17 Jul
2008
17 Jul
'08
8:26 p.m.
I thought I had posted this, perhaps not.
Anyhow,
I have what's purported to be the "First" computer on the internet,
the one that joined the pieces together and I guess you could say "made" the
internet,
or conversely, the "last" node, as it were (depending how you count).
It's also the system where E-Mail was first created.
It's a Sun SLC workstation, owned by Einar Steffard.
I have the original box (very slightly torn),
and the workstation itself is in very good shape except one cosmetic crack, which I
believe can be fixed very easily.
I tried the smithsonian, and other computer museums, but basically was told they already
had too many of this model,
never mind the significance of this particular unit.
it still runs, last I checked, and has all the original data still intact on it, such as
it is.
now, I find myself with a severe lack of space, and need to part with it.
I would like a little bit of money for it, it wasn't a donation to me, and shipping
maybe expensive.
or I would be willing to trade it for a vaxstation 4000, or perhaps a 3100 or two.
(I have a need for 2 working vaxen you see)
so anyhow, that's how it is, this piece of history sitting in the corner of my office,
collecting dust,
and not doing much else.
I'd like to see it get to a good home, and never scrapped, I think it's too
important for that.
so anyhow, anyone who wants this piece of history, drop me a note.
and yes, I have pics (including the shipping labels from Einar to me) for what it's
worth...
Dan.
_________________________________________________________________
If you like crossword puzzles, then you'll love Flexicon, a game which combines four
overlapping crossword puzzles into one!
http://g.msn.ca/ca55/208
17 Jul
17 Jul
8:38 p.m.
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 8:26 PM, Dan Gahlinger <dgahling at hotmail.com> wrote:
I thought I had posted this, perhaps not.
Anyhow,
I have what's purported to be the "First" computer on the internet,
the one that joined the pieces together and I guess you could say "made" the
internet,
or conversely, the "last" node, as it were (depending how you count).
It's also the system where E-Mail was first created.
It's a Sun SLC workstation, owned by Einar Steffard.
I don't understand how this could possibly have been first, second,
third, fourth, or even 100,000th computer on the Internet? The
SPARCstation SLC was released in 1990, long after the ARPAnet had gone
away and TCP/IP had become well established as the protocol of the
Internet. Email had been around for almost 15 years by that time, as
well. Could you have misunderstood what it was used for?
-Seth
18 Jul
18 Jul
10:53 a.m.
no, I didn't misunderstand. perhaps it was the last one Einar had. But it was what he
created Email on.
Check the Wiki for him.
The internet didn't become a really public thing until around 1994.
Sure it existed in various forms, but when you talk about the "Internet"
(Capital "I"), the public wasn't aware of it or using it until late 1994.
To give you some idea, the ISP I worked with in Sept 1994 had an ARIN user registration
number 79.
Yes, the 79th person to register with ARIN. That's pretty damn EARLY!
So enough with your stupid jokes and mockery, this isn't a scam or slight, it's
the real thing, speaking from a public perspective anyhow.
Hey I was there in the mid to late 80's using NA-Net, etc as well, but that WASN'T
the internet.
And hey, I was sending "email" via university systems back in the mid to late
70's too, but that's not what we call "email" today.
there wasn't TCP then, at least where I was (It was Dec-net and PAX).
BTW I helped WRITE TCP-mail, the predecessor to pine/elm, so I think I know a bit about
what I'm talking about.
And yes, I know there was other stuff too, in the 80s, networking like Envoy, but that
too, wasn't the Internet.
I think there are two aspects, the research network, NA-Net, Arpanet and so forth, and
what we, the public now refer to as the Internet.
Sure the worlds FIRST website was built 6 August 1991 but that's not when the public
was aware of it.
So you can see, the 1990 release of the SLC is very much in-line with this time-line.
I was there, I lived through this, I helped the universities build their system for
students so they could reserve research materials from the Canadian National Archives.
The "properly" public internet didn't really come into full view, I would
say until sometime around 1996, perhaps to some, 1995, but really.
BTW I also built the FIRST, Canadian National backbone network link in March of 1994, and
yes, really the first, in Canada.
So been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
That's why "first" was in quotes. I wasn't trying to skewer dates or
make some big claim, but I still think it's an important piece of history.
So go ahead, continue making your immature little jokes about sneakers, if someone is
serious on the list, drop me a note.
Dan.
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:38:49 -0700
From: sethm at loomcom.com
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: "first" computer on the internet
On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 8:26 PM, Dan Gahlinger <dgahling at hotmail.com> wrote:
_________________________________________________________________
I thought I had posted this, perhaps not.
Anyhow,
I have what's purported to be the "First" computer on the internet,
the one that joined the pieces together and I guess you could say "made" the
internet,
or conversely, the "last" node, as it were (depending how you count).
It's also the system where E-Mail was first created.
It's a Sun SLC workstation, owned by Einar Steffard.
I don't understand how this could possibly have been first, second,
third, fourth, or even 100,000th computer on the Internet? The
SPARCstation SLC was released in 1990, long after the ARPAnet had gone
away and TCP/IP had become well established as the protocol of the
Internet. Email had been around for almost 15 years by that time, as
well. Could you have misunderstood what it was used for?
-Seth 
11:19 a.m.
>>>> "Dan" == Dan Gahlinger
<dgahling at hotmail.com> writes:
Dan> no, I didn't misunderstand. perhaps it was the last one Einar
Dan> had. But it was what he created Email on. Check the Wiki for
Dan> him.
Dan> The internet didn't become a really public thing until around
Dan> 1994. Sure it existed in various forms, but when you talk about
Dan> the "Internet" (Capital "I"), the public wasn't aware of
it or
Dan> using it until late 1994. ...
If you're going to use fuzzy metrics like "public awareness" you can
prove anything you want. What's your threshold? 1% of the public?
0.001% of the public? Whose survey are you using?
When did Mosaic come out? If you want to pick a point in time when
the Internet changed from a specialist tool to a worldwide utility,
that would be the one. I forgot the year, but I'm sure it's well
before 1994. And I remember looking into an "Information Superhighway
Onramp" as a product or service at that time, so clearly it was
emerging as a consumer utility then.
paul
12:01 p.m.
On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 02:34:00PM -0400, Evan Koblentz wrote:
gopher, veronica....
It's hugely funny or sad to see domain registrar's automatically
prefixing domain names with 'www'. I have often joked to others that
we could safely remove the destination port from tcp/ip packets, after
all, it's always going to be port 80 right? We could save two bytes
per packet. (Again, I was joking! apart from DNS and e-mail not working
it would work fine right? ;-) )
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
>>>
When did Mosaic come out? If you want to pick a point in time when
the Internet
changed from a specialist tool to a worldwide utility,
that would be the one.
Mosaic made the WEB into a public tool, but remember, the web is just one
application residing on the Internet. 
9:36 p.m.
I have often joked to others that we could safely
remove the
destination port from tcp/ip packets, after all, it's always going to
be port 80 right?
Heh. And, of course, all port 80 traffic is HTTP, right?
I'm typing this over an ssh session run over IP tunneled through
port-53 UDP. The place I'm staying has wireless "Internet". But turns
out they severely cripple it unless you pay - but their crippling lets
port 53 through, apparently without checking that the traffic is
actually DNS traffic. So I'm just tunneling on port 53.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
19 Jul
19 Jul
4:30 a.m.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 12:36:13AM -0400, der Mouse wrote:
Of course!
...
I have often
joked to others that we could safely remove the
destination port from tcp/ip packets, after all, it's always going to
be port 80 right?
Heh. And, of course, all port 80 traffic is HTTP, right? actually DNS traffic. So I'm just tunneling on
port 53.
