UTOPIA BBS

From August of 1993 until April of 1996 my friends Jason Grimm and John Clemens ran a BBS [Bulletin Board System] called UTOPIA.

I had been using BBS's since I was about 10 or so. The local high school had started one on an Apple IIe with a gigantic 10Meg Hard disk known at varying times as "Mr. Weaver's Neighborhood," "Captain's Quarters," and in the end, "School Days." The final incarnation was on a 286 with a 40meg hard drive.

I used to call the high school board on my 1200 baud modem on our Apple IIe. [You typed "pr#4" and then entered raw AT commands from the modem rom monitor].

I never really got into the whole BBS thing until one day my friends called and asked me to test out their new BBS.

It was fun. I had my own sub. I was a co-sysop [Pronounced always as "sigh-sop" not "sis-op" by me]. I had a rivalry with another co, Tiberious. Raistlin [later Pianoman, AKA John] and Ford Perfect [sic] [Jason] were great sysops, and only got mildly annoyed if I played with the user-editor.

Utopia started out on a 2400 baud modem. I had my own sub called "Weave's World". I would create ANSI art. When we were hooked up to various networks, I would send e-mail to myself at other boards [and when we were briefly on WWIV net I could send e-mail through the internet gateway! It wasn't until I got a job with the Army in 1995 that I found out about the real internet].

I was Deater #3, until Ford's computer caught a virus. After that I ended up as #23. I never really forgave losing my low number.

We had neat visitors from all over. We enjoyed talking to Deity, the female from Parkton. Tin Man was cool, as was the original "Aviator" who was much older than us but seemed to enjoy the board.

I uploaded the various games I had written in turbo pascal to the transfer section.

All was good.

Gradually towards the end things tapered down. No longer were there constant busy signals; but then again no one posted. I finally got a 14.4 modem, people found the internet, AOL, and IRC.

In august 1996 Ford could no longer justify the expense of the phone line, which his family could put to better use. I was briefly made a sysop, and things wound down.

We all went off to college. I picked up Linux and have become enmeshed in the internet. Sometimes I long for the days where I would have telix re-dial for hours trying to get in. For when I could sit and play with THEDRAW for hours. But things move on.

I have recently written a program called "ansi2gif" which let me convert all my old ansi art to gif files. I have placed all of these gifs here. Thank goodness for bloated WinNT, forcing my school to move to 25meg disk quotas.
I've slowed some of the animations down a bit; they really only looked right at 1200 baud ;) They are numbered, but not necessarily in chronological order. Any "AMG" references refer to Amy G, a girl I liked in high school. Enjoy.

NOTE! PLEASE DO NOT CALL UTOPIA OR SCHOOL DAYS! THEY NO LONGER EXIST! Please do not harass the people who inherited the phone numbers.

New! I recently found some telix-capture files that I had made way back when that document some of Utopia's Bizzarre posts.

Some typical random posts from August 1993 and July 1994. [OK, so it was a telix capture file I used sporadically] 1993-08.random_posts
The first posts at my sub, the original "Weave's World": 1993-08.weaves_world_sub
Me whining about Pianoman's new mods conflicting w my slow modem: 1993-10.whine
Some more random posts, these from December 1993: 1993-12.random_posts
A not-completed top-ten list written while waiting for Utopia to stop giving me busy signals: 1994-04.top_ten
A story from the neverending story sub, May 1994: 1994-05.neverend.
Report on the Sophmore class trip to Kings Dominion 1994-06.kings_dominion
A second series of posts from the never-ending story sub. 1994-09.neverend
A final series of posts from the never ending story sub: 1994-10.neverend.
Me bragging about my prowess at the door (game) foodfite: brag.txt

Note: for those reading the above posts, the following cast of characters applies:

Deater = Me = Vince W.
Deadalious = Ford Perfect = Jason G.
Raistlin = PianoMan = John C.
Tiberius = Friend of Ford's. Note: I really liked harassing him, and I can't remember why. He really wasn't all that bad.
Rooster = Steve D.
Ruiner = Chris T.
Talon Karrde = Gus T.
Aviator [the original one, not Chris D] and TinMan were these really cool posters who we lost track of. If they are out there, drop us a line.
Deity and Dark Alley were our female posters early on. Hence they got a lot of attention. We lost track of them as well.
Various others are in the messages, but either I can't remember who they are, I don't know who they are, or it's not really important to point them out.

After Utopia shutdown, I ran a talker called Weave's World for a few years, with some minor overlap in the people who would log in

Stuff to Get

Ansi2gif: program to convert the ansi pics to gifs.
vmw_ansi.tgz: A tar.gz'd file containing all of the ansi's, plus a Linux BASH script to create the gifs from them. You can use "winzip" to uncompress a .tgz file under Windows.
On-line ansi art gallery.