My secret life as an 11-year-old BBS sysop

Thirty years ago last week—on November 25, 1992—my BBS came online for the first time. I was only 11 years old, working from my dad's Tandy 1800HD laptop and a 2400 baud modem. The Cave BBS soon grew into a bustling 24-hour system with over 1,000 users. After a seven-year pause between 1998 and 2005, I've been running it again ever since. Here's the story of how it started and the challenges I faced along the way.

Enter the modem

In January 1992, my dad brought home a gateway to a parallel world: a small black plexiglass box labeled "ZOOM" that hooked to a PC's serial port. This modem granted the power to connect to other computers and share data over the dial-up telephone network.

While commercial online services like CompuServe and Prodigy existed then, many hobbyists ran their own miniature online services called bulletin board systems, or BBSes for short. The Internet existed, but it was not yet widely known outside academic circles.

A photo of a Zoom 2400 BPS modem like Benj first used in 1992. — A photo of a Zoom 2400 BPS modem like I first used in 1992. Credit: John Scagon

Whereas the Internet is a huge connected web of systems with billions of users, most BBSes were small hobbyist fiefdoms with a single phone line, and only one person could call in and use it at a time. Although BBS-to-BBS message networks were common, each system still felt like its own island culture with a tin-pot dictator (the system operator—or "sysop" for short) who lorded over anyone who visited.

Not long after my dad brought home the modem, he handed off a photocopied list that included hundreds of BBS numbers from our 919 area code in North Carolina. Back then, the phone company charged significantly for long-distance calls (which could also sneakily include parts of your area code), so we'd be sticking to BBSes in our region. This made BBSes a mostly local phenomenon around the US.

Raleigh-area BBS list from 1991. — My original Raleigh-area BBS list from 1992, dated December 9, 1991. Credit: Benj Edwards

With modem in hand, my older brother—about five years older than me—embraced calling BBSes first (we called it "BBSing"). He filled up his Procomm Plus dialing directory with local favorite BBSes such as The Octopus's Garden, The Body Shop, and Chalkboard. Each system gained its own flavor from its sysop, who decorated it with ANSI graphics or special menus and also acted as an emcee and moderator for the board's conversations.

I have a distinct memory of the first time I realized what a BBS was. One day while I looked over my brother's shoulder, he showed me the file section of one of those BBSes—a list of available files that you could download to your local computer. Pages of free-to-download shareware games scrolled by. My eyes widened, and something clicked.

"You can download games for free?" I remember thinking. I noticed one file labeled "RAMPAGE.ZIP" that was one hundred kilobytes—or "100K," as listed. Thinking of Rampage on the NES, which was one of my favorite games at the time, I asked my brother to download it. He declined because it would have taken over five minutes to transfer on our 2400 BPS modem. Any file around one megabyte would take about an hour to download.

Online time was precious back then. Since most BBSes only had one phone line, you didn't want to hog the line for too long or the sysop might boot you. And there was extra jeopardy involved. Since we were using our regular house telephone line to connect, the odds that my mom would pick up and try to dial out—thus ruining the transfer process—remained very high. But whatever the risks, the thrill of remote projection by computer sunk into me that day and never left.

The joy of BBSing

While my brother began calling BBSes in January 1992, the novelty seemed to wear off for him around March, according to call records I have. He never called them much again. But my story was just beginning. During August of 1992 (on August 2, if I trust my records), just after finishing fifth grade, I began visiting local BBSes in earnest.

Before I started, though, I needed a special name. Many people in the BBS world had a cool alias that they used instead of their real names. Handles like "Gorgon Horror," "The Wizard," and "Einstein" were common. My brother's name was "Blue Dragon," and his favorite color was blue. My favorite color was red, so I picked "Red Wolf." I liked wolves.

To call BBSes, I first used our family's generic 386 PC running MS-DOS—chiefly my brother's computer, and that began to annoy him because he wanted to use it for programming and gaming. And I did it so much that I kept tying up the phone line, which annoyed everyone else in the house.

