• computers

    From rubberchicken@21:1/172 to All on Sun Jul 14 13:25:52 2024
    born in the 80's but have been getting back into retro computers again, i miss the times when this was primary means of comms.

    ... I'm not overdressed, I'm just setting higher standards

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: The Bottomless Abyss BBS * bbs.bottomlessabyss.net (21:1/172)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to rubberchicken on Sun Jul 14 15:01:32 2024
    Re: computers
    By: rubberchicken to All on Sun Jul 14 2024 01:25 pm

    born in the 80's but have been getting back into retro computers again, i miss the times when this was primary means of comms.

    There are times when I also miss the dialup BBS days and when it was the primary means of communications.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nigel Reed@21:2/101 to All on Sun Jul 14 23:50:25 2024
    On Sun, 14 Jul 2024 15:01:32 -0700
    "Nightfox" (21:1/137) <Nightfox@f137.n1.z21.fidonet> wrote:

    Re: computers
    By: rubberchicken to All on Sun Jul 14 2024 01:25 pm

    born in the 80's but have been getting back into retro computers
    again, i miss the times when this was primary means of comms.

    There are times when I also miss the dialup BBS days and when it was
    the primary means of communications.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

    You can relive your dialup days at End Of The Line BBS with both US and
    UK dialup numbers for direct connection or through the Magnum UK
    gateway. See Sysop Notice 15 on my BBS for more info.
    --
    End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
    telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (21:2/101)
  • From deon@21:2/116 to Nigel Reed on Mon Jul 15 15:42:14 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Nigel Reed to All on Sun Jul 14 2024 11:50 pm

    Howdy,

    You can relive your dialup days at End Of The Line BBS with both US and
    UK dialup numbers for direct connection or through the Magnum UK
    gateway. See Sysop Notice 15 on my BBS for more info.

    I'm curious how many calls you get via a modem link?


    ...δεσ∩
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Nigel Reed on Mon Jul 15 09:42:25 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Nigel Reed to All on Sun Jul 14 2024 11:50 pm

    You can relive your dialup days at End Of The Line BBS with both US and UK dialup numbers for direct connection or through the Magnum UK gateway. See Sysop Notice 15 on my BBS for more info.

    I have a dialup line on my BBS too. It's cool to have that, but I feel like it's still not quite the same as it was in the early-mid 90s. One main difference these days is that BBSes get users from all over the world, whereas dialup BBSes back in the day tended to have mainly local users.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Newtype Len@21:2/148 to rubberchicken on Mon Jul 15 08:28:00 2024
    I grew up with dial-up in the 90s and 2000s, but never saw or used a BBS
    until last year. Using one now has changed my apprecation for using the Internet, and has changed my ideas on how to use it to communicate.


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    ---
    * Origin: Shurato's Heavenly Sphere telnet://shsbbs.net (21:2/148)
  • From Nigel Reed@21:2/101 to deon on Tue Jul 16 12:16:33 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: deon to Nigel Reed on Mon Jul 15 2024 15:42:14

    I'm curious how many calls you get via a modem link?

    I have no idea, tbh. Not something I keep an eye on.
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (21:2/101)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Newtype Len on Tue Jul 16 10:25:54 2024
    Re: computers
    By: Newtype Len to rubberchicken on Mon Jul 15 2024 08:28 am

    I grew up with dial-up in the 90s and 2000s, but never saw or used a BBS until last year. Using one now has changed my apprecation for using the Internet, and has changed my ideas on how to use it to communicate.

    When in the 90s did you start using dial-up? To me, I feel like BBSing was where dial-up started. I got my first PC, along with a modem, in 1992, and I started calling BBSes right away. I knew about them because of my dad - The PC and modem were hand-me-down from my dad, and he also gave me a copy of a local BBS list that was available on many local BBSes at the time. There was also a local free computer magazine here that you could get from many convenience stores, the library, etc., which had a list of local BBSes in the back.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nigel Reed@21:2/101 to All on Tue Jul 16 14:05:42 2024
    On Tue, 16 Jul 2024 10:25:54 -0700
    "Nightfox" (21:1/137) <Nightfox@f137.n1.z21.fidonet> wrote:
    Re: computers
    By: Newtype Len to rubberchicken on Mon Jul 15 2024 08:28 am

    I grew up with dial-up in the 90s and 2000s, but never saw or
    used a BBS until last year. Using one now has changed my
    apprecation for using the Internet, and has changed my ideas on
    how to use it to communicate.

    When in the 90s did you start using dial-up? To me, I feel like
    BBSing was where dial-up started. I got my first PC, along with a
    modem, in 1992, and I started calling BBSes right away. I knew about
    them because of my dad - The PC and modem were hand-me-down from my
    dad, and he also gave me a copy of a local BBS list that was
    available on many local BBSes at the time. There was also a local
    free computer magazine here that you could get from many convenience
    stores, the library, etc., which had a list of local BBSes in the
    back.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
    Would have been about 1986. I got a subscription to Prestel, a UK
    service that I've talked about before. One of their information
    providers, Micronet 800, was giving away a free modem for BBC, Spectrum
    and CBM64 users, and maybe a few more, if you subscribed to their
    service.
    From there I went exploring...
    --
    End Of The Line BBS - Plano, TX
    telnet endofthelinebbs.com 23
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (21:2/101)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Nigel Reed on Tue Jul 16 13:08:40 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Nigel Reed to All on Tue Jul 16 2024 02:05 pm

    I grew up with dial-up in the 90s and 2000s, but never saw or used a
    BBS until last year. Using one now has changed my apprecation for
    using the Internet, and has changed my ideas on how to use it to
    communicate.

    When in the 90s did you start using dial-up? To me, I feel like BBSing was

    Would have been about 1986. I got a subscription to Prestel, a UK service

    I was asking Newtype Len, since he said he had used dialup but had never used BBSes before..

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From k9zw@21:1/224 to Nigel Reed on Tue Jul 16 16:33:55 2024
    On 16 Jul 2024, Nigel Reed said the following...

    Would have been about 1986. I got a subscription to Prestel, a UK
    service that I've talked about before. One of their information
    providers, Micronet 800, was giving away a free modem for BBC, Spectrum and CBM64 users, and maybe a few more, if you subscribed to their
    service.

    I had used modems before, but I too was on Prestel using the Bank of Scotland's HOBS (Home and Office Banking System) when it came out in 1985. Excellent system for the times, and I used it until I took a job stateside and moved later in the 1980s.

    I admired the Prestel/Teletext concept of a look-up table locally reducing the actual amount of data needed to be transmitted.

    Order books, booked train tickets, bought groceries and more.

    Also had my own Telex number and was able to do early FidoNet.

    All from my own kit, rather than something at a Uni or at work. I liked that it was "mine!"

    --- Steve K9ZW via SPOT BBS

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: SPOT BBS / k9zw (21:1/224)
  • From Nigel Reed@21:2/101 to k9zw on Tue Jul 16 21:22:25 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: k9zw to Nigel Reed on Tue Jul 16 2024 16:33:55

    I had used modems before, but I too was on Prestel using the Bank of Scotland's HOBS (Home and Office Banking System) when it came out in 1985. Excellent system for the times, and I used it until I took a job stateside and moved later in the 1980s.


    If you find yourself some videotex emulation software you can connect to my BBS on port 6502 or use the dialup numbers and get the "Press Return for Terminal or # for Viewdata" prompt.

    It's still a work in progress and has been for a number of years!

    You could use the latest BeebEM with tcpser or BBCSDL in leui of real a real BBC Micro.
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: End Of The Line BBS - endofthelinebbs.com (21:2/101)
  • From Newtype Len@21:2/148 to Nightfox on Tue Jul 16 20:40:00 2024
    I didn't start using the Internet until 1998, and I was maybe 13 at the time. We had CompuServ in 1991, but my interest in computers was only starting to develop. I learned what a BBS was, but never knew any of them still existed. They were a thing of myth -legends of and older time. My interest in the Internet then was for playing games and instant messaging. As I got older I would learn more and more. As the 'retro' movement picked up steam, I started indulging in the things that I couldn't apprecaite before.

    When I use the word myth and legend, I do so with endearment. Knowing how things used to be has made me appreciate things more, but I wanted to know
    what it was like to use one, hence my being around now. That wonder of what I didn't understand as a kid makes me some sort of antrhopologist, I suppose.anthropologist

    I'm late the party, but still glad to be here.


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    ---
    * Origin: Shurato's Heavenly Sphere telnet://shsbbs.net (21:2/148)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Nightfox on Wed Jul 17 13:05:00 2024
    When in the 90s did you start using dial-up? To me, I feel like BBSing

    Here a lot of BBS became early dialup ISPs. I believe 90% of dialup BBS were gone by late 93, I forget a little, but it was every user just disappeared overnight. One month there were users, next month, not a one.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Spectre on Tue Jul 16 21:14:12 2024
    Re: computers
    By: Spectre to Nightfox on Wed Jul 17 2024 01:05 pm

    Here a lot of BBS became early dialup ISPs. I believe 90% of dialup BBS were gone by late 93, I forget a little, but it was every user just disappeared overnight. One month there were users, next month, not a one.

    Wow, interesting.. I had only just started using BBSes in 1992, and it seemed like the BBS scene was still pretty big where I am, and still for a little while. I started running my own BBS in 1994, and I think the BBS scene was still fairly active here for at least a few more years. I didn't even really know what the internet was until late 1995, and I started using a dialup internet account. I took my BBS down in 2000 since it really wasn't getting many users anymore.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to Spectre on Wed Jul 17 14:04:49 2024
    Here a lot of BBS became early dialup ISPs. I believe 90% of dialup BBS were gone by late 93, I forget a little, but it was every user just disappeared overnight. One month there were users, next month, not a
    one.


    Why you think that happened?
    I'm from Argentina, here BBSs lasted a while longer. I started connecting around 1997 and they were still taking calls up until maybe 1999 or even year 2000. Dial-up ISPs took a slow-burn while to catch up and gather people up.
    Not because BBS' users would move over to ISPs. I'd say anyone that already had a computer and a dial-up modem in 1997 or 1998, going on BBSs wouldn't leave if they didn't have to. The thing was that the 'common public' took those years (1997-2000) to actually get a computer and try to connect to 'the new thing' which was the *www internet, and actually never got to know BBSs.
    It was a 'slow bleed out' process here in Argentina, and for a while both means of connection co-existed... pretty much like right now. It was wild.

    Malvinas

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Malvinas on Wed Jul 17 10:46:03 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Malvinas to Spectre on Wed Jul 17 2024 02:04 pm

    I'm from Argentina, here BBSs lasted a while longer. I started connecting around 1997 and they were still taking calls up until maybe 1999 or even year 2000. Dial-up ISPs took a slow-burn while to catch up and gather

    It was similar where I am (northwest US). The internet seemingly started to become popular here around 1995 or 1996, but the BBS scene was still fairly active, though dwindling. I ran my BBS from 1994 to 2000, and it was fairly active for at least 4 years, from what I remember (and it wasn't until 1998 that I connected it to FidoNet). But in those last 2 years or so, the number of callers dwindled, and by 2000, it wasn't getting much use anymore. I decided to take my original BBS down in February 2000.

    Ironically, I think my current BBS now is getting more use than my original BBS was just before I took it down in 2000.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to Nightfox on Wed Jul 17 21:47:49 2024
    It was similar where I am (northwest US). The internet seemingly
    started to become popular here around 1995 or 1996, but the BBS scene
    was still fairly active, though dwindling. I ran my BBS from 1994 to 2000, and it was fairly active for at least 4 years, from what I
    remember (and it wasn't until 1998 that I connected it to FidoNet). But in those last 2 years or so, the number of callers dwindled, and by
    2000, it wasn't getting much use anymore. I decided to take my original BBS down in February 2000.

