A blast from the past.
Thirty years ago — yeah, I’m that old — I didn’t even know the internet existed yet. As far as I knew, cable internet didn’t exist either.
But there was a vibrant community of people running Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes), which you could dial into to get your daily fix of data, messages, programs, and… ehm… let’s call them fleshy-colored JPG files.:P
There were basically three types of BBSes.
- Mainstream BBSes
- Scene BBSes or boards
- Elite/Warez boards. ( mostly illegal/cracked software )
And for the people who have no idea what “Scene” meant: it was basically everything related to homemade music, art (mostly ANSI-based), custom-made software, and more. So you had the music scene, the ANSI art scene, etcetera.
I ran a BBS called “BRAiNDEAD” from approximately 1994 to 1998 or 1999. I don’t remember the exact dates anymore, unfortunately.
CHAOS?!?
But eh… there’s Chaos! in the title — what about that chaos? Was your BBS a chaos?!
Yeah, it was.
But that’s not the Chaos I meant.
Chaos was a Fidonet-style clone with its own members, own rules, own hosts, hubs, nodes, and points. And yes — I was a proud host during the heyday of Chaos. My addresses were 57:130/0, 57:130/100, and 57:130/101.
Why three?
/0 was the HOST address, /100 the HUB address, and /101 my personal node — the one I used to post my own content from.
This configuration was managed in a file called the nodelist. Unfortunately, I no longer have a nodelist from back when I was a proud host… but I did find some other, newer gems in my backups a while ago.
I was the maintainer of the file, and as you can see, I made the serious fuck-up of stating that The Jam Zone was the host — while the comment above still showed my own board name. 😛 WHOOPS!
Probably the first thing you’ll notice is everyone’s names: The Chronic, Bitface, Cornucopia, Skilla, Felix, Dutch, Shockwave, StefDude, Dweazle, Copkiller, Me (Brain), Elemental, Eelcapone, Beavis, Stime, Cosmic Girl, Lucifer, and Da Cubik…
WHOT?!
Yep — everyone used a handle or nickname, and we always used those names when posting new bullshit, more on that later!
You can also see Elemental in the list, that is the same guy who gave me my nickname.
BTW: Links to all Chaos-related files can be found at the end. Nerds, rejoice!
Software
Running all of this required quite a few different pieces of software.
First, you needed a program called Frontdoor — this was the software that picked up the phone when someone dialed into your BBS. It would then determine whether it was a mailer calling, or an actual person wanting to enter the BBS itself.
Then you needed the BBS software. I used the popular RemoteAccess version 2.x, which was highly customizable with all kinds of third-party tools written for it. That’s what made it fun — you could create your very own look and feel for your board!
For the tossing of files — yes, that’s really what it was called — you needed a tool called Allfix. It was a bit tricky to integrate into Frontdoor, but once it worked, it worked beautifully.
Allfix also handled the tossing of new nodelists throughout the system.
And how did all of this work together
Well… with the ugliest part of the setup: one massive .BAT file full of ERRORLEVEL checks and endless :GOTO statements. But hey — it worked!
And reading all the conversations? For that, I used a program called GoldEd.
DOS/duct tape magic™.
Certified vintage chaos.
Files & Lists
This is the part that still makes me grin — even after more than three decades.
Several members kept track of various files and lists, some of which were absolutely hilarious.
The information below is a verbatim copy of the chaos.his file — where HIS stands for HISTORY! (DUH.)
First of all, there are some lists where everybody can drop info about anything. So if you're curious, just start a new list.. þ Hair-list; everything about hair-length, color etc etc. Maintained by TGK þ UUCP-list; e-mail adresses, and other internet info like webpages ICQ-number, FTP-site or other info. Maintained by TGK þ WIT-list; everything about toilets. Maintained by Tvf þ Config-list; the hardware-configurations (see who's the rich-one). Maintained by Crusher? þ AKA-list; information about AKA's and former AKA's. Maintained by Brain
Yes. A WIT-list — everything! about toilets. And no, I don’t have the actual lists anymore, but I still remember what was in them. Basically, it came down to whether you had a “spoel-plons” or a “plons-spoel” toilet at home.
I even asked ChatGPT for a proper translation — and guess what? ChatGPT delivered!
-
Spoel-plons → flush-then-splash toilet
(“a toilet where the water flushes before anything hits it”) -
Plons-spoel → splash-then-flush toilet
(“classic drop-in-water type, no platform involved”)
Yes… ultimate NERD humor. 💩💾
Stats
We also had weekly statistics — including a top 10 of most active posters and, if I remember correctly, a list of the most popular topics.
The stats software was written by none other than Lucifer! and was called… L-Stats!
Yep, we were that organized.
I still remember one glorious moment when the messagebase structure was updated — yes, even back then we had breaking changes — and it completely broke L-Stats!, driving Lucifer! absolutely nuts.
Lanparty @ The Axe!
We held a LAN party in The Axe!’s basement during the summer of 1996 near Nijmegen (Malden?). Elemental, Lucifer!, Cornucopia?, TGK and others were there.
It was a full weekend of gaming, fun, weed (not me), coding, and all sorts of weird stuff. I vividly remember two things…
Lucifer his keyboard
I remember Lucifer! was trying to get L-Stats! back to work during that weekend. I think it was somewhere around 4 in the morning — it was dead quiet at the moment…
And then it happened. Lucifer! raged.
He picked up his keyboard and smashed it onto the concrete floor.
Keys. Went. Everywhere!
We all looked at him with our square eyes.
You know the kind — the ones shaped by staring at CRTs for way too long straight.
Then he calmly picked up all the keys, clicked them back into place one by one, sat down… and continued coding like nothing had happened.
The keyboard still worked. Because of course it did. (Mechanical, baby.)
Ordering milkshake!
And the other thing I still remember?
Ordering a milkshake in a coffeeshop. Not the kind where you buy coffee — the other kind if you know what I mean 🙂
But hey… they actually had milkshakes on the menu.
So we all ordered one — you know, besides the grassy stuff. I still remember the guy who took our order. He looked at us, nodded…
… and then just ran out the door.
Like… WTF?!
A few minutes later, he came back — holding a tray of milkshakes, all casual like nothing happened.
Turns out he just ordered them down the street.
WHAHAHA.
True service. True chaos. True Netherlands.
That party at The Axe!’s place? Still one of the most epic LANs I’ve ever been to.
Files
I could write a book about Chaos and the scene (and maybe I will someday). But for now: here’s the digital gold I managed to recover from the past.
Enjoy.