Update Notes: 13-Jun-2001

I just came across a web page which details in (reverse) chronological order, important milestones of the internet in Thailand. The page is part of Dr. Thaweesak Koanantakul's website and can be found at: http://www.nectec.or.th/users/htk/milestones.html. For some reason, the milestones end at January 2000 - particularly odd given that a nearby header announces: "The perpetual chronicles of Internet events in Thailand".

Update Notes: 27-Feb-2000 (revised 18-May-2001)

Thailand's internet birthing pains remind me of my own experiences with computer bulletin board systems (BBS'es) in Thailand. Towards the end of my graduate studies in the U.S., I purchased an Apple II+ with a Hayes 300bps modem which I used to download/upload my dissertation from the university mainframe for offline editing. During my non-work hours, I took to "surf" the local BBS'es for diversion.

Upon my return to Thailand in 1982, the first thing I did was to check whether there were any BBS'es around. To my disappointment, there were none. The CP/M Bangkok Users Group (CP/M BUG), though, was interested in setting up a BBS to improve communications between its members and to put its CP/M public domain library online. While the concept of a BBS was not unknown to the members, only a few had actually seen or used one before. As one such person, I took up the challenge to set one up.

At the time, though, there were numerous impediments:

1) Obtaining a computer with a hard disk

While most of us had our own computers, none of us had a computer to spare to run a BBS. Furthermore, most personal computers of that era were only equipped with floppy drives. A hard drive, however, was essential for a BBS to hold the volume of messages expected, not to mention the public domain software that was to be stored on the BBS.

Since we were a CP/M club, it behooved us to use a CP/M computer to run the BBS. Many of the big BBS'es in the U.S. at the time were using S-100 bus CP/M computers running CBBS or RBBS software, and although Apple II BBS'es also existed, these tended to support messaging only due to their limited resources. The IBM PC had already made its appearance in 1981, but no one in their right mind was going to use, least of all donate, a 100-200,000 Baht PC in Thailand to run a BBS. But even if they did, PC-based BBS software probably didn't exist yet anyway.

Action Computers, which had been instrumental in the setup of CP/M BUG, graciously lent us a Morrow MD-11 CP/M computer with a 10mb hard disk to run the BBS. But in the end, it was never actually used.

2) Obtaining BBS software

The reason why the Morrow wasn't used was because we didn't have any BBS software for the Morrow. Unlike Apples and PC's, there are major hardware differences in CP/M systems, and therefore generic BBS software required system-specific patching, something which was probably beyond us.

With this in mind, I tracked down the addresses of some Morrow Users Groups in the U.S. and mailed off letters asking for help. Due to a mix-up, we didn't get a response back for nearly a year. But one day, a diskette arrived courtesy of the Morrow Owner's Review in Berkeley, California. Unfortunately, a key part of the program called "BYE" wouldn't work and without the source code, we couldn't proceed any further. (Actually, even WITH the assembly source code, we still might have been stymied.)

3) Obtaining a modem

Less difficult, but still a problem was obtaining a modem. Given that there were no BBS'es at the time and the internet was still in its infancy, there were almost no consumer type/priced modems for sale. Modems of that era were for business use and costed in the 10,000's of Baht. Furthermore, the use of modems was theoretically regulated by the Telephone Organization of Thailand (TOT) and/or the the Communications Authority of Thailand (CAT). In fact, users were REQUIRED to purchase or lease their modems from the TOT/CAT only. (The regulations didn't target modems per se - rather, only "authorized" or "officially obtained" devices could be connected to the telephone lines. Legally, non-TOT phones couldn't even be used as extensions!)

4) Obtaining a full-time telephone line

Although telephone lines weren't terribly expensive back then, they often required months if not YEARS of waiting time to get one. BBS'es are best run as 24 hour operations, and thus it was necessary to find someone who was willing to part with one of their precious telephone lines full-time.

5) Fear and loathing

As was hinted in 3), we were totally unsure about the legality of operating a BBS in Thailand. We informally sounded out TOT, but a clearcut response wasn't forthcoming (indeed, who at TOT would have even known what a BBS was back then?) Granted, we were small fry, but this sense of fear and loathing never left us. This is also why we never published our BBS telephone number - it was always spread by word of mouth.

Aside from these problems, the biggest question we had was: "Are Bangkok's phone lines good enough to support modeming?" (especially the cheapie microcomputer modems that were beginning to be available in Thailand).

As I still had my Apple modem with me, I tracked down some BBS software for the Apple II called "ABBS" which could work with my Hayes Micromodem II. One evening in 1984, with a handful of people in attendance at "The Computerist" at Siam Square, I installed the ABBS software onto an Apple II clone and set the modem to wait for a call. We then dialed into the BBS from another computer (a PC, I think) and voila - IT WORKED!

As far as I know (and I might be mistaken on this), this was Thailand's first BBS. A short-lived one though. It lasted about an hour before we took it down. After all, with dual 140Kb floppy drives (one drive which was already used by the BBS software), we didn't have a lot of disk space to do anything useful. But at least it worked and we proved that Bangkok's telephone lines were good enough for modem'ing.

As I mentioned above, the PC age had already started and I myself was using a PC. At that time we were receiving newsletters from the Capital PC Users Group (CPCUG) in Washington, D.C. on a quid pro quo basis, and their newsletter frequently mentioned PC-based BBS software developed by CPCUG called "RBBS-PC". I decided to obtain a copy and tried it locally on my home computer. Given the tendency for PC computers to be "compatible" across makes and models (even back then), it worked fine.

In the end, Action Computers came through for us again by providing a used Perseus I PC computer for the BBS. Khun Nikorn Viravatanadej, an Action Computers staffer provided a then state of the art Hayes Smartmodem 1200, a full-time telephone line, and a physical home for the BBS. I provided a Seagate 20Mb hard disk for the BBS, obtained the RBBS-PC CPC12.2b software, and wrote/designed the screens, menus, help files, users guide, file descriptions, etc.

On December 29, 1985, while the rest of Bangkok was preparing to celebrate the new year, Khun Nikorn and I officially turned on the "BUG Board", a 24 hour BBS running at a heady 1200 bps, and had our "celebration" two days early. The rest is history. Khun Nikorn hosted several more iterations of the BUG Board over the ensuing years. At its peak, I believe Bangkok had about 50 BBS'es in operation. These BBS'es, at their most basic level, provided LOCAL messaging and file downloads, but Fidonet-capable BBS'es soon appeared that had the ability to exchange messages BETWEEN BBS'es, a parallel to internet messaging. Towards the tail end of the BBS era, Alan Dawson's Wildcat-based BBS even had a gateway that exchanged email with the internet.

Needless to say, I look back at these times with a sense of satisfaction and nostalgia. There was no commercialization back then - what we did we did for free, begging for what we could, but more often than not, emptying our own pocketbooks to obtain what we needed. While the link between BBS'es and the internet may be a bit tenuous, no doubt, those people who were active on the BBS scene made the step up to the internet "on the run".

Final Notes

As this piece was retrieved from the far recesses of my blurring memory, if anyone remembers anything differently, please let me know (at the contact address at the bottom of the home page) so I can make the necessary corrections.