Introduction

What is a BBS?

A BBS (Bulletin Board System) is a computer system that hosts an online meeting place accessible over a network connection. Users connect to a BBS using terminal software and interact through text-based menus, message boards, file libraries, and sometimes online games – all presented as text, sometimes with color and ANSI art.

The first BBS, CBBS, was created in 1978 by Ward Christensen and Randy Suess in Chicago. During the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of BBSes operated worldwide, most reachable over dial-up modem connections. BBSes were the primary way people communicated online before the World Wide Web: they hosted discussion forums, shared files, played door games, and exchanged mail through networks like FidoNet.

Although the Web displaced most dial-up BBSes, hundreds remain active today over Telnet (and some over SSH or the Web). Modern sysops run BBSes as a hobby, preserving the culture and aesthetics of the pre-Web internet.

What is Telnet?

Telnet is a network protocol from 1969 (RFC 854) that establishes a two-way text connection over the internet. Despite its age, Telnet remains widely deployed and used all over the world for embedded systems. Its longevity comes from its simplicity: it is portable, accessible, and easy to develop for, which is why BBS communities have adopted it for so long.

BBS Server Software

Many BBS software packages persist in their historical form, but some software continues to be updated and can run modern platforms (Linux, Windows, and Mac) and architectures (x86-64/arm64):

BBS Client Software

The most popular BBS Telnet clients are:

As BBS’s are telnet-accessible, you would think you could just telnet to it, and you can, but you will find corrupted screen draws and characters on most bbs’s that feature non-ascii artwork. And that is why these special emulators are suggested as they negotiate about these legacy codepages.

The python telnetlib3-client CLI can translate CP437, allowing use of telnet with your preferred terminal emulator instead of any of these special emulators:

telnetlib3-client --force-binary --encoding=cp437

See Also: MUDs

BBSes are related to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) – both use Telnet, but BBSes typically operate character-at-a-time with legacy encodings like CP437, while MUDs use line mode with ASCII or UTF-8. A companion MUD census is at muds.modem.xyz.

About This Site

This site is a census of Telnet-accessible Bulletin Board Systems. It provides a search interface to browse BBSes, preview their login banners, and examine their Telnet protocol behavior without connecting to them individually.

It was created by the author of the Python telnetlib3 library, and uses the telnetlib3-fingerprint client to gather the results shown here.

The list of BBSes scanned is sourced from the IPTIA BBS Directory relay.cfg, cross-referenced against the MUD list at muds.modem.xyz to exclude MUD servers. The resulting list is github-managed at bbslist.txt. Feel free to suggest any changes by pull request.

BBS Resources

If you are looking for more comprehensive BBS directories, historical information, or ANSI art archives, these other sites are excellent resources: