Before the web: the boards this ground dialed

ITEM 1 · c. 1990–1996 · THE 219 GROUND

No bulletin-board system seated inside the Granger CDP appears in any list reached — and the boards that served this ground are named in the period lists themselves: the nixpub long listings of open-access Unix systems, carried on textfiles.com, name the system's anchor twice. In September 1991 and again in October 1992 the list carries, at 219-289-0282, a system located first as "Notre Dame, IN" and then as "South Bend, IN" — nstar, running SVR4 Unix on eight lines, with 1.5 gigabytes of files including the GNU and SIMTEL20/UUNET archives, 1,421 newsgroups, newsfeeds and e-mail forwarding, its BBS side priced at $30 a year, contact at sysop@nstar.rn.com. The October 1992 listing carries the same number under a second name, gator, "on the internet at 192.190.78.1 as gator.com," with shell accounts at $120 a year without Internet access and $250 with. The two names for one number print as the lists give them, unmerged: whether gator was nstar renamed, a successor, or a co-listed alias is not settled by the lists reached, and the nixpub files are the settling record. The 9600-bps board list (the 96-USA compilation) names a second serving board by name and city: Michiana Computer Network, 219-282-1054, South Bend, IN, HST. A participant's memoir carried in the BBS oral record remembers a third by its initials: "MOM — the Michiana Online Messenger. MOM was located in South Bend, Indiana." No sysop is named for any of the three in the records reached; the lists give nstar's contact only as its sysop address. The dates the record gives are the lists' own: September 1991, October 1992, and the 1993–94 list cycle for the 96-USA file.

The CDP test prints as a negative at list strength. Searched for this item: the nixpub long listings of 1990, 1991 and 1992 (textfiles.com); the 96-USA 9600-bps list; THE BBS List of November 1993 (219 area-code section, read for its Fort Wayne–side entries and its South Bend exchange range); the USBBS lists of November 1993 and March 1994; the WILDCAT! registered-systems lists of 1991–92. Every board those lists seat in this county stands in South Bend or at Notre Dame; none is seated in Granger, in Harris Township, or in Clay Township, and no 271/272/277-exchange board — the Granger exchanges of the era — appears in the 219 sections read. A hobbyist board run from a Granger bedroom would not necessarily have listed itself, and that limit prints with the negative: the finding is that no board of this ground stands in the period's own lists, and the lists are where a board that wanted callers had to be.

Sources:

1. nixpub long listings, September 13, 1991 and October 28, 1992 (textfiles.com / retroarchive mirrors) — nstar and gator at 219-289-0282, Notre Dame / South Bend, IN; prices, lines and archive holdings as printed.
2. 96-USA, the 9600-bps BBS list (retroarchive.org) — Michiana Computer Network, 219-282-1054, South Bend, IN.
3. THE BBS List, November 1993 (Sonya Chang, ed.); USBBS lists, November 1993 and March 1994 (Bob Breedlove, ed.); WILDCAT! registered-systems lists, 1991–92 — the 219 sections searched for any Granger-seated board; none appears.
4. BBS oral-history memoir (rickroot.com BBS reminiscence) — "MOM — the Michiana Online Messenger," South Bend, Indiana; participant memory, printed at that grade.