Eventually, I convinced my parents to sign up for a second telephone line for my BBSing habit (although I called BBSes so much that it may have even been their idea). I do have a small note in my mom's handwriting that the second line would cost $98.15 to install and $16.61 per month after that (about $35 per month today).

Benj's original Procomm Plus dialing directory from 1992. — My brother's original Procomm Plus dialing directory from 1992. Credit: Benj Edwards

Like my brother, I used Procomm Plus (or "PCPLUS" as we called it), which supported IBM PC ANSI colors and terminal codes and provided a nice automated dialing directory. To call a BBS, you'd press Alt+D, select the BBS name with the arrow keys in the list, and hit enter. Your modem would call out (oh, the glorious noise), and if the line was busy, it would attempt to call the BBS over and over again until it connected. Then you sat and waited.

Once the other modem picked up and made a successful connection, Procomm Plus would play a three-note PC speaker melody, and the screen would clear, showing the intro graphics for the BBS, then the login screen where you typed your name and password. It was a rush.

I spent hundreds of hours that summer and fall on local BBSes with cryptic and colorful names. Chaotic Hysteria, Online's Place, The Fastlane BBS, and Baxter were a few of my favorites. But one in particular—The Medieval House of Horrors—became my obsession because its sysop was only a couple of years older than me, and we became friends.

My dad died in 2013. A few days ago, I found a box of his trinkets at my mom’s house

There was something wedged in a pouch. I tilted the box and out tumbled the missing key to my 386 PC’s keylock, 29 years later 😮

He locked my PC when I rackedup a $200 phone bill calling BBSes pic.twitter.com/IIU7Wf96P8
— Benj Edwards (@benjedwards) February 19, 2021

There was only one problem, though: Medieval House of Horrors was located in Smithfield, North Carolina. It was a long-distance call from Raleigh despite being in the same area code, subject to extra fees (something like a dollar a minute back then—it was exorbitant).

A surprise $200 phone bill that showed up not much later made my father very angry. After locking my computer, which disabled the keyboard, I found a spare key. Then he just took away my keyboard. After he restored my privileges, I proceeded to do it again—and another $200 phone bill showed up. I called that BBS hundreds of times. Its sysop was my best friend—or so I thought.

Setting up my own BBS

My memories are very fuzzy 30 years later, but for whatever reason, I decided I wanted to start my own BBS in November 1992. I told my dad, and he asked the co-worker named Doug who had given him the Zoom modem for tips. I also asked local sysops that I chatted with, and they gave me conflicting advice. I didn't know where to start. It was also tricky because I was only 11 years old.

According to my surviving handwritten notes (I mentioned losing a tooth in one of them) and haphazard printouts (from an attached printer where I would press Print Screen and dump the screen contents to a piece of paper), I explored several BBS software options. At my dad's or Doug's suggestion, I tried Procomm Plus's built-in host mode, which was very bare-bones and unappealing. I also used a separate program called "Minihost," which was a minimal BBS package.

A 1992 Canon BubbleJet printout that shows The Cave BBS going online for the first time on November 25, 1992. Credit: Benj Edwards / Vintagecomputing.com

At some point, I decided to call my BBS "The Cave." My 11-year-old reasoning, as I recall, was this: My name was Red Wolf. Where do wolves live? In caves, of course! Biological reality aside, maybe I was thinking of a wolf den. The cozy feel of a den or cave, surrounded on all sides by secure earth, appealed to me.

In any case, the first record I have of bringing The Cave BBS online (using Minihost) is a printout from November 25, 1992, the day before Thanksgiving that year. It's possible I tried Procomm Plus's host mode before this, but my electronic records were lost soon after.

I used a 286-based Tandy 1800HD laptop borrowed from my dad, but things changed rapidly as I explored my options. Not long after, my dad brought home a monochrome IBM PS/2 Model 25 with a very sluggish 8086 CPU that I switched over to for a few weeks. I also tried a BBS program called VBBS for a very short period of time.