Yepp. I've heard of people doing that. You cheapskate you.
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
8:41 a.m.
So I'm
just tunneling on port 53.
Yepp. I've heard of people doing that. You
cheapskate you. 
6:04 p.m.
der Mouse wrote:
I'm typing this over an ssh session run over IP
tunneled through
port-53 UDP. The place I'm staying has wireless "Internet". But turns
out they severely cripple it unless you pay - but their crippling lets
port 53 through, apparently without checking that the traffic is
actually DNS traffic. So I'm just tunneling on port 53.
But how did you know that before you got there to set up the other end
of the tunnel? Or do you always leave an sshd listening on 53?
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
6:11 p.m.
On Sat, Jul 19, 2008 at 8:04 PM, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:
But how did you know that before you got there to set
up the other end of
the tunnel? Or do you always leave an sshd listening on 53?
Thanks for asking the question I was afraid to ask, lest the answer be
too obvious to all but me ;)
20 Jul
20 Jul
7:42 p.m.
I'm typing
this over an ssh session run over IP tunneled through
port-53 UDP. The place I'm staying has wireless "Internet". But
turns out they severely cripple it unless you pay - but their
crippling lets port 53 through, apparently without checking that the
traffic is actually DNS traffic. So I'm just tunneling on port 53.
But how
did you know that before you got there to set up the other
end of the tunnel? Or do you always leave an sshd listening on 53?
That wouldn't help much; they blocked TCP 53. Only UDP 53 seemed open.
(Yes, _I_ know the DNS uses TCP. _They_ apparently don't, or perhaps
just don't care. In this case, I suspect ignorance, but also suspect
they wouldn't care if they did know.)
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
19 Jul
19 Jul
12:03 p.m.
Diane Bruce wrote:
It's hugely funny or sad to see domain
registrar's automatically
prefixing domain names with 'www'. I have often joked to others that
we could safely remove the destination port from tcp/ip packets, after
all, it's always going to be port 80 right? We could save two bytes
per packet. (Again, I was joking! apart from DNS and e-mail not working
it would work fine right? ;-) )
I think it goes back to the original idea of using a separate server for
each service. So back in the day, ftp.apple.com was really a dedicated
ftp server. (DNS round-robin I think came later, is that the case or am
I smoking crack?)
Other machines were used for other purposes, hence ns1. ns2, mail, etc.
The ports had little to do with it.
ftp to apple.com would get you nowhere. ftp.anycompany.com would likely
work. Even if the machine might be named gandalf, or sneetch, or
mickey, or potassium.
So they just extended that idea and slapped on www.
4:28 p.m.
Ray Arachelian wrote:
I think it goes back to the original idea of using a
separate server for
each service.
That certainly was NOT the original idea. When the protocols were being
developed, computers were big and expensive, and you generally only got
one, which you had to use for all your services.
Eric
6:34 p.m.
Eric Smith wrote:
Ray Arachelian wrote:
Yes, you've gone back further than I have, so your version of original
is older than mine, good for you. :-)
If that were the case, there would be no reason to name hosts (or cnames
to hosts) based on their role. Somehow I doubt that any large company
used a single machine to handle all if their internet traffic which most
certainly included an ftp support site, usenet, mail, etc. Whether
Apple, DEC, Xerox or Sun. Yes, perhaps in the very early days that was
feasible, but not a bit later, not right around 1994 when we started
seeing www.domainname.tld hosts.
I think it goes back to the original idea of
using a separate server
for each service.
That certainly was NOT the original idea. When the protocols were
being developed, computers were big and expensive, and you generally
only got one, which you had to use for all your services.
9:38 p.m.
Ray Arachelian wrote:
Yes, perhaps in the very early days that was
feasible, but not a bit later, not right around 1994 when we started
seeing www.domainname.tld hosts.
Even then, it was rare for a company to have an internet host that did
nothing but act as a web server. Internet-facing services were
typically either on a single server or distributed onto a small number
of servers, so using standardized hostnames for services allowed the
specific machine assignments to be done transparently, and also allowed
some uniformity for remote users, being able to expect
www.somecompany.com to be a web server, rather than having to know that
for that particular company the web server was
server3.nw.mt.somecompany.com.
It wasn't until more recent times that it has become common practice to
use a dedicated machine for many or all services, and even now, that
trend may be reversing as services are deployed on virtual machines
running on a shared physical machine.
Eric
20 Jul
20 Jul
8:35 a.m.
actually mentioning that,
wasn't there a point in time around 1994-1996 where you *HAD* to use the
"www" for domains, no matter what?
my memory is a little hazy on exact times of finite events, but I seem to recall that.
I remember a period where you couldn't actually reach a site without the stupid
"www" up front,
and when I mentioned doing it, people would give you this big scared look like "oh
no, you can't do THAT!"
yikes.
those were the crazy, hazy days of the (cough) "net"
Dan.
----------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:01:36 -0400
From: db at db.net
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: "first" computer on the internet
On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 02:34:00PM -0400, Evan Koblentz wrote:
gopher, veronica....
It's hugely funny or sad to see domain registrar's automatically
prefixing domain names with 'www'. I have often joked to others that
we could safely remove the destination port from tcp/ip packets, after
all, it's always going to be port 80 right? We could save two bytes
per packet. (Again, I was joking! apart from DNS and e-mail not working
it would work fine right? ;-) )
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
_________________________________________________________________
Try Chicktionary, a game that tests how many words you can form from the letters given.
Find this and more puzzles at Live Search Games!
http://g.msn.ca/ca55/207
>>> When did Mosaic come out? If you want to pick a point in time when
the Internet changed from a specialist tool to a worldwide utility,
that would be the one.
Mosaic made the WEB into a public tool, but remember, the web is just one
application residing on the Internet. 
9:15 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Dan Gahlinger once stated:
actually mentioning that,
wasn't there a point in time around 1994-1996 where you *HAD* to use the
"www" for domains, no matter what?
Only because of convention.
Remember back when Time Magazine ran a gopher server?
I do.
-spc (I remember a lot of gopher servers actually ... )
10:01 a.m.
Remember back when Time Magazine ran a gopher
server?
I do.
-spc (I remember a lot of gopher servers actually ... )
There's still a few out there :)
*cough*gopher.floodgap.com*cough*
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. ------------
9:59 a.m.
Dan Gahlinger wrote:
wasn't there a point in time around 1994-1996
where you *HAD* to use the "www" for domains, no matter what?
No. It was always a convention for DNS entries, nothing more. It was
always possible for a site to use non-www names for web servers.
It may be more common now for web sites to have names without the www,
or to have two names that resolve to the same server, one with and one
without the www.
Eric
10:23 a.m.
Obligatory_car_analogy:
A guy up the street has the "first" car in America!
It's a 1930 Ford.
Does Dan have OS/2 on the SLC workstation?
10:42 a.m.
Dan Gahlinger wrote:
> wasn't there a point in time around 1994-1996 where you *HAD* to use the
"www" for domains, no matter what?
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Eric Smith wrote:
No. It was always a convention for DNS entries,
nothing more. It was
always possible for a site to use non-www names for web servers.
My old teaching [cob]-website was/is
http://merritt.edu/~fcisin
It has never been a www.
But, some demented browsers will connect even with an extraneous www.
1:11 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 10:42:59AM -0700, Fred Cisin wrote:
Not that this thread needs much help, but in 1995 (hardly any sort of
"first"), I used to serve a small number of text pages from the Amiga
3000 I took with me to Antarctica; it was accessible from all over
the world as http://kumiss.mcmurdo.gov/ This sort of thing is no
longer possible due to changes in rules backed up with a fairly tight
firewall, but once upon a time, it was as easy as getting a name
inserted in our nameserver and firing up something to serve pages.
