15 Jun
2004
15 Jun
'04
11:42 a.m.
At 18:46 15/06/2004, you wrote:
I used to have edit access to the viewdata system run by British Rail,
accessibly via a gateway from Prestel itself. I may still have some of the
docs for the bulk upload interface, but I have no idea what hardware it ran
on... It was rare that we ever saw the actual hardware that was at the end
of a modem or comms link :-)
Rob
On Jun 15, 9:31, Jules Richardson wrote:
Um yes, somewhere in my email I have contacts for a few people, plus the
BBS stuff of course...
It'd be nice to have a Prestel server at
Bletchley with some assorted
80's machines hooked up to it (bodging the phone network inbetween :)
but chances are that nobody's got a copy of the necessary server
software any more :-(
If only for local use, a small PBX or a few line emulators would do.
Even if they did have the server software, I
can't see them having a
snapshot of live data from the 80's which is what would make it
really
interesting. I don't really fancy writing a
few hundred fake pages
:-)
You might be able to get some pages from peopel who used to run BBC
BBSs. Or people Rob and I know might have some dusty archives. I've heard
mention of some sort of viewdata server system there (not
Prestel), although I haven't personally stumbled across it in storage
yet (no room currently to have it on display!). PDP hardware IIRC.
Some of the commercial systems did indeed use the ubiquitous PDP-11,
but the real thing ran on GEC hardware.