Even before I was fully ready, I jumped the gun and began advertising my BBS phone number on other BBSes. I started getting calls on the BBS phone line at night, which disturbed my parents. For some reason, I still had a conventional telephone (with the ringer turned on) sitting in my bedroom.

One night, the second line rang and my mom answered it. The caller heard her talking over their modem speaker and picked up the phone as well. I remember my mom telling the caller that I was only 11 years old and I was going to bed. It was very embarrassing, and of course, that person would mention the episode later to rib me: "I talked to your mom, and she said you had to go to bed!"

At the time, many BBS users or sysops I talked to were teenagers, mostly high school age. But I soon befriended a local sysop named David Cothran, alias "Bc," who was the sysop of Baxter, one of my favorite BBSes. At 26, he was far more wizened and mature than most sysops I knew. He felt like a full-fledged adult. We even began speaking "voice" (as we called it) on the phone occasionally so he could help me out as I entered various settings, and I remember my mom giving him a verbal screening to make sure he meant well. He really did, and looking back, I consider him a valuable mentor.

Bc noticed I was using VBBS and steered me toward WWIV, a much more locally popular BBS software package that he used on his BBS. So with his help, and with the help of a few others, I set up my WWIV version of The Cave by December 12, 1992 (the earliest record I have). Bc also helped me join a local message network called FIITAnet, which exchanged message board posts between systems with automated dial-ups during off hours.

But then disaster struck. That same month, after I had announced to the whole BBS world (every sysop I knew) that I was starting my own BBS, some of the local teenagers became jealous. As Bc noticed, I was the youngest sysop in the area, and that reputation quickly spread. The previous youngest sysop was my long-distance friend, who apparently grew annoyed. Around that time, people I didn't know began calling in, attempting to hack my new BBS.

The Cave BBS main menu, created by Radon in 1993. — The original Cave BBS main menu, created by Radon in 1992 or 1993. Credit: Radon / Benj Edwards

In those days, I used the same password on every BBS I called, including my long-distance friend's BBS. As a result, he and his friends had my login credentials to every BBS, and they began logging into them as me and posting mean public messages under my name, and starting arguments with other people. When I discovered that, I was devastated. I tried to defend myself, but it was impossible. My friend and his buddies played with my name and character as if it were a puppet, making fun of me and humiliating me in front of others.

Around that same time, I had another friend named Radon, who designed my custom BBS menus (the same ones I use, albeit modified, to this day), and he regularly called The Cave and provided updates. Somehow, my long-distance friend and his crew knew about what we were doing. He called in impersonating Radon one night, uploaded an EXE file, and said something like, "Here are the new menus you wanted." I trusted him and ran the file.

It was New Year's Eve 1992, and I sat and watched as a Trojan called "Schizophrenia" wiped my hard drive, destroying everything I had built.

A "Print Screen" printout of the trojan that wiped Benj's BBS in 1992. — A "Print Screen" printout of the Trojan that wiped my BBS in 1992. Credit: Benj Edwards

I hit Print Screen and cried. I was only 11, and I didn't have backups. So much for best friends.

Bouncing back

As devastating as that experience was, I brought the BBS back online again with a new installation during January 1993, although I lost data like the user database, messages, files, and games I had set up over the previous month. I told Bc what happened, and he helped me pick up the pieces and start over.

The betrayals of that December stung me deeply, though, and it essentially split me into two people. I would be "Red Wolf" online, and no one would know about my young age or real name. I became a pretend 30-something, a move I documented on my blog in 2005. Offline, no one (except a trusted few) would know about my BBS life. That way, I could insulate myself from that kind of damage again. Recently, with the help of a therapist, I realized that the episode was the root of many trust issues that have carried over to this day.

Still, there were good times as well. In January 1993, I met my best friend, Nukemaster, when he called my BBS. We often talked on the phone after that, and we went on many online adventures together, including on MUDs, MUSHes, and beyond. He's still my closest friend today. Nukemaster designed many wonderful Cave BBS ANSI art screens that defined the look at feel of The Cave. Callers would view them upon logging on or logging off in particular.