While it may have been commonplace in the early days of the web to
"require" that a default web server live at www.whatever.com, it was
merely uncommon, not forbidden, to also point whatever.com to the
web server as well (which is now somewhat ordinary).
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 20-Jul-2008 at 19:40 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -69.7 F (-56.5 C) Windchill -103.4 F (-75.2 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 9.3 kts Grid 22 Barometer 672.7 mb (10905 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
Dan Gahlinger
wrote:
> wasn't there a point in time around 1994-1996 where you *HAD* to use the
"www" for domains, no matter what?
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Eric Smith wrote:
No. It was always a convention for DNS entries,
nothing more. It was
always possible for a site to use non-www names for web servers.
My old teaching [cob]-website was/is
http://merritt.edu/~fcisin
It has never been a www.
But, some demented browsers will connect even with an extraneous www. 
2:48 p.m.
Fred Cisin wrote:
My old teaching [cob]-website was/is
http://merritt.edu/~fcisin
Fred, did they *really* change the name of the school because of Windows
Vista?!? Nice rumor to start either way... ;^)
3:33 p.m.
Well, if we're going to have fun with "first" claims, there's a
Washington Post article by Kenneth Baer that contains the following
interesting claim:
"Computers were quickly becoming more pervasive, too. VisiCalc, an
early spreadsheet program, was introduced in 1978 and quickly became
the first commercially successful piece of software"
Read the article here:
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/07/20/0720b
aer_edit.html
BTW, Baer is a former speechwriter for Al Gore.
Cheers,
Chuck
5:14 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Well, if we're going to have fun with
"first" claims, there's a
Washington Post article by Kenneth Baer that contains the following
interesting claim:
"Computers were quickly becoming more pervasive, too. VisiCalc, an
early spreadsheet program, was introduced in 1978 and quickly became
the first commercially successful piece of software"
I seem to recall there being a thriving market for commercial software
for IBM mainframes by the early 1970s.
I suppose the claim depends on how you define "commercial success". If
you measure it by units sold (rather than dollars), and set a high
enough bar, VisiCalc could be a "first".
Eric
6:16 p.m.
On 20 Jul 2008 at 17:14, Eric Smith wrote:
I suppose the claim depends on how you define
"commercial success". If
you measure it by units sold (rather than dollars), and set a high
enough bar, VisiCalc could be a "first".
WordStar, CP/M were also-rans? Seems to me that the also-rans pretty
much obliterated VisiCalc sales before too long (e.g. SuperCalc,
Multiplan, Microplan and a host of others). If you want to set a
really high bar, then Lotus 1-2-3 might be the "first" with VisiCalc
just a bit player.
Cheers,
Chuck
6:53 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
WordStar, CP/M were also-rans? Seems to me that the
also-rans pretty
much obliterated VisiCalc sales before too long (e.g. SuperCalc,
Multiplan, Microplan and a host of others). If you want to set a
really high bar, then Lotus 1-2-3 might be the "first" with VisiCalc
just a bit player.
Well, that was basically my point. If you set the bar for "commercial
success" at an arbitrary point, you get an arbitrary "first".
6:15 p.m.
> My old teaching [cob]-website was/is
> http://merritt.edu/~fcisin
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Steven M Jones wrote:
Fred, did they *really* change the name of the school
because of Windows
Vista?!? Nice rumor to start either way... ;^)
They never formally admitted that that was the reason, and there were
several supplemental reasons cited. The president of the school has
transferred to a different district, the vice-president died, none of the
deans from that time are still around, . . .
If you'd like, I'll look up the Compuserve account number of the head of
the CIS department, and we can contact him for an independent opinion of
the motivation.
FWIW, I advocated for keeping the 30 year old Vista College name, so that
we could get more successful marketing of courses that involved MICROS~1
products.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
18 Jul
18 Jul
2 p.m.
- My recollection is what had been called the ARPAnet became the "Internet"
around 1982, certainly we were calling it the "Internet" by '84-85. The
transition to the 5 .mil/.edu/.net/.gov/.com domains was in that time period as well.
It was a "large", functioning, useful network by that time, not just an
experimental/prototype system.
- IIRC, the NSFnet funding/expansion/backbone were slightly later.
- As one who was developing (X.400) multi-node store-and-forward email systems
starting in 1982-3, and was involved in establishing such a Canada-wide and
world-wide functioning email network by 1984-5, by which time "Internet" email
was already very well-established, I won't bother making any further comment
about email firsts.
- The "<user>(a)<subd>.<subd>.<domain>" address format was
also well-established
by the early '80s.
The machine Dan has may have been 'first' at something but without a further
qualifier any claim of historic significance is pointless.
Given the ~1990 date, I was guessing it might have something to do with the
opening of the internet to the public: first machine to route to a public ISP?,
first machine to provide SLIP access?, who knows...? I'm not familiar with the
model of machine mentioned so even those random guesses may be well off.
1:15 p.m.
- IIRC, the NSFnet funding/expansion/backbone were
slightly later.
1985, but things were not really together until 1986.
The last part of the NSFnet went down a couple years ago, very
quietly. By then it had changed hands a couple of times.
The machine Dan has may have been 'first' at
something but without a further
qualifier any claim of historic significance is pointless.
I think the failure of any of the museums to show any interest has
something to say...
--
Will
20 Jul
20 Jul
8:44 a.m.
Mosaic huh? hrm, don't think so. I wouldn't pin it down to that time.
Yes, it's a fuzzy bit of math. and what *DO* we choose as that "moment" in
time.
What is "public awareness"? what represents consumer awareness?
it's a tough nut to crack. for that matter, as you say, does it HAVE a precise number?
I personally rather doubt it.
I think, like all marketing situations (that's technically what we're talking
about, a marketing term)
public awareness would be when a good percentage of the public knows what you're
talking about.
when people line up at 8pm the night before at FutureShop (or name of your store) to buy
the thing that goes on say 10am the next day.
Remember those days? Actually, that's when it's already got "market
penetration".
How about when you can post an article in the newspaper about the "Internet/web"
and people know what youre talking about.
when was the "net" first advertised publiclly in wide distribution? that might
be an acceptable "moment", even if still, a bit late.
working for a PC manufacturer in north america, with 6 offices in Canada and the US, back
in 1994, "we" didn't really push it until late 1995/early 1996
is that a good benchmark? (shrug) certainly on the consumer level its a good barometer
Pick any product you may find the same thing. how about MIcrowave ovens? or LCD monitors?
vcrs ? dvd players?
Dan.
----------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:19:34 -0400
From: Paul_Koning at Dell.com
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: RE: "first" computer on the internet
_________________________________________________________________
Find hidden words, unscramble celebrity names, or try the ultimate crossword puzzle with
Live Search Games. Play now!
http://g.msn.ca/ca55/212
>>>> "Dan" == Dan Gahlinger
writes:
Dan> no, I didn't misunderstand. perhaps it was the last one Einar
Dan> had. But it was what he created Email on. Check the Wiki for
Dan> him.
Dan> The internet didn't become a really public thing until around
Dan> 1994. Sure it existed in various forms, but when you talk about
Dan> the "Internet" (Capital "I"), the public wasn't aware of
it or
Dan> using it until late 1994. ...
If you're going to use fuzzy metrics like "public awareness" you can
prove anything you want. What's your threshold? 1% of the public?
0.001% of the public? Whose survey are you using?
When did Mosaic come out? If you want to pick a point in time when
the Internet changed from a specialist tool to a worldwide utility,
that would be the one. I forgot the year, but I'm sure it's well
before 1994. And I remember looking into an "Information Superhighway
Onramp" as a product or service at that time, so clearly it was
emerging as a consumer utility then.
paul
9:09 a.m.
