SysOps: The People Who Ran the Boards

Every BBS had a SysOp. System Operator. The person who owned the hardware, paid the phone bill, set the rules, and stayed up too late maintaining the thing. SysOps were local celebrities in their scenes. Their boards had personalities because they had personalities. The board was an expression of who they were. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── What they actually did ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── A typical SysOp day: ▓▓ Read overnight logs to see what users did, who logged in, who got disconnected, what files were downloaded. ▓▓ Curate the file area: organize new uploads into the right directories, write descriptions, delete junk. ▓▓ Moderate messages: read every public post, kick out the trolls, pin good threads. ▓▓ Answer netmail from users with technical problems, account requests, or just wanting to chat. ▓▓ Maintain hardware. Defrag the drive. Run ScanDisk. Replace the modem when it died. The BBS was on a 386 in the spare bedroom and it ran 24/7. Things broke. ▓▓ Update the menus with new ANSI art. Most SysOps fancied themselves designers and would tweak the welcome screen monthly. ▓▓ Pay the phone bill. Cry quietly. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── The hardware ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── A respectable SysOp setup in 1993: ▓▓ 486DX2/66 with 16 MB RAM ▓▓ 540 MB hard drive (this was a lot) ▓▓ USR Sportster 14.4 or 28.8 modem ▓▓ A second phone line just for the BBS, which the family was not allowed to pick up ▓▓ A monitor that stayed on amber 24/7 showing the call log ▓▓ DOS 6.22 with DESQview to multitask the mailer, the BBS, and the file area maintenance utilities Total cost in 1993 dollars: around $3000. In current dollars: about $6000. Plus the phone line, plus long-distance charges if you were on FidoNet. ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Why people did it ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── Three reasons, usually: 1. Status. Running a board with 200 active users meant being known. Inside your scene you were somebody. 2. Curation. You got to shape the board's culture, decide what was talked about, what art ran on the welcome screen, what files were on offer. It was creative work disguised as system administration. 3. Community. You knew your callers by name. They knew you. Some of them became real-life friends. SysOp meets (face-to-face gatherings) were a regular thing. When the web arrived, most SysOps did not transition to running websites. The thing they loved was the small, local, known-by-name community. The web killed that. A lot of them just took the BBS down, sent a final NO CARRIER, and went back to having weekends. --- END OF MESSAGE ---