Former BBS sysop here. No idea where any of my old backups are. It has been almost 20 years.
When BBS's died it was both quick and quiet. It is hard to describe. It wasnt like a retirement party where we all sat around toasting the years of door games and shareware. Then hit the power button while saying tearful goodbyes. No. It was more like you left for lunch one day and never returned. Not only you, but so did everyone else too. At the time we thought we would come back but we just didn't. No one even knew who was the last person.
I restored my old BBS off 250mb tapes after spending a long time piecing together a system able to read them. I was able to get some random files from the file section, and even got it up and running in DOSBox, login, and read my inbox from 22 years ago. I was actually able to track down one of the ANSI artists who made one of the menus I used because he publicly linked his identity to his past ANSI work. He's a graphic designer now and was happy to get an e-mail bringing back memories of the past :)
Is FidoNet archived anywhere?
Re:3,000 floppy disk archive (1982–1994)
by externalmodem on Friday May 01, 2015 @11:20AM
(#9471983)
Unfortunately, no. There is no comprehensive archive. There are bits and pieces on the web plus several Fido boards still running with archives going back a decade or so.
BBS operators of the 80s and 90s, where are the copies of those hard drives that you took out of that 286 before you binned it? Google may have bought and destroyed Dejanews, but you're hoarding something much more valuable (IMHO!)