On 20/07/2008 16:44, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
working for a PC manufacturer in north america, with 6
offices in Canada and the US, back in 1994, "we" didn't really push it until
late 1995/early 1996
is that a good benchmark? (shrug) certainly on the consumer level its a good barometer
Good benchmark? No, I don't think so. The manufacturer I was working
for in the UK had ISP accounts in 1988, and I recall friends having
personal accounts with Demon Internet by 1990.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
9:37 a.m.
Pete Turnbull wrote:
On 20/07/2008 16:44, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
Demon's personal account offerings are probably a good metric for when the
'net went mainstream in the UK - but doubtless the timeframe in the US and the
rest of the world was a little different. It's not good indication of when
anything was invented though - just of when it reached wider public
consciousness...
cheers
Jules
working for a PC manufacturer in north america,
with 6 offices in
Canada and the US, back in 1994, "we" didn't really push it until late
1995/early 1996
is that a good benchmark? (shrug) certainly on the consumer level its
a good barometer
Good benchmark? No, I don't think so. The manufacturer I was working
for in the UK had ISP accounts in 1988, and I recall friends having
personal accounts with Demon Internet by 1990.
11:16 a.m.
On 20/07/2008 17:37, Jules Richardson wrote:
Demon's personal account offerings are probably a
good metric for when
the 'net went mainstream in the UK - but doubtless the timeframe in the
US and the rest of the world was a little different. It's not good
indication of when anything was invented though - just of when it
reached wider public consciousness...
Agreed, I'm sure the US would have been somewhat different. I was just
pointing out that some part of the public had that consciousness before
the 90s.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
9:13 a.m.
It was thus said that the Great Dan Gahlinger once stated:
Mosaic huh? hrm, don't think so. I wouldn't pin it down to that time.
Mosaic was released in 1993 [1] and I certainly remember it blowing me
away when I first saw it. I even remember downloading and compiling it
under IRIX as I was tired of logging into the Sun machines upstairs and
running it remotely [2].
I do know that I set up my first home page in mid-to-late 1994 [3] and for
that, I had to download the NCSA web server and compile that. Also around
that time the first ISPs in south Florida (if not in all of Florida) open
their doors to the public and at the time I remember thinking "It's about
time!" AOL had given its subscribers access to USENET since 1993.
What is "public awareness"? what represents
consumer awareness?
Arguably, the first mass-public mention of the Internet happened in 1988.
I remember my Mom mentioning an article she read about some nation-wide
network going down.
when was the "net" first advertised
publiclly in wide distribution? that
might be an acceptable "moment", even if still, a bit late.
Depends upon the service. AOL with USENET and email in 1993. Compuserve
probably a bit before that. Heck, still remember the Trumpet IP stack for
Windows.
-spc (First used the Internet in 1989 ... )
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_%28web_browser%29
[2] College. I worked on the second floor out of the math department.
Computer Science was on the third floor.
[3] http://pineal.math.fau.edu/~spc/
Don't bother really---it's no longer a valid address.
9:40 a.m.
On 20 Jul 2008 at 12:13, Sean Conner wrote:
Depends upon the service. AOL with USENET and email
in 1993.
Compuserve probably a bit before that. Heck, still remember the
Trumpet IP stack for Windows.
I may still have the diskettes from my "internet Starter Kit" from
around then with NCSA Mosaic, Trumpet and (IIRC) Eudora. Web site
hosting back then was pretty rough if you had to go through a
commercial ISP to do it. Does anyone remember how much of a hassle
it was to transfer hosting on a domain? Fill out a form, mail or FAX
it (Network Solutions obviously didn't trust email), sometimes
furnishing a copy of ID in case you had an uncooperative ISP. And
because there weren't a lot of hosting services (and competition),
there could be some real a**holes to deal with.
But that was only because I was coming off of Compuserve--and I'd
been sending and receiving Usenet email there since about 1989. If
you were a Microsoft developer back then, CIS was almost a necessity--
it was the only way to get any sort of a timely answer to a question
from Bill's boys. When Windows 3.0 deployed VxDs,
CIS was the
easiest way to get your VxD ID from Microsoft.
Lynx dates from about 1993, doesn't it?
Cheers,
Chuck
10:19 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 12:40 PM
Subject: Re: "first" computer on the internet
On 20 Jul 2008 at 12:13, Sean Conner wrote:
Still have the # for NSI memorized: 703-742-4777
Sad, huh?
Depends upon the service. AOL with USENET and
email in 1993.
Compuserve probably a bit before that. Heck, still remember the
Trumpet IP stack for Windows.
I may still have the diskettes from my "internet Starter Kit" from
around then with NCSA Mosaic, Trumpet and (IIRC) Eudora. Web site
hosting back then was pretty rough if you had to go through a
commercial ISP to do it. Does anyone remember how much of a hassle
it was to transfer hosting on a domain? Fill out a form, mail or FAX
it (Network Solutions obviously didn't trust email), sometimes
furnishing a copy of ID in case you had an uncooperative ISP. And
because there weren't a lot of hosting services (and competition),
there could be some real a**holes to deal with.
9:41 a.m.
Sean Conner wrote:
Mosaic was released in 1993 [1] and I certainly
remember it blowing me
away when I first saw it.
Heh. I saw it back around then and remember thinking what an utter waste of
time it all was - I was perfectly content with Gopher, FTP, telnet, and
various inter-system instant messaging clients :-) The web was of little use.
15 years later and I still think it's a shame people push web-based services
above anything else; so much more could be done with the concept of a vast
computer network...
cheers
J.
10:15 a.m.
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Sean Conner wrote:
Depends upon the service. AOL with USENET and email
in 1993. Compuserve
probably a bit before that. Heck, still remember the Trumpet IP stack for
Windows.
Compuserve started in 1969!
When internet access started becoming popular, like AOHell, it even tried
to compete with the internet for a while, with forums, etc.
Now it is owned by AOL?
Remember when Netcom, etc. put their own wrappers around internet content?
Remember Prodigy?
There is certainly some validity to examining the historical point wherein
public awareness crossed some specific or arbitrary threshold.
For example, when was the first NON-COMPUTER oriented advertsing
containing a URL?
Who was the first politician to mention a website?
Who decided to paint a URL on the fenders of UC campus police cars?
When did Fry's finally get a website?
But, looking at the time period when Dan first became aware of the
internet is mutually incompatible with ANY sort of "first computer on the
internet" type of claim to fame. There is some valid curiousity about the
1048576th computer on the internet, but museum interest??
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
10:29 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: "first" computer on the internet
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Sean Conner wrote:
Heh - Prodigy, the Source, CompuServe, BRS After Dark, there were a TON of
them...
I remember starting out on CompuServe in 1982 or so - 76576,2064 - I guess I
will NEVER forget it!
300 baud on a Tandy CoCo2 (which I STILL have...).
As I recall, I *LEFT* AOL in about 1993/1994 - my original username was
PowerTrip :)
AOL, as I recall, also rolled-in the PC-Link system that Radio Shack/Tandy
included with all their PC's.
REAL old-timers will remember that there was even an AOL client for the
Apple ][GS!
Depends upon the service. AOL with USENET and
email in 1993.
Compuserve
probably a bit before that. Heck, still remember the Trumpet IP stack
for
Windows.
Compuserve started in 1969!
When internet access started becoming popular, like AOHell, it even tried
to compete with the internet for a while, with forums, etc.
Now it is owned by AOL?
Remember when Netcom, etc. put their own wrappers around internet content?
Remember Prodigy? 