    Ironically, I think my current BBS now is getting more use than my original BBS was just before I took it down in 2000.


    Yea, my reply was about that other guy saying that pretty much 'over night', users vaporized into thin air... I thought not seeing that happen here might've been a 'regional' thing... you say it was pretty similar in the US too...

    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Malvinas on Wed Jul 17 20:10:02 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Malvinas to Nightfox on Wed Jul 17 2024 09:47 pm

    Yea, my reply was about that other guy saying that pretty much 'over night', users vaporized into thin air... I thought not seeing that happen here might've been a 'regional' thing... you say it was pretty similar in the US too...

    Yeah.. I was surprised he also said he thought about 90% of BBSes had disappeared in 1993, which seems pretty early to me. The BBS scene was still fairly big here, I think until about 1997 or so when I noticed users started to dwindle fairly fast. I didn't even know about the internet in 1993, and I'm not entirely sure how many people did.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Bf2K+@21:3/171 to Nightfox on Wed Jul 17 21:49:40 2024
    On 15 Jul 24 09:42:25 Nightfox wrote...

    Re: Re: computers By: Nigel Reed to All on Sun Jul 14 2024 11:50
    pm

    You can relive your dialup days at End Of The Line BBS with both
    US and UK dialup numbers for direct connection or through the
    Magnum UK gateway. See Sysop Notice 15 on my BBS for more info.

    I have a dialup line on my BBS too. It's cool to have that, but I
    feel like it's still not quite the same as it was in the early-mid
    90s. One main difference these days is that BBSes get users from all
    over the world, whereas dialup BBSes back in the day tended to have
    mainly local users.

    Nightfox --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

    To which Bf2K+ replies...

    IN 1985 my Atari 8 bit BBS had mostly long distance users... when I
    switched to a PC and Fidonet around 1988, the ratio changed to mostly
    local users.

    And I also have a modem line on my current BBS, although I disabled it a
    couple of weeks ago for some variable elimination testing...


    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Nightfox on Thu Jul 18 14:41:00 2024
    Wow, interesting.. I had only just started using BBSes in 1992, and it seemed like the BBS scene was still pretty big where I am, and still for a

    I guess there's a couple of other things. Melbourne had a very high density BBS population, and they were all familiar with dialup, it became a short
    leap to the internet. Back then we were close to the top of the heap for internet adoption.

    It fell off after dialup, the vested interests in telecommunications kept the pricing on anything faster pretty expensive, and we gradually slid down the same heap we'd been close to the top of.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Malvinas on Thu Jul 18 14:51:00 2024
    Why you think that happened? I'm from Argentina, here BBSs lasted

    We had a lot of BB systems and users here. Our phone lines and calls were fairly cheap, unless like everyone else you went long distance. A lot of
    your regular systems became ISPs and a lot of them serviced the same users
    they had before. That probably made our transtition a lot easier. Over the next few years there was a lot of consolidation in service providers.. some just shut up shop, some were bought and condensed. Around this stage we had amongst the highest uptake of internet usage in the world, and amongst the
    best speeds.

    Afer that its been slowly downhill for us.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to Nightfox on Thu Jul 18 15:23:35 2024
    (...) I didn't even know about the
    internet in 1993, and I'm not entirely sure how many people did.

    Nightfox

    IIRC, 'the internet', as such actually started out in 1995, replacing Compuserve.
    I wouldn't know as I got my PC connected with a modem around 1997, when the inernet already was a thing but there wasn't much to do there either, there was a lot more activity in BBS systems.

    Malvians.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Malvinas on Fri Jul 19 06:56:43 2024
    On 18 Jul 2024 at 03:23p, Malvinas pondered and said...

    (...) I didn't even know about the
    internet in 1993, and I'm not entirely sure how many people did.

    Nightfox

    IIRC, 'the internet', as such actually started out in 1995, replacing Compuserve.

    Oh goodness. Nope, the Internet has a much longer history.

    The basic ideas started percolating in a few brains in the
    early 1960s; the idea of packet-switched, store-and-forward
    networks arose from the desire to make networking more
    robust against failure. The basic idea is to break communication
    up into small, individually addressed units of data that are
    independently routed from a source to a destination. Then if
    some switching hub failed (or got hit obliterated by a nuclear
    explosion), data could route _around_ the failed node, and
    communications would be only minimally disrupted.

    The first large-scale test of this idea was the ARPANET, which
    became operational in 1969. ARPANET was a smashing success,
    ultimately connecting several hundred research sites, but it
    was limited (for example, host addresses were limited to 8
    bits). Early success gave rise to additional research in
    _inter_networking --- that is, connecting networks, not just
    individual machines. That, in turn, led to the layered design
    of the IP/TCP (as it was originally called) networking suite;
    a few successive designs led to IPv4, which was first widely
    available IP protocol, and that was introduced for real in
    1983, when it officially replaced the old ARPANET NCP protocol.
    Note that the early Internet actually used ARPANET as an
    underlying link-layer protocol.

    Of course, TelCos and others wanted to get in on the packet
    switching goodness, so in the late 1970s, they came up with
    X.25, which was a packet switching protocol designed for signaling
    in the PSTN. It's...ok, I guess, but kinda gnarly. Eventually
    people started to get Serious(TM) about packet switched
    networking, and the ISO convened a working group to come up
    with a Standard(TM) internetworking protocol, resulting in the
    OSI (Open Systems Interconnect) specification. The idea was to
    take over from the researchers and deliver an offering that was
    industrial production-ready. CompuServe, and some of the other
    relatively early timesharing service providers, I think did end
    up using X.25, but no one ever really adopted OSI.

    In 1978, Digital Equipment Corporation released the VAX-11/780
    "super" minicomputer. This was a 32-bit machine that immediately
    attracted the attention of much of the industry including, crucially,
    the researchers at Bell Labs who had written Unix a decade prior
    and targeted it to DEC's 16-bit PDP-11 series of minis. They quickly
    ported Unix to the VAX, where it escaped to the University of
    California, Berkeley, which started rolling its own Unix distributions:
    the Berkeley Software Distributions, or BSD. In 3BSD, support for
    virtual memory on the VAX was added, and BSD became a serious
    competitor to VMS, the DEC-supported operating system for the VAX.
    Around this time DARPA, which had sponsored the ARPANET, was looking
    for a way to standardize computing across its vendors and researchers.
    They'd pretty much decided to use the VAX, but the question of what
    OS they'd use was still up in the air: Unix (as in BSD) or VMS? The researchers at Berkeley, in coordination with Bolt, Bernanek, and
    Newman in Boston, collaborated (kinda...it was fractious) in providing
    TCP/IP for BSD on the VAX. DARPA chose BSD for its software
    standard, and that spread like wildfire across computer manufacturers.

    Around the time this was all happening, the Internet was undergoing
    exponential growth. Bear in mind that the Internet had been done
    under the aegis of the US Government as a research project, but in
    1992-ish the Clinton administration opened the Internet up for
    commercial development. It was widely thought that OSI would be the
    future, but the Internet was there. Also, in 1991, some guy named
    Tim Brenners-Lee at CERN in Switzerland invented this little thing
    he called the World Wide Web.

    So that's the basic idea: by the mid-90s, commercialization of the
    Internet, based ont he web, running on pretty much every Unix available
    at the time, was in full swing. Within a couple of years, OSI was
    a distant memory as the Internet swept all that came before it.

    CompuServe, Prodigy, etc, were all pretty small compared to the
    Internet. They dated from an earlier age of commercial timesharing
    services that were pretty obsolete by the start of the 90s. But
    that's a story for another time.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Malvinas on Thu Jul 18 13:46:50 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Malvinas to Nightfox on Thu Jul 18 2024 03:23 pm

    (...) I didn't even know about the
    internet in 1993, and I'm not entirely sure how many people did.


    IIRC, 'the internet', as such actually started out in 1995, replacing Compuserve.
    I wouldn't know as I got my PC connected with a modem around 1997, when the inernet already was a thing but there wasn't much to do there either, there was a lot more activity in BBS systems.

    Oh? I thought the internet actually started in the late 60s as DARPANet with the US military.. And I'd heard by the late 80s and early 90s, people were using things like Gopher, Newsgroups, etc. on the internet, before the web became popular..?

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to tenser on Thu Jul 18 19:51:28 2024
    Around the time this was all happening, the Internet was undergoing exponential growth. Bear in mind that the Internet had been done
    under the aegis of the US Government as a research project, but in 1992-ish the Clinton administration opened the Internet up for
    commercial development.
    Can you cite your souces in this date? Where did you get that '1992-ish' bit of data, and how much -ish would you say accurately that is?
    I already knew most of the pieces of data you shared on your post, because I studied computer development and network development history when I graduated Computer Science Teacher. I still get the feeling you wrapped that specific slightly-diffuse bit of data around a lot of all-well-known yabba-dabba...
    Do you really know there was anything accessible through a DNS by connecting to a TCP/IP service and querying for a regular URL that would get translated to a specific IP and give back a renderable object to whatever you were connecting with from your side?
    I always knew something like that wasn't possible before 1995, but couldn't back that up with proof. If you can step up with some proof for what you say is what happened, you might change my mind on the matter.
    Thank you!

    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Nightfox on Fri Jul 19 10:52:18 2024
    On 18 Jul 2024 at 01:46p, Nightfox pondered and said...

    Oh? I thought the internet actually started in the late 60s as DARPANet with the US military..

    See my earlier message for a synopsis history, starting
    with ARPANET (not DARPANet) and moving into the period of
    commercialization starting in the 1990s.

    And I'd heard by the late 80s and early 90s,
    people were using things like Gopher, Newsgroups, etc. on the internet, before the web became popular..?

    Gopher was never a particularly popular service. USENET
    actually started life on UUCP over dialup, and migrated
    to the Internet in the late 80s; by the early 90s, most
    UUCP services were gone.

    The biggest applications hosted on the Internet before the
    web were TELNET, FTP, and SMTP-based network mail. Other
    concurrently accessible networks tended to have peering
    points with the Internet; for instance BITNET and UUCP.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Malvinas on Fri Jul 19 11:02:04 2024
    On 18 Jul 2024 at 07:51p, Malvinas pondered and said...

    Around the time this was all happening, the Internet was undergoing exponential growth. Bear in mind that the Internet had been done under the aegis of the US Government as a research project, but in 1992-ish the Clinton administration opened the Internet up for commercial development.

    Can you cite your souces in this date? Where did you get that '1992-ish' bit of data, and how much -ish would you say accurately that is?

    Well, I lived it, so my source is mostly myself. The
    Wikipedia article on commercialization of the Internet
    is pretty good; it certainly happened during the Clinton
    administration. Clinton was elected in 1992, took
    office in January, of 1993; as mentioned on the wiki,
    most of the infrastructure was commercially (not publicly)
    owned by then (but I remember big routers at e.g. NASA
    AMES around that time). Netscape Navigator came out in
    1994, and NSFNet sold of its assets in 1995, so by that
    time it was definitely legal. Some folks had been doing
    business in a legal grey area a few years earlier, though.
    (World STD is mentioned on that article).

