7 Aug
2008
7 Aug
'08
3:32 p.m.
On Thu, 7 Aug 2008, Ethan Dicks wrote:
That sounds fancier than the VIC Modem... that one
didn't even connect
to the wall directly - you picked up a regular phone, dial or touch-
tone, dialled your number, waited for carrier, and, this is the tricky
part, before the far end disconnected, you had to detach the coiled
handset cord from the receiver and plug it into the modem. I probably
had about an 80%-90% success rate without having to dial again.
My first modem was a Novation J-Cat:
http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/Modems/Jcat.html
A tiny little thing that stuck to the side of the computer with velcro.
To dial it, I had to write a program to pulse the off-hook line. I used
it in 1983 with my TRS-80 Model III.
Ow... 40 col was bad enough... I can't imagine 32.
I think that would
have screwed up lots of the message boards and online games I used to
use in those days.
I wrote a Unix-based (Xenix, actually) BBS in 1985, along with a friend
who owned a brand new Tandy 6000HD. Our lowest common denominator for
screen width was the Coco, at 32 columns. So, the first time you logged
in, you were stuck with 32 columns until you changed it. By that time, we
were up to 1200 baud, with 4 lines.
Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us
Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/