10:44 a.m.
remember GeNiE (however it was spelled)? I sure don't, but I do know a guy who
developed a pretty impressive MODULA-2 app to run on a '286 w/any number of "4
port" cards (these typically were 80186 based). It had massive capabilities if you
were to ask me. The service provider opted out though, and preferred to make use of a
rather expensive mini they had just purchased.
10:45 a.m.
On Jul 20, 2008, at 10:29 AM, Tony Mori wrote:
REAL old-timers will remember that there was even an
AOL client for
the Apple ][GS!
Nah. REAL old timers remember AOL as that Atari 2600 cartridge modem
thingy called GameLine.
*shudder* I still think I owe my parents for some hours I racked up.
11:19 a.m.
REAL
old-timers will remember that there was even an AOL client for
the Apple ][GS!
Nah. REAL old timers remember AOL as that Atari 2600 cartridge modem
thingy called GameLine.
12:43 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cameron Kaiser" <spectre at floodgap.com>
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 2:19 PM
Subject: Re: "first" computer on the internet
And don't forget about QuantumLink.
Isn't QuantumLink what became AOL? Which was also PC-Link on the Tandy/Radio
Shack side?
REAL old-timers will remember that there was even an
AOL client for
the Apple ][GS!
Nah. REAL old timers remember AOL as that Atari 2600 cartridge modem
thingy called GameLine.
5:19 p.m.
And don't
forget about QuantumLink.
Isn't QuantumLink what became AOL? Which was also PC-Link on the Tandy/Radio
Shack side?
6:04 p.m.
I do still maintain an AOL account because so far I
have never once failed
to find a local access number even out in absolutely nowhere. And my roadgeek
hobby does take me to absolutely nowhere sometimes.
Did you have a SureRemote account? Those were pretty scarce.
And yes, AOL dialup racks (called Big Dial) were placed in the
weirdest places. One (I think in New Jersey) was in the basement of a
museum, surrounded by stuffed wild animals.
--
Will
1:49 p.m.
and "Samuel"...
George Rachor
=========================================================
George L. Rachor Jr. george at rachors.com
Hillsboro, Oregon http://rachors.com
United States of America Amateur Radio : KD7DCX
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
And don't forget about QuantumLink.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Homestar has a web site? -- Strong Bad -------------------------------------
REAL old-timers will remember that there was even an
AOL client for
the Apple ][GS!
Nah. REAL old timers remember AOL as that Atari 2600 cartridge modem
thingy called GameLine.
1:28 p.m.
On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 10:45:45AM -0700, C. Sullivan wrote:
On Jul 20, 2008, at 10:29 AM, Tony Mori wrote:
We never had an Atari 2600 back in the day, but when I moved up from
a PET to a C-64 (1982), the first thing I stuck on it after a disk
drive was a VIC-MODEM. It came with some sort of CompuServe promotional
offer (a few free hours or free sign-up or something), but the simple
character-echo program in the back of the VIC-MODEM manual was too
simple to be really useful. I ended up having to write my own to
support CompuServe and the BBSes I used to call (AppleII-based, mostly,
IIRC).
When QuantumLink came along some time later, I pretty much ignored it.
Most ironic that I eventually worked for them for a couple of years
after they became AOL (though I was originally employed by CompuServe
as they were being digested - about half-way through my time there,
my badge changed over, my payday changed, the sign on the building
changed, etc...
REAL old-timers will remember that there was even
an AOL client for
the Apple ][GS!
Nah. REAL old timers remember AOL as that Atari 2600 cartridge modem
thingy called GameLine. *shudder* I still think I owe my parents for some
hours I racked up.
If my mother had written things down, I might yet owe her for more than
a few $6/hour (offpeak) hours at 300 baud from those days. It was really
easy to rack up quite a bill, especially after one finds the CIS on-line
shop with posters and other paraphernalia (my first on-line shopping
experience, as I expect it was for many people).
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 20-Jul-2008 at 20:10 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -70.1 F (-56.7 C) Windchill -103.1 F (-75.1 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 8.9 kts Grid 19 Barometer 672.9 mb (10897 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
3 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at usap.gov>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 4:28 PM
Subject: Re: "first" computer on the internet
When QuantumLink came along some time later, I pretty
much ignored it.
Most ironic that I eventually worked for them for a couple of years
after they became AOL (though I was originally employed by CompuServe
as they were being digested - about half-way through my time there,
my badge changed over, my payday changed, the sign on the building
changed, etc...
Hmmm....I dunno Ethan - On CIS, CB Simulator was a REALLY good way to rack
up the hours!
Thank goodness they came up with the package for CBSim'ers, or I might've
gone bankrupt!
*shudder* I still think I owe my parents for
some hours I racked up.
If my mother had written things down, I might yet owe her for more than
a few $6/hour (offpeak) hours at 300 baud from those days. It was really
easy to rack up quite a bill, especially after one finds the CIS on-line
shop with posters and other paraphernalia (my first on-line shopping
experience, as I expect it was for many people).
12:07 p.m.
Tony Mori wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 1:15 PM
Subject: Re: "first" computer on the internet
And what was the first operating system to have builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just LAN
networking? OS/2 Warp had dial up internet access for IBM's ISP as well as
a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released in 1994, but not a full TCP/IP
stack until Warp Connect in 1995. I assume Unix, Linux, AppleOS or AmigaOS
must have had this prior to that? I remember all those damn AOL floppy
disks for all the windows users. FORMAT A: was a good use for them.
Mark
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Sean Conner wrote:
Heh - Prodigy, the Source, CompuServe, BRS After Dark, there were a TON
of them...
I remember starting out on CompuServe in 1982 or so - 76576,2064 - I
guess I will NEVER forget it!
300 baud on a Tandy CoCo2 (which I STILL have...).
As I recall, I *LEFT* AOL in about 1993/1994 - my original username was
PowerTrip :)
AOL, as I recall, also rolled-in the PC-Link system that Radio
Shack/Tandy included with all their PC's.
REAL old-timers will remember that there was even an AOL client for the
Apple ][GS!
Depends upon the service. AOL with USENET and
email in 1993.
Compuserve
probably a bit before that. Heck, still remember the Trumpet IP
stack for
Windows.
Compuserve started in 1969!
When internet access started becoming popular, like AOHell, it even tried
to compete with the internet for a while, with forums, etc.
Now it is owned by AOL?
Remember when Netcom, etc. put their own wrappers around internet
content?
Remember Prodigy?
12:18 p.m.
Mark wrote:
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just
LAN networking?
It certainly wasn't any Microsoft operating system. Microsoft was at
least ten years late to the party.
If you define "internet access" as "having TCP/IP", it might have been
BSD 4.1a, which included the crufty BBN TCP/IP code, and was released in
1982. ARPANET switched from NCP to TCP/IP on January 1, 1983 ("flag day").
12:27 p.m.
Eric Smith wrote:
Mark wrote:
It was stupid of me to leave out BSD. I knew that IBM used the TCP/IP
stack in BSD for their OS/2 and probably AIX as well.
Mark
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that
just LAN networking?
It certainly wasn't any Microsoft operating system. Microsoft was at
least ten years late to the party.
If you define "internet access" as "having TCP/IP", it might have
been
BSD 4.1a, which included the crufty BBN TCP/IP code, and was released in
1982. ARPANET switched from NCP to TCP/IP on January 1, 1983 ("flag day").
22 Jul
22 Jul
2:15 p.m.
From: Eric Smith
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 12:19 PM
Mark wrote:
> And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
> internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that
just
> LAN networking?
It certainly wasn't any Microsoft operating
system. Microsoft was at
least ten years late to the party.
If you define "internet access" as
"having TCP/IP", it might have been
BSD
4.1a, which included the crufty BBN TCP/IP code, and
was released in
1982.
ARPANET switched from NCP to TCP/IP on January 1, 1983
("flag day").