    I already knew most of the pieces of data you shared on your post,
    because I studied computer development and network development history when I graduated Computer Science Teacher. I still get the feeling you wrapped that specific slightly-diffuse bit of data around a lot of all-well-known yabba-dabba... Do you really know there was anything accessible through a DNS by connecting to a TCP/IP service and querying for a regular URL that would get translated to a specific IP and give
    back a renderable object to whatever you were connecting with from your side?

    URLs debuted with the web in 1991. We were definitely using
    them with NCSA Mosaic and Lynx by 1993 (I can remember that
    it took approximately all night to compile Mosaic on a Sun
    SPARCstation 2 with a, what, 20MHz sun4c processor and 8ish
    megs of RAM...). The CERN site was, of course, already
    accessible, and there were a lot of web sites floating around
    at that time. I remember being distinctly unimpressed by the
    web; the protocol (HTTP) was garbage, the markup language was
    a joke; the software was buggy and not very interactive. It
    really felt like a step backwards.

    I always knew something like that wasn't possible before 1995, but couldn't back that up with proof. If you can step up with some proof for what you say is what happened, you might change my mind on the matter. Thank you!

    I don't know what counts as "proof" in your mind. My own
    personal experience was that all of this was possible well
    before 1995.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Malvinas on Fri Jul 19 09:02:00 2024
    IIRC, 'the internet', as such actually started out in 1995, replacing Compuserve.

    There was a lot of usage here via Uni students. There were a lot in the BBS space, and for a short window every man and his dog was importing usenet into BB systems. Thats got to be here... early 93... it was not long beyond that, then slip arrived and everything changed.

    The only thing that changed in 95 here was Win95 eliminating the need to play around with WinSock implementations.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 01:19:27 2024
    URLs debuted with the web in 1991. We were definitely using
    a) Who's "We"?? b) "definitely"? What were 'you' using URLs for?

    them with NCSA Mosaic and Lynx by 1993 (I can remember that
    it took approximately all night to compile Mosaic on a Sun
    SPARCstation 2 with a, what, 20MHz sun4c processor and 8ish
    megs of RAM...). The CERN site was, of course, already
    accessible, and there were a lot of web sites floating around
    at that time.
    Really?? 'a lot of web sites', in 1993?? That's why 'over night' people dropped BBSs to the floor and ran for the hills towards *www ISPs?

    I remember being distinctly unimpressed by the te> web; the protocol
    (HTTP) was garbage, the markup language was te> a joke; the software was buggy and not very interactive. It te> really felt like a step backwards.

    I'm not trying to prove you're lying or anything, I just want to get the facts straight, 'cause you seem to have a lot of legit info, but I don't know why, there's something about your story ('personal experience') that kinda feels like made fit forcefully...
    Might be just me, still wondering...

    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Spectre on Fri Jul 19 16:26:26 2024
    On 19 Jul 2024 at 09:02a, Spectre pondered and said...

    IIRC, 'the internet', as such actually started out in 1995, replacing Compuserve.

    There was a lot of usage here via Uni students. There were a lot in the BBS space, and for a short window every man and his dog was importing usenet into BB systems. Thats got to be here... early 93... it was not long beyond that, then slip arrived and everything changed.

    SLIP was the 1980s; Rick Adams added it to 4.2BSD. It was fun,
    dialing into a Telebit Trailblazer and running `slattach` and
    `ifconfig` to have dial-up Internet access from home. By the
    1990s, people wanted PPP and dynamic IP assignment (SLIP was
    comparatively static, which was wasteful most of the time).
    Also, people started getting into PNAT around this time, so that
    they could have small ethernets at home that were connected to
    the net. I had a 486 running FreeBSD, a VAX running VMS, and
    a MIPS R2000-based DECstation 5000 running Ultrix at home. I
    ran DECnet and TCP/IP, and the 486 did PPP and NAT to the local
    university; my console for the VAX was a VT320, and I could
    login to that, telnet to the FreeBSD machine, and SSH into the
    SPARCstation on my desk at work. I ran a full-on X desktop on
    the Ultrix machine. Good times.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Malvinas on Fri Jul 19 16:36:22 2024
    On 19 Jul 2024 at 01:19a, Malvinas pondered and said...

    URLs debuted with the web in 1991. We were definitely using

    a) Who's "We"?? b) "definitely"? What were 'you' using URLs for?

    Uh, me and other folks who had access to the Internet in the
    early 90s?

    them with NCSA Mosaic and Lynx by 1993 (I can remember that
    it took approximately all night to compile Mosaic on a Sun SPARCstation 2 with a, what, 20MHz sun4c processor and 8ish
    megs of RAM...). The CERN site was, of course, already
    accessible, and there were a lot of web sites floating around
    at that time.

    Really?? 'a lot of web sites', in 1993?? That's why 'over night' people dropped BBSs to the floor and ran for the hills towards *www ISPs?

    I don't really know about BBSes around then. I'd more or
    less stopped using them, because I had access to the Internet,
    and it was far more interesting.

    This was not common; getting onto the network around then
    required a little bit of juice, or some money.

    But I guess I don't see how that's relevant to your earlier
    point I initially responded to, which was something about
    the Internet "starting" in 1995 and taking over from CompuServe.
    None of that is correct. The Internet "started" in 1983,
    based on research stretching back to the 1960s. CompuServe
    was a completely separate thing.

    backwards. I'm not trying to prove you're lying or anything, I just want to get the facts straight, 'cause you seem to have a lot of legit info, but I don't know why, there's something about your story ('personal experience') that kinda feels like made fit forcefully...
    Might be just me, still wondering...

    You made a claim about the history of the Internet. That
    claim was wrong. I gave you the story as I lived it. I
    didn't make any claims about BBSes or anything in that; you
    seem to have invented that yourself.

    You can believe me or not, but the history is out there and
    easily accessible; you can verify the timelines for yourself,
    if you'd like.

    Long story short, the Internet didn't "start" in 1995, it
    certainly had nothing to do with "taking over" from CompuServe.
    If you believe otherwise, the onus is really on you to provide
    evidence, since it's a pretty extraordinary claim.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Malvinas on Fri Jul 19 18:45:00 2024
    1992-ish the Clinton administration opened the Internet up for
    commercial development.

    Can you cite your souces in this date? Where did you get that '1992-ish' bit of data, and how much -ish would you say accurately that is? I

    I'm not in the US, but that sounds about right to me too.

    yabba-dabba... Do you really know there was anything accessible
    through a DNS by connecting to a TCP/IP service and querying
    for a regular URL that would get translated to a specific IP and
    give back a renderable object to whatever you were connecting

    The internet was a whole different beast back then. You're confusing
    Internet with WWW. Early adopters had things like, Mail and FTP of course,
    but you also had IRC, MUDS (multi-user dungeon), UUSENET and possibly
    something like gopher. All of these things used DNS... and all were pretty much text based. It wasn't until WWW popped up in the main conciousness that anything pretty and "renderable" came along. And that just creaked along at dialup speeds for some time.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 18:51:00 2024
    Gopher was never a particularly popular service. USENET actually
    started life on UUCP over dialup, and migrated to the Internet
    in the late 80s; by the early 90s, most UUCP services were gone.

    the UUCP services disappeared but USENET hung on for a long time...

    The biggest applications hosted on the Internet before the web were TELNET, FTP, and SMTP-based network mail. Other concurrently
    accessible networks tended to have peering points with the Internet;

    You also get stuff like Napster, and OpenNap, but they are a bit later, and have WWW as support. ~95-98 somewhere... I'm only going by the house I was living in at the time for a year reference...

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 19:00:00 2024
    (not publicly) owned by then (but I remember big routers at e.g.
    NASA AMES around that time).

    All of ours came out of Universities of the time...

    Netscape Navigator came out in 1994,

    You guys call it NutScrape too?

    URLs debuted with the web in 1991. We were definitely using them
    with NCSA Mosaic and Lynx by 1993 (I can remember that it took approximately all night to compile Mosaic on a Sun SPARCstation
    2 with a, what, 20MHz sun4c processor and 8ish megs of RAM...).
    The CERN site was, of course, already accessible, and there were
    a lot of web sites floating around at that time. I remember being distinctly unimpressed by the web; the protocol (HTTP) was garbage,
    the markup language was a joke; the software was buggy and not very interactive. It really felt like a step backwards.

    Yeah the early sites were all static. Took a while to figure out you could
    post results from a script, and the browser didn't care how you did it, so
    long as it was decipherable. Lots of .CGI scripting.

    I think your utilisation is a bit earlier than mine. Mine was also driven by my tech of the time, up until 95, I was still pushing a IIgs, which was only good for text, and the old BBS hardware which had at least gotten to 3/486
    and was running the local fileserver, but still either ran in text also. So
    no early browser compiling, but you did have, Nutscrape, Exploiter and I
    forget who else, all trying to set the browser/HTML standards of the time
    too.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Malvinas on Fri Jul 19 19:06:00 2024
    Really?? 'a lot of web sites', in 1993?? That's why 'over night' people dropped BBSs to the floor and ran for the hills towards *www ISPs?

    You also need to remember, Internet wasn't universaally adopted around the world at the same time. A lot of our users migrated to IRC for the
    fascination of chatting to someone overseas, which usually meant the US, because pretty much all traffic routed there first, even some traffic that you'd expect to be at least local to country.

    That and the emerging web... plus you had a lot of I'll call them non-tech computer users turn up.. they weren't interested in text.. just prettiness
    and ease of use relatively speaking for the time.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 19:09:00 2024
    SLIP was the 1980s; Rick Adams added it to 4.2BSD. It was fun,

    SLIP was still a common option here into the early 90s... until WinSock and whatever PPP implementation arrived, I'm a bit hazy on that timing though.
    SLIP was usually easier to get working for the dialup crowd. SLIP didn't
    last to long once things got going though.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 07:23:00 2024
    tenser wrote to Spectre <=-

    SLIP was the 1980s; Rick Adams added it to 4.2BSD. It was fun,
    dialing into a Telebit Trailblazer and running `slattach` and
    `ifconfig` to have dial-up Internet access from home. By the
    1990s, people wanted PPP and dynamic IP assignment (SLIP was
    comparatively static, which was wasteful most of the time).

    Or, they were cheapskates in the 90s, ran a shell account, then used
    SLiRP to create a SLIP connection over a dial-up shell. Man, that was a
    pain!

    Also, people started getting into PNAT around this time, so that
    they could have small ethernets at home that were connected to
    the net. I had a 486 running FreeBSD, a VAX running VMS, and
    a MIPS R2000-based DECstation 5000 running Ultrix at home. I
    ran DECnet and TCP/IP, and the 486 did PPP and NAT to the local university; my console for the VAX was a VT320, and I could
    login to that, telnet to the FreeBSD machine, and SSH into the SPARCstation on my desk at work. I ran a full-on X desktop on
    the Ultrix machine. Good times.

    That was about the time I had my first DSL line and used a Linux box as
    a firewall, mail host, web server and samba host. NATed the LAN, ran a
    BBS and a couple of servers behind it. It all felt very cutting edge to
    me, but it was pretty tame by comparison.





    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spectre on Fri Jul 19 07:26:00 2024
    Spectre wrote to tenser <=-

    Yeah the early sites were all static. Took a while to figure out you
    could post results from a script, and the browser didn't care how you
    did it, so long as it was decipherable. Lots of .CGI scripting.

    I still have my copy of "CGI Programming on the World Wide Web" by
    O'Reilly, purely for sentimental reasons now. My PERL days are long
    gone.