As I started my new life as a fictional 33-year-old, things were looking up. 1993 was a bustling year for BBS activity. I added popular door games to my BBS, such as TradeWars 2002, Operation: Overkill II, Global War, and Food Fight. With the help of many callers uploading games, utilities, and graphics, I repopulated The Cave BBS file section, which was a highlight of the board. Today, you can find my vintage BBS file section on The Internet Archive.

In retrospect, 1994 was the busiest year for my BBS, just before the Internet began widely making inroads into the community. 1995 was a great year, too, but it was also the year a local ISP called NandO.net became very popular as a gateway to the Internet, which siphoned away more users.

Regardless, my BBS tech improved on the way. After users began defecting to faster BBSes with better modems, I set aside my 2400 modem for an Intel 14,400 BPS model, then switched to 28,800 BPS at some point later. And the computer gained more horsepower as well. After running The Cave on a 16 MHz 386 for a few years, my dad bought me a generic 486 DX4 PC running at 120 MHz that screamed in DOS mode, although I used Windows 3.1 on the side. By the end, I was running Windows 95 with WWIV v4.24 in MS-DOS command prompt windows, which could run in the background while I did other things on my machine.

The Cave BBS computer in March 1996. — The Cave BBS computer in March 1996, a 120 MHz DX4 PC running MS-DOS and Windows 3.11. Credit: Benj Edwards

1996 and 1997 saw caller declines but still felt relatively active. By early 1998, very few local BBSes remained, and the call volume to The Cave felt like a trickle of what it once was. Besides, I increasingly wanted to use my second phone line as a 24-hour link to the Internet instead.

The last day of the original Cave BBS was February 9, 1998. I was in 11th grade, about to turn 17 years old. I remember waking up one morning, checking the BBS, and noticing that a memory leak (which was common with BBS door games) had crashed the BBS again. Instead of resetting it, I decided to just take it offline. I held no ceremony and shed no tears; it just felt like time to hang up the ol' BBS and move on.

Coda: The telnet era

If you haven't noticed already by the photos and printouts, I have an inborn predilection for history and documenting things. Even when I was 11 years old, I was looking ahead and trying to predict what artifacts would be important to the future. That's around the time I began collecting vintage computers and game consoles (with the aim of starting a museum, which never happened).

In 2005, I began revisiting my BBS past on the Internet with posts on Vintage Computing and Gaming, a blog I founded. It was there I first publicly revealed my real age as "Red Wolf" the sysop (24 at the time). Amazingly, I received two emails from ex-Cave BBS callers who were surprised to learn the news. One of them was even a close friend that often played Duke Nukem 3D co-op with me. They had no idea I was a kid back then.

The Telnet Cave BBS main menu, 2005-present. Credit: Benj Edwards

Around that same time, I set up a telnet version of The Cave BBS using Synchronet software, which was Internet friendly and very easy to use. Today, I still host that version of The Cave BBS, and I wrote a handy guide about how to call it.

The original Cave BBS ran for just over five years, but the Telnet version of The Cave has now been running for 17 years—far longer than my dial-up days. Is it the pretender now or the real thing? Where does nostalgia stop and the present begin? As it turns out, the veil between the past and future is far more permeable than I thought.

And as for me, my identity as a BBS sysop is now fully integrated into my life in general. It's no longer a secret act or a role that split off but something I can embrace with pride as we all look back on that formative era together. Back then, we BBSers were the nerds, the weirdos. Now the whole world is using online services very much like a BBS, and they don't even know it.

Listing image: Benj Edwards

Benj Edwards Senior AI Reporter

Benj Edwards is Ars Technica's Senior AI Reporter and founder of the site's dedicated AI beat in 2022. He's also a tech historian with almost two decades of experience. In his free time, he writes and records music, collects vintage computers, and enjoys nature. He lives in Raleigh, NC.

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