Break Into Chat

Breaking into chat is the kind of thing that a SysOp might have done to a caller to their BBS, unilaterally suspending whatever action the caller was attempting to undertake in favor of a rare and non-optional text conversation with the system operator. Maybe the user had previously unsuccessfully attempted to (P)age the SysOp, and now that they were back they were just "returning the call". (Or maybe the SysOp wanted to temporarily put the BBS to sleep so they could free up enough memory to play X-Wing for a couple of hours, and was courteously giving notice rather than simply dropping carrier.) (And then there's whatever djjj was doing at AHOM.) In any event, breaking into chat was an exceptional and extraordinary moment of human connection to experience while modeming.

[kirkman] has taken the phrase "Break Into Chat" and used it as a brand for a combination blog / wiki on BBS / ANSI art / vintage technology themes, a project that got its start when he noticed in late 2012 that Wikipedia was beginning to delete BBS and especially BBS door-related articles as "unnotable" and started forking and expanding on this rare and precious knowledge that was not widely available elsewhere. It has been the home base for his explorations into, among other subjects, the Inspector Dangerfuck webcomics confusion, ATSASCII animation, and [Instant Graphics & Sound].

https://breakintochat.com/blog/ https://breakintochat.com/wiki/