    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 04:07:51 2024
    On 19 Jul 2024 at 06:45p, Spectre pondered and said...

    yabba-dabba... Do you really know there was anything accessible through a DNS by connecting to a TCP/IP service and querying
    for a regular URL that would get translated to a specific IP and
    give back a renderable object to whatever you were connecting

    The internet was a whole different beast back then. You're confusing Internet with WWW. Early adopters had things like, Mail and FTP of course, but you also had IRC, MUDS (multi-user dungeon), UUSENET and possibly something like gopher. All of these things used DNS... and
    all were pretty much text based. It wasn't until WWW popped up in the main conciousness that anything pretty and "renderable" came along. And that just creaked along at dialup speeds for some time.

    I still don't know what all of that mumbo jumbo about DNS
    and URLs is suppose to mean. DNS long predates the web; its
    what we used after the hosts.txt file became unwieldy and
    hard to keep up-to-date. URLs came onto the scene when the
    web started popping up in the early 90s.

    People still seem to be very confused as to what the Internet
    actually is; it's just the collection of publicly inter-connected
    TCP/IP networks. _Applications_ of the Internet, like the
    web, etc, are all different.

    As I said earlier, I found the web pretty unimpressive when I
    first saw it; most of the content was boring. I vividly remember
    one web site, linked from the "main" server at CERN, that was
    some guy's collection of pictures of beer coasters from random
    bars. It rendered slowly on Mosaic on an RS/6000 machine. *shrug*

    The CGI thing came along pretty quickly; people were writing all
    sorts of little protocol gateways and so on in Perl and C, so
    that you could get `finger` information through web forms. I
    remember reading an article about that in ;login: in the early
    90s and just thinking to myself, "why not just, you know, use
    a finger client?" Within a decade the web had subsumed most of
    those services and they'd been retired, for better or worse.

    Ah, IRC: as a friend of mine put it, "The CB radio of the Internet."

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Jul 20 04:09:47 2024
    On 19 Jul 2024 at 07:23a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    That was about the time I had my first DSL line and used a Linux box as
    a firewall, mail host, web server and samba host. NATed the LAN, ran a
    BBS and a couple of servers behind it. It all felt very cutting edge to me, but it was pretty tame by comparison.

    People were very confused when I told them that I had neither
    a PC (at least, not one running Windows or DOS) nor a Mac at
    home. When I told them I had a VAX, they just looked at me
    like I was crazy.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 09:24:15 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: tenser to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 2024 04:07 am

    As I said earlier, I found the web pretty unimpressive when I first saw it; most of the content was boring. I vividly remember one web site, linked from the "main" server at CERN, that was some guy's collection of pictures of beer coasters from random bars. It rendered slowly on Mosaic on an RS/6000 machine. *shrug*

    I think the thing with the web wasn't necessarily the content, but the ability to share things fairly easily. If someone wanted to share photos or some information, they could put up a web page and share a link - and they could edit their web page to include links to other pages that you could just click on.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 09:25:22 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: tenser to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Jul 20 2024 04:09 am

    People were very confused when I told them that I had neither a PC (at least, not one running Windows or DOS) nor a Mac at home. When I told them I had a VAX, they just looked at me like I was crazy.

    My dad had a DOS/Windows PC in the late 80s, but I also remember him having a couple of Alpha Micro AM1000 computers in another room. I still don't know exactly what he used them for. Maybe I could ask him..

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 14:01:59 2024
    Long story short, the Internet didn't "start" in 1995, it
    certainly had nothing to do with "taking over" from CompuServe.
    If you believe otherwise, the onus is really on you to provide
    evidence, since it's a pretty extraordinary claim.


    What I meant by 'the internet started in 1995' is that the common public adoption of *www as a means of communication and service consumption took off around 1995 and not 1993.
    The technology and infrastructure named 'THE internet' started in 1983 and is based around research dating back to the 60s.
    I'm sure you can understand both concepts...
    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to Spectre on Fri Jul 19 14:05:55 2024
    The internet was a whole different beast back then. You're confusing Internet with WWW.
    I wouldn't say I'm 'exactly' confusing it, it's just that when I think of the internet, I mean the more social 'informatica' side of it, the *www side of it you're referring to.
    I know the difference between the technologies and developments called 'the internet' and what common tech-illiterate people call *www 'the internet'...
    For me, in social, communications and commercial products regards, the interchanging line between both concepts blurs pretty much.
    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 14:12:55 2024


    People still seem to be very confused as to what the Internet
    actually is; it's just the collection of publicly inter-connected
    TCP/IP networks. _Applications_ of the Internet, like the
    web, etc, are all different.

    It's more than 'just the collection of publicly inter-connected networks'. It's a cultural, social, communicational and commercial event, that changed humanity for good and *that* didn't start at 1993, but rather some time later, around 1995, I'd say. I do remember that too, because I lived *that*.
    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Malvinas on Sat Jul 20 06:20:56 2024
    On 19 Jul 2024 at 02:01p, Malvinas pondered and said...

    Long story short, the Internet didn't "start" in 1995, it
    certainly had nothing to do with "taking over" from CompuServe.
    If you believe otherwise, the onus is really on you to provide evidence, since it's a pretty extraordinary claim.

    What I meant by 'the internet started in 1995' is that the common public adoption of *www as a means of communication and service consumption
    took off around 1995 and not 1993.

    The world wide web started in 1991. "Common Public Adoption" is
    a rather different thing. Those of us using the Internet before
    that period of "common public adoption" were using the web rather
    earlier.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Malvinas on Sat Jul 20 06:23:00 2024
    On 19 Jul 2024 at 02:12p, Malvinas pondered and said...

    People still seem to be very confused as to what the Internet actually is; it's just the collection of publicly inter-connected TCP/IP networks. _Applications_ of the Internet, like the
    web, etc, are all different.

    It's more than 'just the collection of publicly inter-connected
    networks'. It's a cultural, social, communicational and commercial
    event, that changed humanity for good and *that* didn't start at 1993,
    but rather some time later, around 1995, I'd say. I do remember that
    too, because I lived *that*. Malvinas.

    Commercial ISPs existed well before 1993. Look up UUNET, for
    instance.

    Perhaps in your personal experience you started hearing about it
    in 1995, but that doesn't mean that's when it started.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Nightfox on Sat Jul 20 06:24:46 2024
    On 19 Jul 2024 at 09:24a, Nightfox pondered and said...

    As I said earlier, I found the web pretty unimpressive when I first s it; most of the content was boring. I vividly remember one web site, linked from the "main" server at CERN, that was some guy's collection pictures of beer coasters from random bars. It rendered slowly on Mo on an RS/6000 machine. *shrug*

    I think the thing with the web wasn't necessarily the content, but the ability to share things fairly easily. If someone wanted to share
    photos or some information, they could put up a web page and share a
    link - and they could edit their web page to include links to other
    pages that you could just click on.

    We had that before the web; people ran public anonymous FTP
    servers running at many, if not most, sites well before the
    web was a thing. It was common to create directories for
    users so that they could drop things into that part of the
    filesystem exposed to anon FTP; lots of stuff got shared that
    way.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Spaceboy@21:4/125 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 22:22:57 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: tenser to Nightfox on Sat Jul 20 2024 06:24:46

    We had that before the web; people ran public anonymous FTP
    servers running at many, if not most, sites well before the
    web was a thing. It was common to create directories for
    users so that they could drop things into that part of the
    filesystem exposed to anon FTP; lots of stuff got shared that
    way.

    Is ftp not still commonly used this way? I have found a lot of stuff recently and am damn grateful we still have it around. All the http stuff is bloated and inefficient nowadays. Efficiency=elegance?
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Veleno BBS -= https://www.velenobbs.net =- (21:4/125)
  • From Bob Worm@21:1/205 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 22:31:25 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: tenser to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 2024 04:07:51

    Hi, tenser.

    Ah, IRC: as a friend of mine put it, "The CB radio of the Internet."

    I've never heard that one before but it seems like a great analogy. I loved both back in the day and I don't care what that makes me!

    BobW
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: >>> Magnum BBS <<< - bbs.magnum.uk.net (21:1/205)
  • From Bob Worm@21:1/205 to tenser on Fri Jul 19 22:43:58 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: tenser to Malvinas on Sat Jul 20 2024 06:23:00

    Commercial ISPs existed well before 1993. Look up UUNET, for
    instance.

    Yeah, I'm not sure how this is even a debate. Demon Internet in the UK started in 1992. It had "Internet" in its name because that was a known thing even then. Demon was basically started to provide *affordable* Internet access, so they definitely weren't the first to market.

    Perhaps in your personal experience you started hearing about it
    in 1995, but that doesn't mean that's when it started.

    Even I was on the Internet in 1995, and I wasn't even the first from my circle of friends.

    BobW
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: >>> Magnum BBS <<< - bbs.magnum.uk.net (21:1/205)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Spaceboy on Sat Jul 20 11:29:05 2024
    On 19 Jul 2024 at 10:22p, Spaceboy pondered and said...

    Re: Re: computers
    By: tenser to Nightfox on Sat Jul 20 2024 06:24:46

    We had that before the web; people ran public anonymous FTP
    servers running at many, if not most, sites well before the
    web was a thing. It was common to create directories for
    users so that they could drop things into that part of the
    filesystem exposed to anon FTP; lots of stuff got shared that
    way.

    Is ftp not still commonly used this way? I have found a lot of stuff recently and am damn grateful we still have it around. All the http
    stuff is bloated and inefficient nowadays. Efficiency=elegance?

    Some people still do, I suppose, but honestly, _modern_ HTTP
    is probably better than FTP at this point. FTP is kind of an
    add protocol, that spends a lot of time sending text data
    about ports to connect to and so on over a "control" channel,
    and doing data transfer over transient "data" connections.
    HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 are much more efficient, channelizing a
    single logical connection.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Jul 20 19:28:00 2024
    O'Reilly, purely for sentimental reasons now. My PERL days are long
    gone.

    PERL, we don't need not stinking PEARL... just use bash scripts :)

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Malvinas on Sat Jul 20 19:34:00 2024
    What I meant by 'the internet started in 1995' is that the common public adoption of *www as a means of communication and service consumption took off around 1995 and not 1993. The technology and infrastructure

    Yeah nah, you're too late in your estimated time of arrival... well before 95 we had plenty of websites and user pages kicking around.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Malvinas on Sat Jul 20 19:36:00 2024
    I wouldn't say I'm 'exactly' confusing it, it's just that when I think of the internet, I mean the more social 'informatica' side of it, the *www side of it you're referring to. I know the difference between the

    If you're not confusing it, you're doing a bang up job of mashing it all into one thing, and saying this is when it starts... it didn't happen like that..
    it morphed into that over time, and at far different rates globally.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Bob Worm on Sat Jul 20 19:39:00 2024
    Ah, IRC: as a friend of mine put it, "The CB radio of the Internet."

    I've never heard that one before but it seems like a great analogy. I loved both back in the day and I don't care what that makes me!

    Our locals thought of it as, one of the local chat BBS systems.. some 16
    lines MajorBBS... why talk to Melbourne, when I can chat to the world.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Bob Worm on Sat Jul 20 19:43:00 2024
    Yeah, I'm not sure how this is even a debate. Demon Internet in the UK started in 1992. It had "Internet" in its name because that was a known thing even then. Demon was basically started to provide *affordable* Internet access, so they definitely weren't the first to market.

    I have to concur.. the only thing that arrived in 95 was win95 with its TCP stack on board. But even web browsing was a thing in Win 3.11, bit trickier
    to work with.. but as capable as any platform of the time..

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to tenser on Sat Jul 20 08:05:00 2024
    tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    People were very confused when I told them that I had neither
    a PC (at least, not one running Windows or DOS) nor a Mac at
    home. When I told them I had a VAX, they just looked at me
    like I was crazy.

