[thechat] Memory Lane... Internet clients from '97

Luther, Ron ron.luther at hp.com
Mon Oct 27 07:08:10 CST 2003


Jorah Lavin noted:

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Handelaar" <john at videoisland.com>

> /me has had the address john at gn.apc.org since June 19*88*.

>>Well, I was doing a little bit of BBSing by around '94 or so, over a little
>>old modem... what, 2300 baud or something? using an XT clone with a 20 meg
>>hard drive. 


Hi Jorah,

<sigh ... 'old guy thread', eh?> 
BBSing with an XT?  Whippersnapper!!  ;-)

We had BBS's back in the 8-bit world ... before there were XT clones.  
You had to call each one individually on a separate call, so a lot of 
us would set our alarm clocks for the middle of the night when the 
boards weren't busy (they could only 'receive' one call at a time as 
well!) and the phone rates were cheaper.

That was in the early 80s ... '82?, '84? ... somewhere around there. 
Paid $75 for my fancy 300 baud external 'Volksmodem' ... and (I think) 
$150 for that damnable Atari 850 interface to allow it to connect 
to my 800!

A very old RonL.

(Who grew up playing with plugboards ... see second picture below:
http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/plugboard.html and note the 
sharp metal corners!)

[BTW - Those are very sturdy (coax?) cables with 1/4" connectors like 
guitar cables ... just the thing to keep your pre-schooler amused 
for hours!]


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