While BSD 4 may have had a TCP/IP implementation, the reference
implementation was done on TENEX and TOPS-20 systems and Multics.
2:37 p.m.
Mark wrote:
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access?
I wrote:
If you define "internet access" as
"having TCP/IP", it might have been
BSD 4.1a, which included the crufty BBN TCP/IP code, and was released
in 1982.
Rich Alderson wrote:
While BSD 4 may have had a TCP/IP implementation, the
reference
implementation was done on TENEX and TOPS-20 systems and Multics.
In 1982, did either TENEX or TOPS-20, as distributed, include TCP/IP?
My (possibly incorrect) recollection was that TOPS-20 didn't actually
ship with "built in" TCP/IP support at that time, while BSD 4.1a did.
Eric
3:16 p.m.
From: Eric Smith
Sent: Tuesday, July 22, 2008 2:37 PM
Rich Alderson wrote:
> While BSD 4 may have had a TCP/IP implementation,
the reference
> implementation was done on TENEX and TOPS-20 systems and Multics.
In 1982, did either TENEX or TOPS-20, as distributed,
include TCP/IP?
My
(possibly incorrect) recollection was that TOPS-20
didn't actually
ship with
"built in" TCP/IP support at that time,
while BSD 4.1a did.
I want to say yes, but the memory has grown fuzzy. If you had an
ARPANET
connection you could order TOPS-20AN, and I know who did the TCP/IP work
for
Digital, but do I want to swear that TOPS-20AN was TCP/IP by 1982? Not
really.
On the other hand, TENEX, as a BB&N product, probably did, but I'll
admit to
speculation here.
20 Jul
20 Jul
12:24 p.m.
Tymnet (from Tymshare)?
The network service of SBC in the 1970's escapes me, but I recall a
lot of head-banging going at CDC corporate after they'd picked it up
from IBM (via lawsuit).
Ticketron, IIRC, was one of the results of the corporate
brainstorming.
Cheers,
Chuck
1:51 p.m.
On Sunday 20 July 2008 15:07, madodel wrote:
I remember all those damn AOL floppy disks for all the
windows users.
FORMAT A: was a good use for them.
Did that, and have since found that when I go to use them I have to
format 'em again, though surprisingly I'm not seeing bad sectors like I am
with some of the "brand name" floppies I also have around.
Got plenty of 'em left, too, even this many years later.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
23 Jul
23 Jul
10:24 a.m.
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for internet
access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just LAN
networking?
I'm fairly sure WfW had TCP/IP.
OS/2 Warp had dial up internet
access for IBM's ISP as well as
a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released in 1994, but not a full TCP/IP
stack until Warp Connect in 1995. I assume Unix, Linux, AppleOS or AmigaOS
must have had this prior to that?
Unix and Linux, yes. MacOS didn't have built in TCP/IP until MacOS 8
in 1997. Apple had a long history of resistance to reason. It seemed
that for most of its history on Macs, TCP/IP was encapsulated in
AppleTalk packets, even when run over Ethernet, which required that
you have a gateway to strip the TCP/IP out of the AppleTalk. Of
course the gateway software was neither free, nor did it ship with the
TCP/IP software. Even if you had software to direct TCP/IP over a
modem, it probably wouldn't do TCP/IP over Ethernet without AppleTalk
encapsulation. Trying to tie a Mac into a TCP/IP over Ethernet
network used to be an exercise in frustration. Here at the lab in the
late 80s we used to localtalk the Macs together and have a single
localtalk to TCP/IP over Ethernet gateway. It was slow, but it worked
and didn't require as much setup and software on each individual Mac.
I assume that AmigaOS was essentially static in the mid90s. The late
80s versions had no networking included that I'm aware of.
At least for a PC under DOS, free packet drivers with TCP/IP were
available even if it wasn't included with the OS.
10:41 a.m.
2008/7/23 Eric J Korpela <korpela at ssl.berkeley.edu>:
Optional extra, downloaded from MS, for 3.1. Built in to 3.11 but only
a 16-bit DOS stack; the 32-bit protect-mode stack came later. Only ran
over LANs, couldn't do dialup; IE included its own dialup stack
licences in from Shiva.
And what was
the first operating system to have builtin support for internet
access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just LAN
networking?
I'm fairly sure WfW had TCP/IP. Unix and Linux, yes. MacOS didn't have built in
TCP/IP until MacOS 8
in 1997.
OpenTransport came in with MacOS 7.6, I think in '96 or so. Before
that, 7.5 came with MacTCP, which was available back to System 6. I
have a Classic II running it.
Trying to tie a Mac into a TCP/IP over Ethernet
network used to be an exercise in frustration. Here at the lab in the
late 80s we used to localtalk the Macs together and have a single
localtalk to TCP/IP over Ethernet gateway. It was slow, but it worked
and didn't require as much setup and software on each individual Mac.
I used to get it working without too much trouble. IPX for Novell, too.
I assume that AmigaOS was essentially static in the
mid90s. The late
80s versions had no networking included that I'm aware of.
3.5 and 3.9 came with bundled 3rd party stacks, I believe. Dialup only, though.
At least for a PC under DOS, free packet drivers with
TCP/IP were
available even if it wasn't included with the OS.
The MS Workgroup Client did TCP/IP and was a free download and bundled
on the CD with NT Server from 3.1, the first version, in 1993. I still
use it today for Ghosting PCs.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com
Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508
1:43 p.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 06:41:04PM +0100, Liam Proven wrote:
I don't recall specifics, but given those version numbers, I think
we must have been running MacTCP on the first Macs I used that weren't
using Localtalk-only.
I don't recall any specific troubles hanging a Mac off of a TCP/IP
network in 1995-1996. We definitely did not have any gateway boxes
(like Gatorboxes I saw at other facilities). We configured the static
addresses and DNS servers right on the Macs (all of which had internal
Ethernet interfaces, of course, NuBus for most, PDS slots for some).
This was with at least one PowerMac (8100/av) and a wad of IIcs, FWIW.
We didn't have any compact or B&W Macs around by 1995.
The initial versions of AmigaDOS (1.0 for the A1000, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 for
the A500 and A2000), did not have any sort of networking support from C=,
but I think there were a few products from third parties one could buy. I
don't remember them being very popular.
By the late 1980s or very early 1990s, C= released docs on "SANA2", Standard
Amiga Network Architecture, but for a number of years, there wasn't much
out there to take advantage of it. Long after LAN networking was available
for most contemporary desktops, it finally came to the Amiga. The SANA2
spec was more about the low-level interface between your hardware and the
lowest layer of your networking stack - not quite wire-level protocol,
but it was more of a standard API than anything, with the intention that
you could insert some NIC-independence into the network stack.
There's a tale I remember running across back in the day that dave Haynie
repeatedly designed in a twisted-pair Arcnet interface based on, IIRC,
the COM20020 chip (or something close) with an RS-485 media layer, but
higher-ups equally repeatedly forced him to delete it. I don't know if
that hardware was ever built, but I did acquire some samples and _almost_
built it. It was probably around 1991 or so, long enough ago that there
might still be some debates on comp.sys.amiga.* about it and what sort
of network stack to put above it.
By the early-to-mid-1990s, C= came out with a less-than-universally-popular
SANA2-compliant network stack and application set to share drives and
printers and such. I even resold a few copies, bought from a former C=
employee (Dale Luck?) who got a license to resell it himself. I think
I probably have 10-15 unsold copies in the original envelopes, lying
around the house.
By about 1994 or so, TCP/IP networking did come to the Amiga, first
for developers only and for the A2065 LANCE-chipset-based Ethernet
card, then for anything with a SANA2 driver. I did get a copy of
that after I bought a used A2065, but eventually, there were other
stacks from other sources, like MIAMI, that would also do dialup.