    I wish I was there when you got the phone call "Hello, this is Neil from Microsoft Support, we were informed you have a virus on your
    computer..."



    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 08:07:00 2024
    Spectre wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    PERL, we don't need not stinking PEARL... just use bash scripts :)

    I'd forgotten about the power of bash - I have a tilde account, and
    there are a couple of bash scripts that turn text files into an HTML web
    site. Pretty cool, and quite retro.

    Another script turns the HTML into gemini markup.



    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Nightfox on Sat Jul 20 08:27:00 2024
    Nightfox wrote to tenser <=-

    My dad had a DOS/Windows PC in the late 80s, but I also remember him having a couple of Alpha Micro AM1000 computers in another room. I
    still don't know exactly what he used them for. Maybe I could ask
    him..

    The Computer History museum has an IBM 1401 mainframe computer. The guts
    of it were donated by a guy who retired from a pool maintenance company
    in southern California.

    He'd been using it to run his pool business from his garage since the
    mid 70s.



    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to tenser on Sat Jul 20 08:30:00 2024
    tenser wrote to Nightfox <=-

    We had that before the web; people ran public anonymous FTP
    servers running at many, if not most, sites well before the
    web was a thing. It was common to create directories for
    users so that they could drop things into that part of the
    filesystem exposed to anon FTP; lots of stuff got shared that
    way.

    Some of them were even intentional! I remember inheriting an FTP site
    when I came into a company that was used for customer file transfer with user/pass.

    My predecessor hadn't turned off anon FTP, and we had directories upon directories with dot-filenames and a ton of porn. If you wanted a porn collection back then, the quickest way was to leave an FTP site open.



    ... Adding on
    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spaceboy on Sat Jul 20 08:31:00 2024
    Spaceboy wrote to tenser <=-

    Is ftp not still commonly used this way? I have found a lot of stuff recently and am damn grateful we still have it around. All the http
    stuff is bloated and inefficient nowadays. Efficiency=elegance?

    It is, but most common browsers have dropped FTP support. Bummer, as a
    browser was the easiest way to connect to an FTP site you weren't going
    to be connecting to repeatedly.



    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 08:35:00 2024
    Spectre wrote to Malvinas <=-

    What I meant by 'the internet started in 1995' is that the common public adoption of *www as a means of communication and service consumption took off around 1995 and not 1993. The technology and infrastructure

    Yeah nah, you're too late in your estimated time of arrival... well
    before 95 we had plenty of websites and user pages kicking around.

    1993 for me, getting a 56k leased line for my business. $6K a year!

    In 1992, O'Reilly published the Whole Earth Internet Catalog.

    Long before that, we were running/participating in listservs, Usenet,
    FTP and Gopher - or telnetting into services that ran in a shell
    session.



    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 08:45:00 2024
    Spectre wrote to Bob Worm <=-

    I have to concur.. the only thing that arrived in 95 was win95 with its TCP stack on board. But even web browsing was a thing in Win 3.11, bit trickier to work with.. but as capable as any platform of the time..

    I hired a guy into IT in 1992 who I've seen go onto a successful career
    in IT. I should tell him the thing that got him into IT was that he'd
    gotten Trumpet Winsock, Crynwyr packet drivers and Microsoft networking
    to interoperate on Windows 3.11 and it impressed the hell out of us. :)

    (Read: I couldn't figure it out...)

    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Bob Worm@21:1/205 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Jul 20 22:01:29 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Sat Jul 20 2024 08:27:00

    The Computer History museum has an IBM 1401 mainframe computer. The guts
    of it were donated by a guy who retired from a pool maintenance company
    in southern California.

    He'd been using it to run his pool business from his garage since the
    mid 70s.

    Crikey - he could probably have retired 10 years earlier if he hadn't had to power that thing all this time!

    BobW
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: >>> Magnum BBS <<< - bbs.magnum.uk.net (21:1/205)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jul 21 12:42:21 2024
    On 20 Jul 2024 at 08:05a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    tenser wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    People were very confused when I told them that I had neither
    a PC (at least, not one running Windows or DOS) nor a Mac at
    home. When I told them I had a VAX, they just looked at me
    like I was crazy.

    I wish I was there when you got the phone call "Hello, this is Neil from Microsoft Support, we were informed you have a virus on your
    computer..."

    Ha! The best was when I got the call from the guy telling
    me that he was calling me, "from Google." I asked him, "what's
    your LDAP?" (Google-internal speak for login name; any Googler
    would know that right away). He hung up. Lol.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jul 21 12:46:58 2024
    On 20 Jul 2024 at 08:30a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    tenser wrote to Nightfox <=-

    We had that before the web; people ran public anonymous FTP
    servers running at many, if not most, sites well before the
    web was a thing. It was common to create directories for
    users so that they could drop things into that part of the
    filesystem exposed to anon FTP; lots of stuff got shared that
    way.

    Some of them were even intentional! I remember inheriting an FTP site
    when I came into a company that was used for customer file transfer with user/pass.

    Ha! Yeah. We used to set up an "incoming" directory that
    was world-writeable; eventually that turned out to be a bad
    idea for this very reason. This changed to having an
    "incoming" directory that was mode 751 (drwxr-x--x), so that
    the anonymous FTP user could `chdir` into it. Then we'd
    create a writeable directory with some obscure name under
    that, and share it with whoever wanted to send us stuff. As
    long as those directory names were hard to guess, it worked
    pretty well.

    Though there was the time I found an Amiga warez site on
    an FTP server at Bell Labs. I let Ches know and he fixed
    it. Fun fun fun.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From deon@21:2/116 to Spectre on Sun Jul 21 11:42:55 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Spectre to tenser on Fri Jul 19 2024 07:09 pm

    Howdy,

    SLIP was still a common option here into the early 90s... until WinSock and whatever PPP implementation arrived, I'm a bit hazy on that timing
    though.
    SLIP was usually easier to get working for the dialup crowd. SLIP didn't last to long once things got going though.

    Yeah, I was an ISP in the early-mid 90s with a mate. We joined APANA, and had a modem in the city that gave us a 33K link to the internet. I think at some point we updated that to 56K.

    At my mates place, we had 10 phone lines, 1 was permanent call to the city using PPP on answering, 1 was used by me, which also was PPP to my place, and the other 8 lines (on a line hunt) went to a shell account where users could use shell/text if they wanted, or SLiRP to setup a SLIP/PPP connection.

    We had an 8 port digiboard from memory, and the 2 onboard serial ports on, I'm guessing, a 386 (or 486) running linux. Those were the days that I would compile an updated kernel, which took hours to complete. I think I used to kick it off at night, and it would be finished sometime early morning if there were no issues.

    We used to charge $100/year (rules of APANA meant we couldnt be profitable), so it was a hobby with me any mate. It was hard to not be profitable, as most of the 8 lines were busy most of the day. I think we gave everybody 2 hrs max per day. I cant remember how many users we had, but I think it was well over 200 at the time.

    I found a recent APANA report that showed that we were their 3rd biggest user (in terms of traffic - I didnt know that at the time), which is what they charged us by.

    It was kinda cool logging in, and seeing all 8 lines busy. The good ol days :)


    ...δεσ∩
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)
  • From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 19:20:41 2024
    BY: Spectre (21:3/101)

    |11S|09> |10Here a lot of BBS became early dialup ISPs. I believe 90% of dialup BBS|07
    |11S|09> |10were|07
    |11S|09> |10gone by late 93, I forget a little, but it was every user just|07 |11S|09> |10disappeared|07
    |11S|09> |10overnight. One month there were users, next month, not a one.|07 Yes, people got bored of the bbs'es and even if you bribed them with money they did not want to touch them with a ten foot pole in 1996/1997.


    --- WWIV 5.8.1.3688[Windows]
    * Origin: inland utopia * california * iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to tenser on Sat Jul 20 23:20:36 2024
    Commercial ISPs existed well before 1993. Look up UUNET, for
    instance.
    I will do that

    Perhaps in your personal experience you started hearing about it
    in 1995, but that doesn't mean that's when it started.

    From the beginning of this series of messages I had a feeling that
    there was something 'regional' related to the different perceptions
    and ideas that we all shared.

    Malvinas

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 23:30:28 2024
    On 20 Jul 2024, Spectre said the following...

    Yeah, I'm not sure how this is even a debate. Demon Internet in the U started in 1992. It had "Internet" in its name because that was a kno thing even then. Demon was basically started to provide *affordable* Internet access, so they definitely weren't the first to market.

    I have to concur.. the only thing that arrived in 95 was win95 with its TCP stack on board. But even web browsing was a thing in Win 3.11, bit trickier to work with.. but as capable as any platform of the time..

    Spec

    This here is really interesting. I remember before 1995 (before Win95), taht BBSs were a common thing, and there was a sort "collective concious" of using
    BBSs to connect with others, I remember news paper articles about FIDOnet and how that could get you in touch with anyone anywhere in the world, but it wasn't until 1995 (and Win95, indeed...) with IExplroer preinstalled, and
    the browser war it ensued that *web browsing* (!!) really became something
    most people became aware of.
    All these cool messages with so much info, pointers and personal experiences have been very enlightening.

    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From J0hnny A1pha@21:4/158 to Utopian Galt on Sun Jul 21 15:47:52 2024
    BY: Utopian Galt (21:4/108)
    On Saturday,July 20, 2024 at 06:20 PM, Utopian Galt (21:4/108) wrote:

    BY: Spectre (21:3/101)

    |11S|09> |10Here a lot of BBS became early dialup ISPs. I believe 90% |11S|09> of dialup BBS|07
    |11S|09> |10were|07
    |11S|09> |10gone by late 93, I forget a little, but it was every user just|07
    |11S|09> |10disappeared|07
    |11S|09> |10overnight. One month there were users, next month, not a one.|07
    Yes, people got bored of the bbs'es and even if you bribed them with
    money they did not want to touch them with a ten foot pole in 1996/1997.

    I remember there was a time in early Internet where BBSers were trying to create/port experiences into Web form. It was the paradigm many people were most familar with. Services like GEnie and AOL felt very familiar in those days.



    --- WWIV 5.9.03742[Linux 6.8.0-38]
    * Origin: Space Junk! BBS (21:4/158)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Malvinas on Sun Jul 21 17:12:22 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Malvinas to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 2024 11:30 pm

    This here is really interesting. I remember before 1995 (before Win95), taht BBSs were a common thing, and there was a sort "collective concious" of using BBSs to connect with others, I remember news paper articles about FIDOnet and how that could get you in touch with anyone anywhere in the world, but it wasn't until 1995 (and Win95, indeed...) with IExplroer preinstalled, and the browser war it ensued that *web browsing* (!!) really became something most people became aware of.

    ..when most people became aware of FIDONet? I'm not so sure. It seemed that there were a lot of people who bought their first computer in the mid-90s and were getting on the internet and didn't really have a knowlege of BBSes.

    And I think Internet Explorer was included as an optional install in a Windows 95 add-on, and it came pre-installed in Windows 98. That was around the time of the Microsoft anti-trust trial, and Microsoft tried to say Internet Explorer was integrated into the OS and they couldn't remove it..

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to Malvinas on Mon Jul 22 14:02:55 2024
    On 20 Jul 2024 at 11:20p, Malvinas pondered and said...

    Perhaps in your personal experience you started hearing about it
    in 1995, but that doesn't mean that's when it started.


    From the beginning of this series of messages I had a feeling that
    there was something 'regional' related to the different perceptions
    and ideas that we all shared.

