About
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 10,000 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).
You can also find us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/particlesbbs
January 26th, 2015 at 4:36 pm
Hi. I’m from West Nebraska. I started out with a Vic-20 and a Datasette in ’78. In ’84 I moved up to a C= 64 with a 1541 Drive. My first modem was 300 baud. I could read my e-mail and acticles from my local BBS as they were coming “down the pipe”. I Couldn’t use any programs at the time due to my C= 64 on a BBS for PCs. In ’86 I upgraded again to a C= Amiga 500. I got a 2400 baud modem and found an Amiga BBS in Little Rock AR that I called once a month.
Now I use Vice and CCCS to “relive” my 64 days. I do have a D64 about 3/4 filled with Vic-20 prgs if you are interested.
So just wanted to say “congrats and Thank You” for keeping the BBS alive.
March 1st, 2015 at 9:19 am
Hm, is it trully up 24/7? Because I’m trying to connect right now and I always get:
Connected to particlesbbs.dyndns.org.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
particles! bbs – http://www.particles.org
connecting…
Connection closed by foreign host.
March 1st, 2015 at 2:30 pm
It truly is, except when it crashes… and it crashed last night. It’s rebooting now.
March 2nd, 2015 at 6:33 am
Ah thanks for replying
Seems to have crashed again, but oh well, I’ll keep on trying!
June 13th, 2015 at 12:26 am
Thank you for keeping this open! I’m new, just fixed my c64 and have been checking things out… hope the ‘online’ games are active.
February 17th, 2016 at 4:39 pm
I heard you were looking for some Petscii GFX. I found a few images and zipped them up. I’m not sure where they came from but I know there are about 20 disk images here. I tried to post the link on facebook and it’s not working. Maybe it doesn’t like the file link or it doesn’t like no-ip domains. At any rate, enjoy:
http://mw2.bounceme.net/justpix055734562/petscii_from_the_net_cj.7z
February 18th, 2016 at 12:57 am
Thanks much!