IIRC, MIAMI isn't SANA2, but does have drivers for all the popular
ethernet cards and for dialup.
I started manufacturing the GG2 Bus+ right around this time. The
most popular ISA card to use was an NE2000 with its SANA2 driver
and one of the TCP/IP stacks (serial and printer cards were another
common use, but Ethernet dominated the interests of the buyers). Since
I charged $100-$125 for a GG2 Bus+, and you could add a $20-$45 Ethernet
card, it did take up two slots, but it was _much_ cheaper than an A2065.
There were also drivers for WD/SMC 8013 cards and at least one other type
of ISA 10Mbps card, but that solution really lost popularity when
some of the accelerator cards included 10/100 NICs onboard. There
was only ever one 10/100 NIC I know of for the ISA bus, an obscure
and expensive one from 3Com, so GG2 Bus+ sales pretty much dried up
after 1997.
I use free TCP/IP with 8-bit machines all the time - MS-Kermit on top
of a packet driver. I use it to telnet around various machines in my
house, and to move files to/from my PC-based EPROM burner. The burner
_can't_ go in a modern machine (proprietary 8-bit ISA parallel interface
card), so the fastest machine I've used for that is a Compaq laptop
and docking station (for the burner card and the NIC). I've also used
this same software arrangement with a dual-floppy Zenith laptop and a
Xircom pocket adapter, but mostly as an Ethernet-equipped portable
terminal. Literally DOS + packet driver + Kermit... nothing else
on the boot floppy.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-333-S Current South Pole Weather at 23-Jul-2008 at 20:10 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -74.2 F (-59.0 C) Windchill -102.8 F (-74.9 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 6.2 kts Grid 4 Barometer 667.0 mb (11122 ft)
Ethan.Dicks at usap.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
2008/7/23 Eric J Korpela <korpela at
ssl.berkeley.edu>:
Optional extra, downloaded from MS, for 3.1. Built in to 3.11 but only
a 16-bit DOS stack; the 32-bit protect-mode stack came later. Only ran
over LANs, couldn't do dialup; IE included its own dialup stack
licences in from Shiva.
My recollection from 1995 is having to download a package direct from MS
to use TCP/IP with WfW 3.11, but perhaps that was just clients and the
stack was built-in.
I never did TCP/IP dialup directly from a Windows box - I always had
something "smarter" between me and the phone (like a "WebRamp",
OS/68K-
based dial-up appliance).
And what
was the first operating system to have builtin support for internet
access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just LAN
networking?
I'm fairly sure WfW had TCP/IP. Unix and
Linux, yes. MacOS didn't have built in TCP/IP until MacOS 8
in 1997.
OpenTransport came in with MacOS 7.6, I think in '96 or so. Before
that, 7.5 came with MacTCP, which was available back to System 6. I
have a Classic II running it. Trying to tie
a Mac into a TCP/IP over Ethernet
network used to be an exercise in frustration. Here at the lab in the
late 80s we used to localtalk the Macs together and have a single
localtalk to TCP/IP over Ethernet gateway. It was slow, but it worked
and didn't require as much setup and software on each individual Mac.
I used to get it working without too much trouble. I assume that
AmigaOS was essentially static in the mid90s. The late
80s versions had no networking included that I'm aware of.
3.5 and 3.9 came with bundled 3rd party stacks, I believe. Dialup only, though. At least for a
PC under DOS, free packet drivers with TCP/IP were
available even if it wasn't included with the OS.
The MS Workgroup Client did TCP/IP and was a free download and bundled
on the CD with NT Server from 3.1, the first version, in 1993. I still
use it today for Ghosting PCs. 
3:25 p.m.
New subject: Old data books online
Some old digital data books are online line - many around 1968 ish.
TTL-RTL-ECL-DTL ect.
http://tech-systems-labs.com/data_books.htm
5:48 p.m.
New subject: Old data books online
On Wed, 2008-07-23 at 16:25 -0600, bfranchuk at jetnet.ab.ca wrote:
Some old digital data books are online line - many
around 1968 ish.
TTL-RTL-ECL-DTL ect.
http://tech-systems-labs.com/data_books.htm
Very nice... Thanks
--
Steve Robertson
steerex [at] ccvn [dot] com
7:31 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
I was musing today about the old recirculating stores (mercury delay
line, magnetostrictive, acoustic, etc.) used for memory on old iron.
Suppose one wanted simulate one in modern components. How would you
do it, if you had, say, a million bits to store?
Would you use a 1x1Mb DRAM and a counter to cycle through the
addresses? Or an 8x128Kb SRAM with an external 8 bit shift register?
Any other thoughts? Access has to be read and write and make the
bitrate about 10MHz.
Cheers,
Chuck
8:56 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Chuck Guzis wrote:
I was musing today about the old recirculating stores
(mercury delay
line, magnetostrictive, acoustic, etc.) used for memory on old iron.
Suppose one wanted simulate one in modern components. How would you
do it, if you had, say, a million bits to store?
Would you use a 1x1Mb DRAM and a counter to cycle through the
addresses? Or an 8x128Kb SRAM with an external 8 bit shift register?
Any other thoughts? Access has to be read and write and make the
bitrate about 10MHz.
It wouldn't matter really. What does is that it behaves the same way.
If I had to do it, I'd almost always do it in software, I would base it
on a cycle counter. At whatever rate is proper. If you say 10MHz, ok
fine, so if I had a 10MHz CPU clock, I'd use that, if not I'd adjust for
whatever would reconcile the CPU clock cycle rate versus the period
(1/freq) for the memory.
In the end, you can always figure out what the proper math for it is,
and get at the right bit. If I had to emulate it, I'd do something like
figure out what my current clock cycle is, and which bit out of those I
needed, and do the modulo math to get at it. So at some point, you'd
divide by 8. Since you're dividing by a power of two, you can (under
most architectures) use a right shift, and use the left over bits to
figure out the rest.
So if the CPU clock was 10MHz (and you need to be careful of how long
each instruction takes), then use the clock cycle as a pointer into that
memory, modulo its size. If it really wasn't a million bits, but rather
a power of two, say 2^20, it makes it a little bit easier. (Mind you
I'm horribly drunk - so I shouldn't even be typing, let alone trying to
figure out powers of 2 here, but as a recently jobless unix sysadmin
loser bum, indulge me my two seconds of neuronal discharge. :-)
So don't actually rotate the bits around, but instead look at the clock
cycle counter and use that as an index into the memory at the moment in
time you care about.
i.e. use 2^20-1 as a filter and AND that against the counter like so
(apply grains of salt as needed):
valuenow=memory[ (counter & 0xFFFFF)>>8 ] & 1<<(counter &
0x07);
If you had to do it in hardware, well, use whatever you can as a
counter, fed at the proper speed as an index into the address space. I
suspect a 555 timer wired up the right way to pulse at 10MHz, and wired
to feed a 20 bit counter circuit which acts as the address bus of said
memory would work, but there's probably more elegant ways of doing it.
Just my drunken worthless $10^-93 ;-)
24 Jul
24 Jul
10:04 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Any other thoughts? Access has to be read and write
and make the
bitrate about 10MHz.
Ray Arachelian wrote:
If I had to do it, I'd almost always do it in
software, I would base it
on a cycle counter. At whatever rate is proper. If you say 10MHz, ok
fine, so if I had a 10MHz CPU clock, I'd use that,
How are you going to use any conventional CPU at 10 MHz to bit-bang a 10
MHz bitstream?