    Bear in mind also that commercial sale of DNS domains
    started in 1992 (Network Solutions taking over from NSF).

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Nightfox on Mon Jul 22 20:14:00 2024
    ..when most people became aware of FIDONet? I'm not so sure. It seemed that there were a lot of people who bought their first computer in the mid-90s and were getting on the internet and didn't really have a knowlege of BBSes.

    We had a raft of people pre popular internet, that started buying modems to call BBS' but it occured really late in the game.. only a year or so before
    we went all internetty... Prior to that it tended to be the computer
    hobbyist, nerdy types or knew one of the same that knew anything about
    modems or BBS...

    By the time you hit mid 90s anyone buying a modem has no interest in a BBS they're being sold internet access. That's become the primary reason for purchase.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Bf2K+@21:3/171 to Nightfox on Mon Jul 22 08:21:10 2024
    On 21 Jul 24 17:12:22 Nightfox wrote...

    Re: Re: computers By: Malvinas to Spectre on Sat Jul 20 2024
    11:30 pm

    This here is really interesting. I remember before 1995 (before Win95), taht BBSs were a common thing, and there was a sort "collective concious" of using BBSs to connect with others, I
    remember news paper articles about FIDOnet and how that could
    get you in touch with anyone anywhere in the world, but it
    wasn't until 1995 (and Win95, indeed...) with IExplroer
    preinstalled, and the browser war it ensued that *web browsing*
    (!!) really became something most people became aware of.

    ..when most people became aware of FIDONet? I'm not so sure. It
    seemed that there were a lot of people who bought their first
    computer in the mid-90s and were getting on the internet and didn't
    really have a knowlege of BBSes.

    And I think Internet Explorer was included as an optional install in
    a Windows 95 add-on, and it came pre-installed in Windows 98. That
    was around the time of the Microsoft anti-trust trial, and Microsoft
    tried to say Internet Explorer was integrated into the OS and they
    couldn't remove it..

    Nightfox --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

    To which Bf2K+ replies...

    I started my BBS on an Atari 8bit machine in Jan 1984. In 1987 (or 88) I
    moved it to a PC and joined Fidonet. I shut it down in 1996. Then in
    1999, I put it back up on the Atari 8bit platform running on an emulator
    in a PC connected to the internet. It is still running and I added a 2nd
    BBS (Synchronet) a couple of months ago.

    A8 - Boot Factory 2k+; bfbbs.no-ip.com:8888
    Synch - RetroRunning; retrorunning.ddns.net:8880

    So I became aware of Fidonet around 1987.

    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spectre on Mon Jul 22 06:49:00 2024
    Spectre wrote to Nightfox <=-

    By the time you hit mid 90s anyone buying a modem has no interest in a
    BBS they're being sold internet access. That's become the primary
    reason for purchase.

    I miss the endless busy signals of the '90s. Wait, I don't. Being able
    to connect to the internet (mostly) without busy signals was a big part
    of the allure for some people.

    I recall setting a handful of BBSes on repeat dial and waiting until
    one of them answered. Usually, the less popular one would connect you
    and you'd end up reading messages on a stock Spitfire board instead of
    the one you *really* wanted to call.



    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Jul 22 09:56:39 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Spectre on Mon Jul 22 2024 06:49 am

    By the time you hit mid 90s anyone buying a modem has no interest in a
    BBS they're being sold internet access. That's become the primary reason
    for purchase.

    I miss the endless busy signals of the '90s. Wait, I don't. Being able to connect to the internet (mostly) without busy signals was a big part of the allure for some people.

    I recall setting a handful of BBSes on repeat dial and waiting until one of them answered. Usually, the less popular one would connect you and you'd end up reading messages on a stock Spitfire board instead of the one you *really* wanted to call.

    Yeah, that's something I don't really miss. Also, when I started using the internet (late 1995), one thing I really liked was that it seemed a lot easier to find software updates & things to download. There were times when I'd find an update to a PC game or other sofwtare, and when using BBSes, I might not know there's a newer version and might just happen to find an update on a BBS somewhere, or hear there's a newer version but have a hard time finding a BBS that had it. On the internet, companies usually had a web site or FTP site you could go to and download the latest updates easily.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to Nightfox on Mon Jul 22 21:48:25 2024
    And I think Internet Explorer was included as an optional install in a Windows 95 add-on, and it came pre-installed in Windows 98. That was around the time of the Microsoft anti-trust trial, and Microsoft tried
    to say Internet Explorer was integrated into the OS and they couldn't remove it..


    The complaint presented by Netscape, that arrived at Court in the end, was that Microsoft *tried* (and succeded, for a while...) to have IExplorer
    pre-installed with *Win95*. There wouldn't have been a case otherwise.

    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to tenser on Mon Jul 22 21:51:57 2024
    Bear in mind also that commercial sale of DNS domains
    started in 1992 (Network Solutions taking over from NSF).


    Now that you mention that, I remember Nic.ar (the state-owned public service that registers .com.ar domains in my country), started to register domains in 1992, but I'm not sure of there were more than say 10 domains registered and active by that time.

    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 23 06:40:00 2024
    I miss the endless busy signals of the '90s. Wait, I don't. Being able

    Reminds me of one of the off label uses for your modem... Attack dialing
    your girlfriend.. I had one living in a share house at the time for a bit,
    and trying to call that house was a nightmare... Add the number to the
    dialing directory and let it rip.. run for the phone when you here someone pickup :)

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From dreamchipper@21:1/228 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 23 14:32:01 2024
    I still have that Whole Internet book! I think its funny that once upon a time, all of the internet could fit in one book.

    Ray

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: SDF-1 BBS: bbs.sdf1.net (ssh: 5022, telnet: 5023) (21:1/228)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to dreamchipper on Tue Jul 23 09:57:18 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: dreamchipper to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 23 2024 02:32 pm

    I still have that Whole Internet book! I think its funny that once upon a time, all of the internet could fit in one book.


    One of the first email lists I was on was "What's New on the Web...", a list of new web sites. The list was probably pretty much complete, encapsulated in a weekly email list.

    I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San Francisco and worked at a software company in San Francisco. San Francisco was cool, and the epicenter of multimedia in tech. San Francisco was cool and the rest of the bay area was uncool. I wonder what would have happened if I'd decided to work outside of San Francisco in the uncool valley and gotten a job at Netscape.
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Win32
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 23 10:25:22 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to dreamchipper on Tue Jul 23 2024 09:57 am

    I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San Francisco

    I should probably watch that show.. I watched the first episode (or part of it) and for some reason didn't continue watching the show.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Nightfox on Tue Jul 23 16:17:35 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Nightfox to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 23 2024 10:25 am

    I should probably watch that show.. I watched the first episode (or part of it) and for some reason didn't continue watching the show.

    It's definitely worth the watch. Season 1 takes place in the early 80s and mimics the rise of Compaq and the PC clones. Season 2 is a time jump and deals with gaming. Season 3 takes another time jump and is all about online services. Season 4 takes place after another jump and is set in the rise of the world wide web.
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Win32
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Gamgee@21:2/138 to Nightfox on Tue Jul 23 20:57:00 2024
    Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San Francisco

    I should probably watch that show.. I watched the first episode (or
    part of it) and for some reason didn't continue watching the show.

    Yes, you should watch it - absolutely outstanding.



    ... Behind every great man is an amazed mother-in-law!
    === MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From dreamchipper@21:1/228 to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed Jul 24 15:34:29 2024
    I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San

    I didnt know later seasons got into that. I stopped watching part way through season 2. I'll have to pick it up again

    Ray

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: SDF-1 BBS: bbs.sdf1.net (ssh: 5022, telnet: 5023) (21:1/228)
  • From Mhansel739@21:3/171 to dreamchipper on Thu Jul 25 06:03:18 2024
    Halt and Catch Fire - where are you streaming these seasons from? I am interested in re-watching it, but am hesitant to sign up for another darn streaming service.
    --Matt

    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From TheNerd@21:1/230 to Spectre on Thu Jul 25 10:38:31 2024
    Here a lot of BBS became early dialup ISPs. I believe 90% of dialup BBS were gone by late 93, I forget a little, but it was every user just disappeared overnight. One month there were users, next month, not a

    I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my area were
    still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and the BBS ran for a good 10 years (dialup, then web based around 2001) longer before life made me shut down. By 2003 things where really slowing down on the Dialup scene but when we transitioned to a web board it kept going for a while.

    It would be nice to see it come back but I doubt it ever will.


    --- TheNerd -/- Sysop: NerdRage BBS -/- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: NerdRage BBS -.- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net (21:1/230)
  • From TheNerd@21:1/230 to Malvinas on Thu Jul 25 10:43:06 2024
    IIRC, 'the internet', as such actually started out in 1995, replacing Compuserve.
    I wouldn't know as I got my PC connected with a modem around 1997, when the inernet already was a thing but there wasn't much to do there
    either, there was a lot more activity in BBS systems.

    Bah.. the Internet was a 30 year old overnight success by the time 95 rolled around. The marker for 95 was simply Windows 95, which was built to be online at the time. 3.1 would do it of course with WinSock but it was a pita and unreliable. 95 was the shit.. the world changed that day.


    --- TheNerd -/- Sysop: NerdRage BBS -/- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: NerdRage BBS -.- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net (21:1/230)
  • From TheNerd@21:1/230 to Spectre on Thu Jul 25 10:59:33 2024
    Netscape Navigator came out in 1994,

    You guys call it NutScrape too?

    No.. usually it was "F*&#$ng Netscape".. often times after it locked up or crashed.. usually just about the time before you got to see boob on the photo you where downloading in the browser window..


    --- TheNerd -/- Sysop: NerdRage BBS -/- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: NerdRage BBS -.- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net (21:1/230)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to TheNerd on Thu Jul 25 09:47:47 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: TheNerd to Spectre on Thu Jul 25 2024 10:38 am

    I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my area were still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and the BBS ran for a good 10 years (dialup, then web based around 2001) longer before life made me shut down. By 2003 things where really slowing down on the Dialup scene but when we transitioned to a web board it kept going for a while.

    :) I just started high school in 1994, which was also the same year I started running my own BBS. I really enjoyed running my BBS in those days. I took my BBS down in 2000, as (from what I remember) it wasn't getting many callers at all anymore, maybe 1-2 in a day (though not always every day). I thought BBSing was pretty much dead, but in 2007 I learned there were still some BBSes around and on the internet, and I set up my current BBS and have been running it since then.

    I feel it's ironic that I've been running my current BBS longer than my original BBS in the 90s.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to TheNerd on Thu Jul 25 09:50:04 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: TheNerd to Malvinas on Thu Jul 25 2024 10:43 am

    Bah.. the Internet was a 30 year old overnight success by the time 95 rolled around. The marker for 95 was simply Windows 95, which was built to be online at the time. 3.1 would do it of course with WinSock but it was a pita and unreliable. 95 was the shit.. the world changed that day.

    I started using the internet in 1995 with Windows 3.1 and Winsock. I don't think it was a PITA.. It actually seemed fairly easy to set up. You'd just configure Winsock for your ISP and dial in, and you were online. I did that for a while until in 1996, I got my first job and spent my first couple paychecks on parts for a new PC, which I installed Windows 95 on.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to TheNerd on Thu Jul 25 09:50:42 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: TheNerd to Spectre on Thu Jul 25 2024 10:59 am

    You guys call it NutScrape too?

    No.. usually it was "F*&#$ng Netscape".. often times after it locked up or crashed.. usually just about the time before you got to see boob on the photo you where downloading in the browser window..

