The Bulletin Board System: it brought life online. Long before the Internet connected the planet and changed nearly evertying, there was a brave and pioneering band of computer users who spent their time, money and sanity setting up their home computers and phone lines to welcome anyone who called. They called these places "Bulletin Board Systems," or BBSes. And their collections of messages, rants, thoughts and programs became the way that an entire generation learned about being online. This 3-DVD set contains many stories of the BBS, including: - The first BBSes and their unique look on the world - The experience of being a System Operator (SysOp) - The incredible triumphs and politics of Fidonet - Underground and Hacking BBSes - ANSI Artists and the Art Scene - The BBS Industry of the 1990's - The rise of the Internet and the Internet BBS ... and much more Director Jason Scott spent three years traveling throughout the country documenting stories of the people and events that made the BBS what it was. The resulting 250 hours of footage were edited down into multiple episodes, each dealing with one aspect of the BBS. Ideal as either a teaching tool or a reminder of your own memories, the BBS Documentary Collection brings back this nearly-forgotten time in a way that will tell the story... one caller at a time.
I was sitting at lunch one day with my friend Mike in high school, and he was talking about this great new thing called a BBS. And I wasn't really popular in high school, so I was like 'What is this?'- I was really into computers. And he said 'Oh, you can talk to people through the computer.' I was like 'No.' and he was like 'Yeah, come over.' So I went over to his house, and he started dialing up. And at that moment, I was hooked.
It kinda even got brought into the mainstream when our local radio DJs would call in. And I heard him one night, sitting there listening to our little voicemail system we had. I hear his voice and go "That sounds like the guy from the radio!" And sure enough, it was the local DJ that had called in and he wanted to get online. He wanted to know, 'How do I get an account? What do I gotta do?' And he would be on the air and he would say stuff about people on our board; he'd mention 
their usernames and such. And it was a huge deal for the people that were on our board, to hear their name on the radio, and for him to be in the chat for them to go 'Hey, play this song,' and he would. And he would make a comment about missing links or something about our board that only we would know. Didn't make any sense to anybody else listening. And we basically got our free advertising that way, you know, where his program directors, they didn't know what he's saying, 'He's just saying whatever's cool and hip nowadays, I guess.' And he's really talking about our board and the people that are on there. So it was really something neat.
In '92, we had the police come over. Basically, I don't know exactly what it was... they were responding to a complaint. At that time, we had installed four telephone lines. We did the wiring ourselves, of course. We also had to convince the telephone company that we weren't running a gambling or sex phone operation, which was kind of interesting. And all the supplies we got to install at the apartment complex like the demarc, or demarcation box, were from the Southwestern Bell surplus store, so just attached that to the wall and ran the cable. So the cops came over a few months after that, responding to a complaint--it had nothing to do with SDF actually--but when they came in and they saw this black computer case about this big, with 4 modems blinking on top--probably 5 modems--they decided to call their computer crimes department. So those guys came over, you know, we wait about an hour and they came over. They took photographs of SDF, they took photographs of my musical equipment. They asked questions, you know, where'd you get this stuff, all that. They wanted login accounts, which we happily gave them, but they never logged into, so... Other than that, I mean, we were kinda worried that something would happen, but we were still unafraid that SDF was going to get confiscated. It really seemed fishy that they were so paranoid anyways.