FidoNet

FidoNet is an inter-connecting file and message transport system that was used by bulletin board systems. The network still exists today, but is dwindling in size and organization, due to the lack of callers to BBS systems that it was developed to serve, and the closing of most of those systems as a result.

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FidoNet was originally founded in 1984 by Tom Jennings of San Francisco, California as a means to network together BBSes that used his own "Fido" BBS software. Over time, other BBS software was independently adapted to support the relevant FidoNet protocols, and the network became a popular means for hobbyist computer users to communicate. FidoNet was non-commercial, and mostly popular amongst hobbyist computer users, many of them hackers and radio amateurs, before the Internet became accessible and inexpensive.

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1984: :This page is about the year 1984. For George Orwell's novel, see Nineteen Eighty-Four.For other uses, see 1984 (number)....

Tom Jennings: Tom Jennings (born 1955 as Thomas Daniel Jennings in Boston, Massachusetts) is the creator of FidoNet, the first message and file networking system for BBSes. Originally, the FidoNet protocols were implemented in a program named Fido, authored by Jennings, but they were ultimately implemented by ot...

California: California is a state located on the west coast of the United States. It is the most populous state in the U.S., as well as physically the most diverse, with the highest and the lowest points in the lower 48 states located within 150 miles of each other. If California were an independent nation, it...