    I don't remember having such a problem with Netscape. It always seemed like a good browser.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Spectre on Thu Jul 25 12:50:15 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Spectre to TheNerd on Fri Jul 26 2024 03:26 am

    ways, and having to flip between Nutscrape and Internet Exploiter as they

    Nutscrape *Masturbator

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Spectre on Thu Jul 25 12:51:54 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Spectre to TheNerd on Fri Jul 26 2024 03:29 am

    I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my area were
    still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and the BBS

    Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...

    In my area (northwest Oregon in the US), there were still a lot of BBSes in 1993. I started running my own BBS in 1994, and I got a Fido feed in 1998. However, BBS usage was starting to drop off by then, and in 2000, usage was so low that I decided to stop running my BBS at the time.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to TheNerd on Fri Jul 26 03:26:00 2024
    No.. usually it was "F*&#$ng Netscape".. often times after it locked up

    I don't recall any of the early browsers being particularly unstable, just highly incompatible with each other and rendering HTML in wildly different ways, and having to flip between Nutscrape and Internet Exploiter as they either added features or displayed the page you wanted to look at.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to TheNerd on Fri Jul 26 03:29:00 2024
    I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my area were still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and the BBS

    Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS
    around to even get Fido from...

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From klunk@21:1/124 to Mhansel739 on Thu Jul 25 22:35:41 2024
    Halt and Catch Fire - where are you streaming these seasons from? I am interested in re-watching it, but am hesitant to sign up for another darn streaming service.

    I have access to all 4 seasons ;)

    Klunk

    ... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: Who Dares Wins Amiga BBS (21:1/124)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spectre on Thu Jul 25 17:38:13 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Spectre to TheNerd on Fri Jul 26 2024 03:29 am

    Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...

    That's odd. In the San Francisco Bay Area there were hundreds of BBSes in the area and a whole echomail distribution system. I was part of that until the late 90s, probably 1998. I got an ISDN line and connection to the internet and started using FTP to get fidonet mail.
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Win32
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Nightfox on Fri Jul 26 12:44:00 2024
    I started using the internet in 1995 with Windows 3.1 and Winsock. I don't think it was a PITA.. It actually seemed fairly easy to set up.

    Never did that.. at that stage, we'd had the baptism of fire running linux
    for the local user group. Always had a linux box doing fileserving and
    routing after that. An odd couple of times I had dialup into that same box
    for internet from other locations.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jul 26 12:56:00 2024
    That's odd. In the San Francisco Bay Area there were hundreds of BBSes in the area and a whole echomail distribution system. I was part of that until the late 90s, probably 1998. I got an ISDN line and connection to the internet and started using FTP to get fidonet mail.

    Australia generally were early internet adopters, probably why my time scale
    is so different. Its probably mid 93 its well on its way to gone. We had amongst the highest density of BBS in the world here in Melbourne, and Sydney... a lot were smallish single line systems.. I believe a lot of those that were sysops for the sake of being a sysop just shut down and went
    straight to dial-up internet. While anyone that had more than 2 lines
    morphed into a service provider. We had hundreds of ISPs for a while.

    But it all disappeared so fast there was no one to keep in touch with about what nets still functioned even. Even the BBS registry pretty much
    disappears around then. By 95 we were on cable internet. The other long standing problem I had was nothing that we were using leant itself to
    TCP/IP... No serial redirection available, no networking available.. with a vairety of truly antique drivers and shims I was able to get NWLITE to see other stations but it could never talk to another station. So it all went by the wayside. The few I can recall that hung on tended to be Major BBS which had the module for telnet service. They were pretty much just ISPing it
    though, the chat groups were all dead.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Bf2K+@21:3/171 to Spectre on Thu Jul 25 23:30:10 2024
    On 26 Jul 24 03:29:00 Spectre wrote...

    I was in my last year of high school in 1993. The boards in my ar still going strong. about a year later I became a FidoNet Hub and

    Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]

    To which Bf2K+ replies...

    I didn't leave FidoNet until 1996 or 97... don't remember for sure
    because I recently looked at some old nodelists and saw my node listed in
    a 97 list.

    I brought my old Atari 8-bit BBS back on the internet in 1999 and it is
    still up and running...

    bfbbs.no-ip.com:8888


    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Bf2K+ on Fri Jul 26 21:56:00 2024
    I didn't leave FidoNet until 1996 or 97... don't remember for sure
    because I recently looked at some old nodelists and saw my node listed in a 97 list.

    I brought my old Atari 8-bit BBS back on the internet in 1999 and it is still up and running...

    Back in 93-94 I don't think we had enough ways to migrate a BBS to the internet. Most had already left the building by the time they became
    available.

    I do remember seeing RLFOSSIL back then, but having no way to use it with any of my existing infrastructure.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Mhansel739@21:3/171 to klunk on Fri Jul 26 06:45:46 2024
    I have access to all 4 seasons ;)

    Klunk
    That is AWESOME! But, where do I get it?
    --Matt

    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spectre on Fri Jul 26 07:11:00 2024
    Spectre wrote to Bf2K+ <=-

    Back in 93-94 I don't think we had enough ways to migrate a BBS to the internet. Most had already left the building by the time they became available.

    I don't think there was a terminal program that could do Telnet and
    Zmodem back then; that was the one show-stopper I kept going back to.
    Between QWK and file transfers, Zmodem was a requirement.

    I do remember seeing RLFOSSIL back then, but having no way to use it
    with any of my existing infrastructure.

    Yeah, by the time I had a DSL line, I was down to one or two callers a
    day. I wonder how many I would have gotten were people able to telnet
    in?


    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From TheNerd@21:1/230 to Nightfox on Fri Jul 26 12:07:01 2024
    I started using the internet in 1995 with Windows 3.1 and Winsock. I don't think it was a PITA.. It actually seemed fairly easy to set up. You'd just configure Winsock for your ISP and dial in, and you were online. I did that for a while until in 1996, I got my first job and spent my first couple paychecks on parts for a new PC, which I installed Windows 95 on.

    OH gawd I hated Winsock. Early in my career I had to support that for an ISP.. thankfully not for long before it filtered out of the system. Nothing but pain with a 'user' on the other end of the phone.


    --- TheNerd -/- Sysop: NerdRage BBS -/- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: NerdRage BBS -.- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net (21:1/230)
  • From TheNerd@21:1/230 to Spectre on Fri Jul 26 12:15:34 2024
    Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...


    London Ontario Canada.


    --- TheNerd -/- Sysop: NerdRage BBS -/- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: NerdRage BBS -.- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net (21:1/230)
  • From TheNerd@21:1/230 to Nightfox on Fri Jul 26 12:16:36 2024
    I don't remember having such a problem with Netscape. It always seemed like a good browser.

    I never found it to be an especially great browser.. it wasn't horrible but it was early days in the world of WWW. I was very happy when FireFox came out.


    --- TheNerd -/- Sysop: NerdRage BBS -/- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: NerdRage BBS -.- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net (21:1/230)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to TheNerd on Fri Jul 26 11:49:03 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: TheNerd to Nightfox on Fri Jul 26 2024 12:16 pm

    I don't remember having such a problem with Netscape. It always seemed
    like a good browser.

    I never found it to be an especially great browser.. it wasn't horrible but it was early days in the world of WWW. I was very happy when FireFox came out.

    If Netscape wasn't a great browser, what browser were you comparing Netscape to? I don't think there were very many web browsers available at the time, and they were probably about on par with each other. Firefox didn't come out until 2004..

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Mhansel739 on Sat Jul 27 06:22:00 2024
    I have access to all 4 seasons ;)

    That is AWESOME! But, where do I get it? --Matt

    Vivaldi or is that too retro? :P


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Jul 27 06:25:00 2024
    I don't think there was a terminal program that could do Telnet and
    Zmodem back then; that was the one show-stopper I kept going back to. Between QWK and file transfers, Zmodem was a requirement.

    Ponder, there was something I was using close to 95... I forget what it was now.. but that was to late for us. Earlier if you wanted telnet you'd need
    to dial a text shell and telnet from there..

    Some of the early telnet clients also didn't cope with ANSI BBS very well either. Sure they could manage some colour and movement.. but BBS pages
    tended to push the envelope in comparrison to what the clients were designed for.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. (21:3/101)
  • From Mhansel739@21:3/171 to TheNerd on Sat Jul 27 06:45:00 2024
    Netscape, or any of the other browsers out at the beginning of the wild
    west days of the world wide web (WWW), were hit or miss. Web page/site developers had to choose what browser they were developing for. One
    browser rendered one way, the other another way. And each of them had
    their own "special" tags that the others couldn't use or recognize.
    I think back to the days of IE being the "premier" browser with its
    ActiveX controls. Many financial institutions developed their sites for
    that browser and you could only access them with IE.
    While I love that I was part of those days, I am still glad that some
    standards were formed and adhered to by all browsers, making them "semi-universal".
    --Matt

    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Mhansel739 on Sat Jul 27 08:27:18 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: Mhansel739 to TheNerd on Sat Jul 27 2024 06:45 am

    their own "special" tags that the others couldn't use or recognize. I think back to the days of IE being the "premier" browser with its ActiveX controls. Many financial institutions developed their sites for that browser and you could only access them with IE.

    That was an example of Microsoft's "embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy. They'd often take something that was supposed to be standardized and add their own stuff to it and/or make it work a little differently. Because of how many people used Microsoft's stuff, many developers would end up supporting it, and competitors' stuff wouldn't work anymore. Microsoft did that with IE for many years.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Mhansel739 on Sat Jul 27 09:01:00 2024
    Mhansel739 wrote to TheNerd <=-

    Netscape, or any of the other browsers out at the beginning of the wild west days of the world wide web (WWW), were hit or miss. Web page/site developers had to choose what browser they were developing for.

    Mostly due to Microsoft making IE intentionally different. Embrace,
    Extend, Engulf...


    What I remember from the early days fondly was Netscape Communicator.
    I used that at a couple of companies for POP3 email, then later IMAP.
    I'd set up an internal NNTP server for collaboration and we'd use it
    for internal teams chat. Pair that with Palm Desktop and you'd hear
    Palms syncing throughout the building. It worked pretty well for the
    time.

    I tried Mozilla SeaMonkey, reminded me a lot of the UI from
    Communicator, but it refuses to load randomly and isn't very well
    updated these days.




    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From maple@21:1/215 to Nightfox on Sat Jul 27 18:27:38 2024
    I should probably watch that show.. I watched the first episode (or
    part of it) and for some reason didn't continue watching the show.

    ohhh i SUPER recommend HCF, it's one of my favourite tv shows ever. a lot of people i knew at the time were turned off from it because of how "inaccurate" it is, but something they don't realize is that the show is about the
    people, it's not a documentary!

    "computers aren't the thing. they're the thing that gets us to the thing" :)

    |08- |05maple "|13mavica|05" syrup |07(|10byte/byteself|07 or it/its)
    |09https://maple.pet/

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: Retro32 BBS (21:1/215)
  • From TheNerd@21:1/230 to Nightfox on Sun Jul 28 17:59:35 2024
    On 26 Jul 2024, Nightfox said the following...
    If Netscape wasn't a great browser, what browser were you comparing Netscape to? I don't think there were very many web browsers available
    at the time, and they were probably about on par with each other.
    Firefox didn't come out until 2004..

    There was no comparing.. as I said, it was the early days of WWW. But netscape itself was plagued with all kinds of bugs in the UI or page display and copious crashing. The addon game back then was a pita as well. We did however have Internet Explorer in 95. Which was better, all be it chained to the OS. Then it wasn't better and it just sucked. Off to firefox.


