarity! This was a server basically about FirstClass itself then, rather than a general-purpose community?
@misty Yeah, I think they were more about (re-)selling it as an intranet product than building any sort of public community. (When I peeked at its user directory, it looked more like one admin's "personal/family" server than anything else.) I believe it still has open registration though.
We only barely used our intranet instance (and the licenses cost a lot for the small local uni/college); by 2014 it was still up and I was setting up Active Directory sync, by 2016 it was powered off, everyone had already been switching to Moodle anyway. (Now I run an empty "retro lab" instance on the same license.)
I know that a large university was an extensive FC user though – at least I got that impression from outside; their primary student login system was still backed by FC until ~2020.