BYTE Information eXchange (BIX) was an online service created by ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

''.

History

'' in the October 1984 issue announced BYTEnet, "a project in computer conferencing", with 200 beta testers who received free service during the "experiment". The magazine formally announced BIX in the June 1985 issue, offering an introductory sign-up fee of $25, and evening and weekend charges of $6 per hour of connect time: the service offered direct numbers in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

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Chicago Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...

, and

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

. It was a text-only

Bulletin Board System A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running list of BBS software, software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user perfor ...

-style site running the CoSy conferencing software. BIX originally ran on an Areté multiprocessor system based on the Motorola 68000, then 68020. By June 1986 the company had more than 6000 subscribers, and the magazine printed excerpts of BIX discussions. In 1987, with 17,000 users, BIX moved to a

Pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

9820 running DC/OSx. When the Pyramid became too expensive to run, BIX was ported to a DEC Alpha server.

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American education science company that provides educational content, software, and services for students and educators across various levels—from K-12 to higher education and professional settings. They produce textbooks, ...

also used the same software internally. ''BYTE'' staff and writers such as

Jerry Pournelle Jerry Eugene Pournelle (; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American scientist in the area of operations research and ergonomics, human factors research, a science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. ...

were active on the service, and invitations for further discussion were printed with many articles in the magazine. Access was via local dial-in or for additional hourly charges, the

Tymnet Tymnet was an international data communications network developed and operated by Tymshare. It was based at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. The network used packet-switching techniques, including statistical multiplexing, an ...

X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for Packet switched network, packet-switched data communication in wide area network, wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the CCITT, International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Co ...

network. Monthly rates were initially $13/month for the account and $1/hour for X.25 access. Unlike

CompuServe CompuServe, Inc. (CompuServe Information Service, Inc., also known by its initialism CIS or later CSi) was an American Internet company that provided the first major commercial online service provider, online service. It opened in 1969 as a times ...

, access at higher speeds was not surcharged. Later, gateways permitted email communication outside the system. BIX was acquired by the

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), was an ancient sacred precinct and the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient Classical antiquity, classical world. The A ...

online service in 1992. In the mid-1990s, the Internet became more available to the masses and

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

, mailing lists, and competing services such as CompuServe and

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were able to offer flat-rate services, which adversely affected BIX membership levels. In the late-1990s, as the Internet became more mainstream, membership and activity plummeted forcing BIX to cut pricing to $40 per year, with no per hour connection charge by using the Internet for access. Lower prices and full page ads in ''BYTE'' were unsuccessful in turning the service around. Consequently, BIX was shut down in 2001. Some members created a new service, based on an open-source version of CoSy, called NLZ (Noise Level Zero) where they continued what remained of the service, with many of the same conferences and topics that were active at the end of Delphi's ownership until 2018. Other CoSy-based conferencing systems of the same era still survive including CIX.

References

{{Online services Pre–World Wide Web online services Bulletin board systems 1985 establishments in the United States 2001 disestablishments in the United States Internet properties established in 1985 Internet properties disestablished in 2001