    --- TheNerd -/- Sysop: NerdRage BBS -/- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: NerdRage BBS -.- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net (21:1/230)
  • From TheNerd@21:1/230 to Mhansel739 on Sun Jul 28 18:02:54 2024
    developers had to choose what browser they were developing for. One browser rendered one way, the other another way. And each of them had their own "special" tags that the others couldn't use or recognize.
    I think back to the days of IE being the "premier" browser with its

    OMG yes.. This is why my foray into web design as a profession ended. Constant standard changes or stupid extras that where real cool in IE didn't render right or at all in netscape or firefox.. no thanks. Now I look at code for pages and no thanks.

    CSS was pretty cool when it hit wide spread adoption tho... IE needed to f that up a bit as usual of course.


    --- TheNerd -/- Sysop: NerdRage BBS -/- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: NerdRage BBS -.- telnet: nerdragebbs.ddns.net (21:1/230)
  • From klunk@21:1/124 to Mhansel739 on Sun Jul 28 17:26:10 2024
    That is AWESOME! But, where do I get it?

    Where are you based?
    Klunk

    ... Operator, give me the number for 911

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: Who Dares Wins Amiga BBS (21:1/124)
  • From Errol Casey@21:1/182 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jul 28 12:28:32 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to dreamchipper on Tue Jul 23 2024 09:57 am

    I'm re-watching Halt and Catch Fire season 4 now - they captured that early web period well. I think back to that time, I lived in San Francisco and worked at a software company in San Francisco. San Francisco was cool, and the epicenter of multimedia in tech. San Francisco was cool and the rest of the bay area was uncool. I wonder what would have happened if I'd decided to work outside of San Francisco in the uncool valley and gotten a job at Netscape.
    Where are you watching it? streaming service? which one.

    I've heard of the show, but have never found where I could watch it.
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Too Lazy BBS - toolazy.ddns.net:2323 (21:1/182)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 30 02:18:38 2024
    On 25 Jul 2024 at 05:38p, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    Re: Re: computers
    By: Spectre to TheNerd on Fri Jul 26 2024 03:29 am

    Interesting. Where in the world are you? By 93 there wasn't another BBS around to even get Fido from...

    That's odd. In the San Francisco Bay Area there were hundreds of BBSes
    in the area and a whole echomail distribution system. I was part of that until the late 90s, probably 1998. I got an ISDN line and connection to the internet and started using FTP to get fidonet mail.

    Once I got access to the Internet, I found the technical
    discussion content I'd been looking for, and then I started
    to wonder why anyone would care about the endless flame
    wars and "big personalities" on fight-o-net. The silly
    "rules" imposed by sysops on local BBSes seemed strange once
    I realized they didn't have any content I cared about.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to TheNerd on Mon Jul 29 09:45:21 2024
    Re: Re: computers
    By: TheNerd to Mhansel739 on Sun Jul 28 2024 06:02 pm

    OMG yes.. This is why my foray into web design as a profession ended. Constant standard changes or stupid extras that where real cool in IE didn't render right or at all in netscape or firefox.. no thanks. Now I look at code for pages and no thanks.

    In 2010, I got a job as a "web developer" and was thinking from the job description that it might be more back-end development (with PHP and similar), but the job turned out to be a bit different.. Among other things, they had me doing some front-end web development, which I was a little less familiar with, and wanted me to make some customizations to their Magento setup (Magento is an open-source online store package). Magento ended up being terribly complicated, but as far as the front-end stuff, I didn't like having to support all the different browser standards either, which I suppose is why I've tended to gravitate away from front-end web development. I do like UI development for other things though (such as desktop software, mobile apps, etc.).

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.20-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Mhansel739@21:3/171 to TheNerd on Tue Jul 30 04:53:22 2024
    OMG yes.. This is why my foray into web design as a profession ended. Constant standard changes or stupid extras that where real cool in IE d render right or at all in netscape or firefox.. no thanks. Now I look code for pages and no thanks.

    CSS was pretty cool when it hit wide spread adoption tho... IE needed t that up a bit as usual of course.

    Yes, this is what I was talking about. Browsers rendered things
    "differently" depending on how the developers "interpreted" the HTML or
    CSS code. Yes, CSS was a developing standard, but it was still the WWW
    (wild wild west) on the WWW (world-wide web). My foray into web-dev was similar. I found it silly creating different versions of pages for
    different browsers, or locking someone into a specific browser to look at
    or use a page.
    --Matt

    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From Mhansel739@21:3/171 to klunk on Tue Jul 30 04:57:00 2024
    I am in Virginia, US. I see that I can get it via Amazon or an AMC subscription. I am just not ready to sign up for another streaming
    service at this time. At the rate I am going, I am paying almost as much
    as I did for DirectTV with the different services. Ok, that may be a
    slight exaggeration, but you get the point. I will hold off for a bit.
    Plus, fall semester starts up in a couple weeks, so I will not have much
    time to spend as I get acclimated to the class load I am teaching.
    --Matt

    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Mhansel739 on Tue Jul 30 06:27:00 2024
    Mhansel739 wrote to TheNerd <=-

    Yes, this is what I was talking about. Browsers rendered things "differently" depending on how the developers "interpreted" the HTML or CSS code. Yes, CSS was a developing standard, but it was still the WWW (wild wild west) on the WWW (world-wide web). My foray into web-dev was similar. I found it silly creating different versions of pages for different browsers, or locking someone into a specific browser to look
    at or use a page.

    The problem from my perspective was extensions and interpretations of
    the HTML standard by Microsoft making IE less compatible. Microsoft
    knew that corporate networks would support IE and intentionally erode
    competitor's market share. Microsoft in the '90s was ruthless and
    should have been broken up.


    --- MultiMail/Win v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Mhansel739@21:3/171 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Aug 11 10:10:46 2024
    The problem from my perspective was extensions and interpretations of
    the HTML standard by Microsoft making IE less compatible. Microsoft
    knew that corporate networks would support IE and intentionally erode
    competitor's market share. Microsoft in the '90s was ruthless and
    should have been broken up.

    Yes, MS was ruthless during the 90s. They were looking to have dominance
    and keep their competitors out of the corporate arena. Should they have
    been broken up? Maybe. But, in my opinion, they created what the consumer
    and most of the commercial world wanted - a single platform to work from.
    As much as we love Linux, there are "too many" variations for it to take
    hold. It does well in the server arena, but not the desktop. And Mac, as
    good as it is missed the mark.
    Think about this. Once Microsoft established itself as the OS of choice
    for IBM and the clones, it already created a foothold. Commodore, Atari,
    and other platforms just could not compete with the common platform that software was being created for.
    --Matt

    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From Malvinas@21:4/167 to Mhansel739 on Sun Aug 11 15:42:59 2024
    As much as we love Linux, there are "too many" variations for it to take hold. It does well in the server arena, but not the desktop. And Mac, as good as it is missed the mark.
    Just recently I saw a conference by Linus Torvalds where he pointed out just that. That MS was succesful because there's only 1 Windows in each cycle, whereas in Linux, each app creator has to release an immense amount of binaries to have their app ready to be used in a myriad of different distros. The Cathedral and the Bazaar, back for blood... Still, Mr. Torvalds pointed out that is yet another huge corporation one that could push this culture and logic into the linux sphere, when Steam would have to standarize binary releases for games compatible with the linux platform

    Think about this. Once Microsoft established itself as the OS of choice for IBM and the clones, it already created a foothold. Commodore, Atari, and other platforms just could not compete with the common platform that software was being created for.
    --Matt

    On this last piece of your post: MS didn't "establish itself"... they did some kind of shady move with IBM to have their OS pre-installed in OEM computers for a good few years, until it was irreversible. I know american folks (coming from "the land of opportunity and the free and brave), see these 'corporate moves' as not so much as "shady", but you gotta give that that's not quite "squeaky clean"...

    Malvinas.

    Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas!

    ... Islas Malvinas, siempre Argentinas.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/64)
    * Origin: The Vault BBS (21:4/167)
  • From Mhansel739@21:3/171 to Malvinas on Mon Aug 12 04:49:16 2024
    On this last piece of your post: MS didn't "establish itself"... they d some kind of shady move with IBM to have their OS pre-installed in OEM computers for a good few years, until it was irreversible. I know ameri folks (coming from "the land of opportunity and the free and brave), se these 'corporate moves' as not so much as "shady", but you gotta give t that's not quite "squeaky clean"...
    No doubt that MS did some shady stuff to get DOS on the IBM. They have
    done (have been doing) some shady stuff to stay on top. There is no way
    they could have done this and come out squeaky clean. I have used MS
    stuff as long as it has been around, but am not blind to the fact that
    they are just one more corporation out to make money. I see the crud they
    pull with their licensing (both desktop/server licenses and their
    cloud-based offerings).
    I use it because that is where the tools are that I need for work. And to
    me, their tools are pretty good. Yup, there are alternatives that work as
    well, if not better (and cost less).
    --Matt

    --- RATSoft/FIDO v09.14.95 [JetMail 1.01]
    * Origin: STar Fleet HQ - Real Atari! bbs.sfhqbbs.org:5983 (21:3/171.0)
  • From mary4@21:1/166 to rubberchicken on Fri Aug 23 04:13:11 2024
    born in the 80's but have been getting back into retro computers again,
    i miss the times when this was primary means of comms.

    i was born in 1991! this is a cooler way to talk! :D

    --mary4 (Victoria Crenshaw) the 286 enthusiast

    ... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Datanet BBS | telnet://datanetbbs.net:23 (21:1/166)
  • From mary4@21:1/166 to Newtype Len on Fri Aug 23 04:18:00 2024
    I grew up with dial-up in the 90s and 2000s, but never saw or used a BBS until last year. Using one now has changed my apprecation for using the Internet, and has changed my ideas on how to use it to communicate.

    i got my 1st pc in y2k and we used dailup until 2002 i never saw a bbs until this year! <3
    i compleately understand your views and i hold thre same ones!~

    --mary4 (Victoria Crenshaw) the 286 enthusiast

    ... It said "insert disk #3", but only two will fit...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Datanet BBS | telnet://datanetbbs.net:23 (21:1/166)
  • From Rixter@21:1/242 to mary4 on Thu Aug 22 20:42:24 2024


    i was born in 1991! this is a cooler way to talk! :D

    --mary4 (Victoria Crenshaw) the 286 enthusiast

    ... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Datanet BBS | telnet://datanetbbs.net:23 (21:1/166)


    I have always thought so.
    --- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32
    * Origin: Ricks BBS - ricksbbs.synchro.net (21:1/242)
  • From Elmer Quinn@21:1/242 to Rixter on Sun Aug 25 04:40:14 2024


    i was born in 1991! this is a cooler way to talk! :D

    --mary4 (Victoria Crenshaw) the 286 enthusiast

    ... Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Datanet BBS | telnet://datanetbbs.net:23 (21:1/166)


    I have always thought so.
    same here! this is so much better than fb.
    --- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32
    * Origin: Ricks BBS - ricksbbs.synchro.net (21:1/242)
  • From hollowone@21:2/150 to Elmer Quinn on Sat Nov 2 11:56:26 2024
    i was born in 1991! this is a cooler way to talk! :D
    same here! this is so much better than fb.

    You guys still need to learn how to quote without all the personal and server signature crap :) but good to see old-fashioned terminal communication fancy you and at least I can tell you know already that reply comes below not above the original message :)

    -h1

    ... Xerox Alto was the thing. Anything after we use is just a mere copy.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbS>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)