The Mister FPGA platform and the AO486 core offer a unique opportunity to recreate the experience of dialing into a Bulletin Board System (BBS) from the pre-Internet era of computing. While it’s possible to use a modem and a terminal emulator like Procomm to connect to a BBS just as it was done in the past, it’s also possible to use modern networking technologies like Telnet to access a BBS over the Internet.
To get started, you’ll need to have a Mister FPGA platform and an AO486 core installed on it. You’ll also need a Telnet client, which is a piece of software that allows you to connect to a remote system using the Telnet protocol. Many operating systems, including Windows and Linux, come with a Telnet client built-in, but you can also use a third-party Telnet client if you prefer.
Once you have everything set up, the first step is to find a BBS that is accessible via Telnet. There are several resources available online that can help you find BBSes that are still active and accepting Telnet connections. Once you have found a BBS that you’d like to connect to, you can use your Telnet client to initiate a connection by specifying the BBS’s hostname or IP address.
For example, to connect to a BBS with the hostname “bbs.example.com”, you could use the following command:
telnet bbs.example.com
This will establish a Telnet connection to the BBS, and you will be able to interact with it just as you would have in the past, using ASCII character commands to navigate menus and access various services.
Recreating the experience of dialing into a BBS using Telnet and the AO486 core can be a fun and nostalgiciac way to explore the history of computing and communication. It’s also a great way to learn more about how BBSes worked in the past, and to gain a deeper understanding of the technologies that paved the way for the modern Internet.