Ask HN: Remember Fidonet?

orf

https://www.google.com/search?q=is+fidonet+alive+today https://www.google.com/search?q=is+fidonet+archived+anywhere

zapp42

https://www.fidonet.org/

jlarcombe

FidoNet was great fun. Despite finding it difficult to remember any useful numbers in my life (credit card, NI etc) I can still remember my FidoNet addresses from when I was a youngster. I'm not sure how I'd feel about an archive though, I'm sure I wrote a lot of childish nonsense on it! like a lot of things, perhaps best left as a happy memory...

invaliduser

2:320/104 represent!

Joe_Cool

Yes, but only what was mirrored to usenet: https://usenetarchives.com/groups.php?c=fido But usenetarchives has had some enshittification happen. This one still has some of the more fun files: http://textfiles.com/bbs/FIDONET/ There is also a Giganews dump on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/giganews And this one: https://archive.org/details/usenet-fido Google stopped being useful for usenet a while ago but still has some if you can find it.

grumpysysop

Get off my lawn!

fidotron

Of course! There was a time we were encouraged to be friendly with Russia, and many Russian devs were on Fidonet. This was actually how some I knew were recruited to work for western companies.

bjourne

I do remember. :) Posted the same question ten years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12216932 The archives are almost completely gone and only a small fraction is available on internet. Perhaps some still exist on old harddrives - but I wouldn't count on it. Disk space wasn't cheap back then.

brk

I remember, and ran a node for a while. I think it is alive today in spirit through forums like this. The original needs and limitations that drove the creation of Fidonet have been dead for decades though.

throwaway_20357

There surely must be some BBS backup tapes somewhere that at least contain some of the boards?

steve1977

I also remember the MausNet. This was a German speaking counterpart so to speak. Interestingly, I remember it from my Atari days, even though it was initially a Apple network (Münster Apple User Service).

graycrow

It was really popular in Ukraine in the late '90s, before Internet became widely available. [Former point of 2:4614/1]

qsort

It became famous in Italy even among non-techies because it was involved in a large scale police operation in 1494 dubbed the "Fidonet crackdown". https://www.wired.com/1994/08/hacker-crackdown-italian-style...

harrigan

Episode 4 of the BBS documentary covers Fidonet and is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng0NE4lDP2U

cykros

Last I checked it was still quite alive with quite a few BBS systems, though admittedly that was a few years ago. Looks like you can still hook up to it using a Synchronet BBS anyway using the steps available here: https://wiki.synchro.net/howto:fidonet The homepage for FIDONet itself is here: https://www.fidonet.org/ And the Zone 1 Hub, Dark Realms (a Renegade BBS since 1994) is here: https://www.darkrealms.ca/ It has node lists available if you're looking for systems to connect from.

anovikov

2:5019/19

grishka

I'm too young to have used it myself but from what I know it was huge in Russia in the 90s.

ferd

yes! don't remember my number, Zone 4 for sure (Argentina). Exchanging messages with people on the other side of the world felt like magic at the time (even though it took many hours/days for a msg to round-trip) I also run "Sudaka's BBS" based on Maximus/2, with many interactive "apps" I'd developed using Maximus' proprietary C-like language. Great high-school times. I can still hear my parents complaining about my monopolizing the phone line every night :-)

b112

PunterNet, the C64 BBS by Steve Punter, was far more popular for a time. The C64 was the most sold computer of all time, and may still be. It wasn't until later that clones existed and became popular, and then FidoNet dwarfed PunterNet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64 It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling desktop computer model of all time. I used to run a board. Was beyond fun.

throw0101d

I also remember using the BlueWave offline mail reader: * https://en.everybodywiki.com/Blue_Wave_(mail_reader) As well as the QWK and SOUP file formats (the latter when I started on Usenet as well): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWK_(file_format) * https://web.archive.org/web/20080509070947/http://combee.tec... And Tradewars 2002 'door game': * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_Wars * https://breakintochat.com/wiki/TradeWars_2002 * https://breakintochat.com/wiki/BBS_door_game * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_(bulletin_board_system)