Not really. I was dialing in to BBS services in 1983.
However, some computers came with modems right out of the box (often times in one of those very slots), and so not all users needed to do any hardware installation to get onto a BBS.
Also, there were external modems available that would plug into an old-fashioned serial (RS-232) port. For you little kids, this is not the same thing as USB.
You also might need to configure IRQ lines or other settings for your modem. “Plug and play” was several years in the future. We are talking about getting your hands dirty and changing jumpers on circuit boards. Sometimes they might provide an easier switch that you could just toggle. But you had to do something other than just plug it in.
This is nonsense. Computers had serial ports for modems decades before USB was around.
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Not entirely. Most had a serial port, and you could plug in an external router to that, unless it was already in use by something else, like a mouse.
**Nemo **is describing installing an internal modem. A lot of the newer, high end PCs then would come with an internal modem.
In '88 I had a PS2 mod 25, which I had installed an internal modem into. That was a bear to do.
I wasn’t quite that early (that was before I got a computer), but certainly by the late 80s. I knew plenty of folks BBSing or using online services like Compuserve or Quantum Link by 1987 or so. (Compuserve started in 1979 and Q-Link in late 1985). I remember the mid-80s issues of Family Computing being full of Compuserve ads and weird Compuserve style email addresses, which were something like “72345,1234.” Heck, didn’t War Games in 1983, have the main character dialing up to a BBS somewhere in there? I know he logged into the school computer and the government computer, but it seems like the existence of BBSes was at least implied in the movie, but it’s been a couple years since I’ve seen it.
73457,452 Baybeeeee
If your second sequence only had 3 digits, you were old skool. 
I joined Compuserve in 88. It came in a big grey box like a hardback book, $50 with a $50 credit. Functionally free but they weren’t just giving it away quite yet. Mostly I just played Scott [?someone?'s] Adventure and wasted time in chat rooms.
Edit: our modem was external and blazing fast 4800 bps.
Scott Adams, I assume? I remember those from the Vic-20 years. Had a bunch of his games, including “Pirate’s Cove.” (I want to say there were five for the Vic-20. Adventure, Pirate’s Cove, The Count, Voodoo Castle, and some spy one. Secret Mission, I think.) “Pirate’s Cove” is where I first learned the word “flat” to mean “apartment” and “doubloon.”
Haha, yeah – I wrote “Scott Adams” then I reminded myself “that’s the Dilbert guy” so I thought I misremembered.
I recall if you tried the Adventure magic words (one was “xyzygy”) in Zork, funny things would happen.
How often were you fooled by Robo-Sysop?
XYZZX. Also ‘plugh’.
In the UK, the equivalent of Compuserve was called Microlink … it was definitely operational before 1988 … I remember being hooked up to it in 1986.
It was also bloody expensive …,.IIRC a quarterly subscription was something like £125.GBP
At that time of course, everything was expensive …I remember buying a Star dot matrix printer in 1986 for £345 GBP
A hollow voice says, “fool.”
I blame my phone keyboard. There is no way that is not the last earthly word to pass through my brain before I die.
Wait. Now I’m wondering if we’re talking about two different things. Scott Adams’ game was Adventureland (or “Adventure Land” on the Vic-20 cartridge. I personally remember it simply as “Adventure,” and this screenshot shows I’m not going crazy, but the cartridge images I could find online all are “Adventure Land.”) You must be talking about Colossal Cave Adventure, which was William Crowther (expanded by Don Woods.) That would make a bit more sense, as that would more likely be the text adventure game you’d find on a BBS or mainframe, and that’s the one with the XYZZY magic word (unless Scott Adams also incorporated it as a nod to Crowther. I never got to the end of Adventure(land), so I don’t know for sure.)
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ATH0
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I remember knocking people off of the CIS “CB” system by figuring out how many spaces needed to be added to the beginning of a line to make it wrap to the next on-screen line, then typing NO CARRIER
Some comm apps of that era would cheerfully accept that as a message from the modem and drop the connection. :smack: Could be worse. My very first comm app was IBM’s COMM.BAS, a BASIC program that would crash at the first hint of hitting backspace. Whenver that happened, I could CTRL-ALT-DEL the PC, reboot, and start the app while the external modem was still holding the connection.
If memory is accurate, my last CIS ID was 76403,5166 - think I had three over the years.
One thing I don’t think anyone really mentioned is that you wouldn’t get BBS service via Compuserve. They were one of the first “walled gardens” and there wasn’t a whole lot of outside connectivity other than perhaps taking a stab at searching for something via GO ARCHIE.
I’m just trying to remember the service I used to save on long-distance phone bills for reaching distant boards. Tymshare, perhaps? For something like ten or fifteen bucks a month, you could get evening and weekend access to dial in with a local number, then use the system to dial the number you wanted.
Just because I’m astonished that this bit of info just surfaced from the depths, let me leave this here…
74765,1445