Monochrome BBS

Monochrome runs on custom software, making the platform and user experience distinct from other bulletin board systems.

The underlying software (mono - lowercase m) was originally written in around 1990 by David Brownlee, then a student at City, University of London, for his final year project.

[1] By its peak in the mid-1990s over 8000 accounts had been created and there were often more than 150 people logged in simultaneously, making it arguably the most popular Internet-based BBS in the UK at the time.

I also learned just what was possible with ASCII-text-based formats; using escape codes and other techniques, text could change color, move on the screen, blink, and do all sorts of other interesting things.

(p.24)However, with the advent of web forums and GUI-based instant messaging, Mono's text-only format was already seen as nostalgic even in 1994 when it appeared in the first issue of .net magazine.

[8] Discussions are on a wide variety of topics, including technology, science, arts, music, sports, work, family, news as well as general chat.

In 1996 a marriage between two members, one from the USA and one from the UK, was featured in the Daily Telegraph,[10] "Good Morning with Anne and Nick" on BBC1, and a Channel 4 short film called "Get Netted" amongst other sources.

Mono's interface was designed for ease of use - most operations are performed using single keypresses, and the options available are shown on-screen wherever possible, so it is relatively straightforward for a newcomer to start making their way around without reading much documentation.

The Esc key may be pressed at any time to provide a menu of additional facilities such as the talker, messaging systems, personal profile and settings.

The talker takes some cues from MUDs by being composed of rooms, for which users write the descriptions, and a visitor may wander through these using the cardinal directions.

A variety of operating systems have been involved historically, including SunOS and OpenBSD, but NetBSD has been the chosen OS for some years.

As hardware speeds have increased and the number of users has declined, Monochrome today is just a single virtual machine performing both client and server roles.