What Is This?

Back in the day, in the before time, and before the land of the internet, people used to call their local Bulletin Board System, or BBS, to talk with their friends, play games, and download files using text-only. When the internet became popular, many of the BBSes dropped out of favor and went by the wayside. But a bunch of us stuck around. Nowadays, it’s sort of cool to be ‘retro’ though we’re not doing this because we want to be a hipster – we just like using old computers for fun and like communicating via text instead of through a web browser. It gives a greater sense of community than a forum might which then makes it seem more personal.

So What Is a Particles?

Particles! the BBS was founded May 25th, 1992 on a Commodore 64. It’s gone through a ton of iterations over the years, but back in 2005 we went back to our roots and are using all original Commodore equipment to run the BBS. The name Particles! is sort of a joke on how BBSes were named back in the day. People liked to add the word ‘Board’ to their names, such as Surf Board, or Circuit Board. A friend suggested Particle Board and we shortened it down and it’s stuck for all these years.

So What Can I Do Here?

The BBS is open, 24 hours a day, for your ‘call’ (a telnet session these days). There are very active message bases for lots of retro conversation, well over 70,000 files for you to download for all sorts of Commodore computers, and at least 60 online games for you to play. You don’t need a Commodore computer to use the BBS – you can connect with anything you’d like. Click the tabs across the top of the webpage to find out more information on how to connect, download, or play games. We have a Retro Usenet feed so you can read messages like it’s 1984 all over again!

General Information:

The board’s address is particlesbbs.dyndns.org port 6400 (Important! Without the port number you’ll just connect to empty space).

We also have a modem at 1-479-553-8122.  You’ll most likely be limited to 2400 baud since we’re using it over a VOIP line.

You can also find us on Twitter @particlesbbs