Welcome: Where have you landed?
You've arrived at Eye Of The Beholder, and the first thing worth clarifying is that this isn't exactly a website in the usual sense: the web page you're reading is only the shop window. Behind it there's a living system that has been running for decades on a very different philosophy from the commercial InterNet we know today.
Eye Of The Beholder is two things at once, complementary to each other. On the one hand, it is a FidoNet node: an active part of a worldwide messaging network created in 1984 -ten years before the web existed- that is still operational and connects hobbyists across the planet through mail and forums that travel from one computer to another without passing through centralised servers. On the other hand, it is a BBS, a system you can connect to directly with a terminal client in order to read messages, download files, play classic applications and take part in a small but active community, just as people did before the World Wide Web.
If none of the above rings a bell, don't worry: in the sections below we explain what each part means and how you can take part. If, on the other hand, you already know perfectly well what this is about, welcome home: we're still here, 2:343/107 is still in the nodelist, the prompt is still waiting, and the door is still open.
The FidoNet side of Eye Of The Beholder is probably the hardest to explain to someone who didn't live through that era, so let's take it step by step.
FidoNet is an independent, non-profit messaging network founded by Tom Jennings and "John Madill in 1984, which at its peak interconnected more than thirty-five thousand systems worldwide and which, against all odds, is still alive today running over the InterNet*.
The essential difference from email or modern social networks is that FidoNet has no central server: every node is an independent system, run by a hobbyist (the sysop), that communicates directly with other nodes by following a worldwide directory called the nodelist. Each node has an address in the zone:net/node format; ours is 2:343/107, where 2 corresponds to Europe, 343 to the regional network we belong to, and 107 is our specific node number.
Two kinds of traffic flow through the network: netmail, which is personal mail from one user to another, and echomail, topic-based forums where everything is discussed, from retrocomputing to politics, science fiction or amateur radio.
Underneath, Eye Of The Beholder runs on BBBS, a classic piece of software well known among some veteran sysops.
If you'd like to understand better how all this works, register as a point (a user who hangs off a node in order to send and receive their own FTN mail) or simply browse the available conferences, you'll find detailed explanations, configuration guides and the sysop's contact details throughout the rest of the site.
The other side of Eye Of The Beholder is its BBS, short for Bulletin Board System.
To understand what a BBS is, it helps to mentally travel back to the 1980s and 1990s, when the InterNet hadn't yet reached the general public and the usual way to connect with other computing enthusiasts was to dial someone else's computer over the phone using a modem.
Those systems, the BBSes, were the handcrafted equivalent of today's social networks: boards where news was read, forums where people debated, repositories of programs that were downloaded at speeds unthinkable today, and turn-based games known as doors in which you competed against other users of the same system. Ours still operates with exactly that same philosophy, except you no longer need a modem or a phone line: it's enough to connect over the InterNet using a terminal client or web client.
Underneath, the BBS runs on Synchronet, one of the most solid and best-maintained environments around today, and it preserves all the rituals of the era: ANSI art on every screen, hotkey-driven menus, registration through an initial questionnaire, and separate areas for messages, files and games.
Since the BBS is also integrated with the FidoNet node, the messages you post here can travel out to the rest of the worldwide network.
The rest of the site contains connection instructions, a list of available services, the installed doors and everything you need to register as a user and become part of this small community.