This is the first episode in a two episode story about the Bulletin Board System (BBS) era seen from a Swedish perspective. Follow DJ Daemon through the late 70s, through the Wechselmann-indictment to the discussion about Anita Bondestam and her weird moped analogy. It covers the era between 1978 to the early 1990s.
Playlist:
00:00 LIVE – Time for another episode of Flashback – Tracks from the past
00:07 DJ Daemon speaks: In this episode we will teach you to connect to the network. Just set the serial speed to 9600 bps, connect the Data Circuit Terminating Equipment to the Data Terminal and make sure to set your terminal to 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit. It’s all about the Bulletin boards, the scene of the hobbyists, the criminals, the fear inducing headlines and the cyberpunks running through the phone network at 2400 baud.
00:39 Style – Ability
03:06 DJ Daemon speaks: Before the Internet, we connected over phone lines to each other. Sure, there were USENET and university networks back then. But we, the hobbyists, called each other computer’s and wrote intelligent texts to each other. At least we thought they were, back when we were teens. This meant, everyone could have their own system to let others call them and so we formed a big scene. The person running a system like that was called a Sysop, as in System operator and the system was called a Bulletin board system or BBS. I will call them boards throughout this program to not run out of oxygen. Think about it: you had to pay long distance telephone fees to call some boards and even if they were local, you paid by the minute.
04:05 Michiel van den Bos – March Of The Halflings
08:09 DJ Daemon speaks: The first electronic bulletin board went up in Chicago in 1978, and we got our first Swedish BBS the next year. It started slowly, as the home computing era had yet not begun and few people had access to modems, computers and even liked the idea of spending money on hourlong calls. But it did happen, if only so slowly.
08:42 Beehunter of Jazz – Apoplexy
11:00 DJ Daemon speaks: One technology that made the whole BBS-era possible was the modem. Sure, a modem is just something you use to send data over a telephone line. So? When Hayes released the “Smartmodem”, the whole thing took off. This unit was standalone but came with a set of commands to control them and soon all modems used the Hayes command set. Do you remember typing ATDT 7268265 to call that number. Yeah, that’s the most common command. This meant all computers and terminal program that supported it were allowed to play. Hop on in, the water is warm, was the message. Before that, finding the right combination of hardware and software held the whole revolution back.
11:00 DJ Daemon speaks.
12:04 Traven of Syndrome – Alone In The City
17:33 DJ Daemon speaks: This podcast talks retro computing from a Swedish perspective, so here’s Sweden The BBS-scene was sprawling during the 80s. I don’t know so much about it, as I started in the 90s, but Joacim Melin has written a lot about it. On his blog, you can read about how legendary people lite Jan Mickelin were active in the BBS-scene and part of creating the Swedish computer magazine called “Datormagazin”. In the beginning it was all Commodore, but soon expanded to Amiga and later other environments. Most BBSes were small, but some, like Permobas grew large. This board was sponsored by handicap equipment manufacturer Permobil and lasted until 1985 when Permobil cut the deal. The reason was that they felt most users on it were not handicapped.
18:38 Alex Menchi – Lightquest Theme
22:52 DJ Daemon speaks: In 1988, political activist and filmmaker Maj Wechselmann successfully sued Eskil Block over something he wrote on the Swedish board Kom-systemet. He accused her of being a traitor and a Soviet agent. This later led to the enactment of the “BBS-lagen” law 10 years later, that made “electronic bulletins” fall under the law and made prosecution of slander and defamation easier. This law also applies to the Internet. So, the new technology could be abused, and people were waking up to the dark sides of it.
23:38 ArchAngel – Eternal Dreams
26:12 DJ Daemon speaks: The 90s were upon us and the boards were being examined by mass media. The headlines warned us about the seedy underbelly of the computer networks even before the Internet was a thing. The terrorist’s or anarchist’s handbook was a braindead text that explained how to make bombs. It was very dangerous to follow as I came with advice such as “If you see bubbles forming, run for it!”. It was sometimes spread among us younglings as it was cool to have a copy, but I made the good choice of not having it on my board. Then there was piracy copied games, but we have talked about that in episode 35 already. Some said you could buy drugs, meet with criminals and then there was the neurotic fear of illegal pornography that made the whole scene look downright evil. But no one I’ve ever spoken to in the scene had seen any evidence of any of that. We all felt annoyed by the press misrepresenting the whole hobby. We were only in it for the discussions and the demos.
27:31 Henripekka Kallio and Matti Brockman – A Taste of Moonshine
31:03 DJ Daemon speaks: Anita Bondestam, who was the director of Swedish authority on data- and computer issues, Datainspektionen said something that rubbed us the wrong way. She compared modems and mopeds and noted that you should make sure the kids follow the laws, wear a helmet and so on. This way she indirectly compared illegally modified mopeds with our boards. “Or as we say here in Datainspektionens: if you buy a modem, you get into trouble”. It sounds “better” in Swedish, where it rhymes. Her views on juvenile delinquency as the direct effect of using modems was very bewildering to us.
32:06 Morgan – Angel’s Deep Shadow
38:25 DJ Daemon speaks: Some other day I will talk more about the 90s and the end of the era. But you know what happened. It was not aliens, it was the Internet. Sorry, mr Tsoukalos.
38:40 Andreas Viklund of KFMF – Traxah symphonee
41:52 DJ Daemon speaks.
42:43 DRAX – Back 2 B4 Tomorrow
46:16 DJ Daemon speaks.
47:12 Astro boy of Pearl – Eclipse
51:31 DJ Daemon speaks.
52:08 Bacter vs Saga musix – Whiskey Drops
56:13 DJ Daemon speaks.
56:35 LIVE – Celebrating over 30 years of tracked music
56:41 Boomerang – Child of Light
Production notes:
I wanted to create a special series about the BBS-scene a long time. And I wanted to tell it from my own memories or from other BBS-sysops in Sweden. This was realized in the autumn of 2021 in a three part miniseries. The first part is about the early days until the early 90s. The second covers the 90s until the sunset era. The third talks about the desert wandering years until today.
Colophone:
"By the rockets red glare" is a stanza from the National Anthem of the United States of America.
Tags: Retro history, Storytelling, Host: DJ Daemon