Eric
23 Jul
23 Jul
10:08 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Chuck,
It has to be done in hardware otherwise why bother. If you want the respect
and awe of the group show us your gravitas and use a spool of fibre optic
cable as the "media" and blink your data in through an LED or LASER diode. A
photo transistor or photo PIN diode at the end will read your data so that
it can be replicated at the beginning of the fibre and start the whole loop
over again. Makes me tingle just thinking about it.
For reference whomever suggested a 555 as a clock source, they crap out at
about 1 MHz. A really good CMOS 555 ( a 7555 ) on a good day may make it to
2 MHz but I wouldn't hold my breathe.
Come on Chuck, show us what your made of .......
Best regards, Steven
I was musing today about the old recirculating stores
(mercury delay
line, magnetostrictive, acoustic, etc.) used for memory on old iron.
Suppose one wanted simulate one in modern components. How would you
do it, if you had, say, a million bits to store?
Would you use a 1x1Mb DRAM and a counter to cycle through the
addresses? Or an 8x128Kb SRAM with an external 8 bit shift register?
Any other thoughts? Access has to be read and write and make the
bitrate about 10MHz.
Cheers,
Chuck
11:09 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
On 23 Jul 2008 at 22:08, Scanning wrote:
It has to be done in hardware otherwise why bother. If
you want the respect
and awe of the group show us your gravitas and use a spool of fibre optic
cable as the "media" and blink your data in through an LED or LASER diode. A
photo transistor or photo PIN diode at the end will read your data so that
it can be replicated at the beginning of the fibre and start the whole loop
over again. Makes me tingle just thinking about it.
Crikey, I couldn't afford enough fiber to recirculate a megabit!
Let's see--I'm after a 10MHz bitrate and the speed of light through
glass is about 2.00x10**8 m/sec...
Think of the logic speed that would be required to keep track of
position of any given bit within the loop... !
Cheers,
Chuck
24 Jul
24 Jul
midnight
New subject: Pointless question...
Chuck,
If you kicked your clock rate up to 100 MHz you would only need about 3048
Kilometers of fibre .....
Best regards, Steven
P.S. What about bouncing a beam of coherent light between two not quite so
parallel front-surface mirrors .... ?
P.P.S. Maybe a SAW device and a piece of glass... ?
Subject: Re: Pointless question...
On 23 Jul 2008 at 22:08, Scanning wrote:
> It has to be done in hardware otherwise why bother. If you want the
respect
> and awe of the group show us your gravitas and
use a spool of fibre
optic
> cable as the "media" and blink your
data in through an LED or LASER
diode. A
> photo transistor or photo PIN diode at the end
will read your data so
that
> it can be replicated at the beginning of the
fibre and start the whole
loop
over again.
Makes me tingle just thinking about it.
Crikey, I couldn't afford enough fiber to recirculate a megabit!
Let's see--I'm after a 10MHz bitrate and the speed of light through
glass is about 2.00x10**8 m/sec...
Think of the logic speed that would be required to keep track of
position of any given bit within the loop... !
Cheers,
Chuck
12:41 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
On 24 Jul 2008 at 0:00, Scanning wrote:
P.P.S. Maybe a SAW device and a piece of glass... ?
Many years ago, when "thin film" memories were hot stuff, I recall
reading something about an experiment wherein proton precession (as
in a proton precession magnetometer) was proposed as a storage
mechanism. Store a megabit in a bottle of water sort of thing. The
details escape me after 40 or so years, but I do recall it was a LIFO
sort of arrangement--the bits came out in the reverse order that they
went in.
So, no good for my application.
Cheers,
Chuck
12:02 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Chuck Guzis <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 23 Jul 2008 at 22:08, Scanning wrote:
Crikey, I couldn't afford enough fiber to recirculate a megabit!
Let's see--I'm after a 10MHz bitrate and the speed of light through
glass is about 2.00x10**8 m/sec...
Think of the logic speed that would be required to keep track of
position of any given bit within the loop... !
Cheers,
Chuck
1000000 bit on copper wire would occupy about 50000 metres of the stuff to
rely on the propagation delay to store the data. How about you do a serial
to 8 bit parallel conversion on the data then transmit it in parallel over 8
by 200ish metre cables then re-serialise the data at the other end. Or even
don't bother with the serialisation and leave it as a byte wide delay line
and then you don't have to stress on the logic speed issue.
David
12:17 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 5:02 PM, David Kane <davidfrkane at gmail.com> wrote:
1000000 bit on copper wire would occupy about 50000 metres of the stuff to
rely on the propagation delay to store the data. How about you do a serial
to 8 bit parallel conversion on the data then transmit it in parallel over 8
by 200ish metre cables then re-serialise the data at the other end. Or even
don't bother with the serialisation and leave it as a byte wide delay line
and then you don't have to stress on the logic speed issue.
David
Maybe if I engaged my brain when I did my math it would be best. Copper is
20m/bit not 20bit/m oops.So my idea would need 8 by 78km wires. And even
then my logic was no good anyway, the segmentation of the line length does
not get power of 2 increase in data density.
*backing out into the shadows again*
David
5:42 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 23 Jul 2008 at 22:08, Scanning wrote:
Hmm, big laser and a Mars-mounted reflector? Cue "world's biggest computer "
and "world's first interplanetary computer" threads :-)
JOOI, what was the typical speed for original delay-storage technology? How
does your intended 10MHz compare?
cheers
Jules
It has to be done in hardware otherwise why
bother. If you want the respect
and awe of the group show us your gravitas and use a spool of fibre optic
cable as the "media" and blink your data in through an LED or LASER diode. A
photo transistor or photo PIN diode at the end will read your data so that
it can be replicated at the beginning of the fibre and start the whole loop
over again. Makes me tingle just thinking about it.
Crikey, I couldn't afford enough fiber to recirculate a megabit!
Let's see--I'm after a 10MHz bitrate and the speed of light through
glass is about 2.00x10**8 m/sec...
10:04 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
On Thursday 24 July 2008 08:42, Jules Richardson wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Mars? What the heck do you do then when it's on the other side of the sun?
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
On 23 Jul 2008 at 22:08, Scanning wrote:
Hmm, big laser and a Mars-mounted reflector? Cue "world's biggest computer
" and "world's first interplanetary computer" threads :-) It has to be done in hardware otherwise why
bother. If you want the
respect and awe of the group show us your gravitas and use a spool of
fibre optic cable as the "media" and blink your data in through an LED
or LASER diode. A photo transistor or photo PIN diode at the end will
read your data so that it can be replicated at the beginning of the
fibre and start the whole loop over again. Makes me tingle just thinking
about it.
Crikey, I couldn't afford enough fiber to recirculate a megabit!
Let's see--I'm after a 10MHz bitrate and the speed of light through
glass is about 2.00x10**8 m/sec...
11:43 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
> Hmm, big laser and a Mars-mounted reflector? Cue
"world's biggest computer
> " and "world's first interplanetary computer" threads :-)
On Thu, 24 Jul 2008, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Mars? What the heck do you do then when it's on
the other side of the sun?
System maintenance?
Reroute the packet through Jupiter?
Ask the mice for a system reconfiguration?
12:11 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
> Ask the mice for a system reconfiguration?
On Thu, 24 Jul 2008, Eric Smith wrote:
Meddle not in the affairs of mice, for they are
pandimensional and may
replace your brain with an electronic one. (A simple one should do.)
What?
I don't understand.
Where's the tea?
12:13 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
On Thursday 24 July 2008 14:43, Fred Cisin wrote:
:-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
> Hmm, big
laser and a Mars-mounted reflector? Cue "world's biggest
> computer " and "world's first interplanetary computer" threads
:-)
On Thu, 24 Jul 2008, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Mars? What the heck do you do then when it's
on the other side of the
sun?
System maintenance?
Reroute the packet through Jupiter?
Ask the mice for a system reconfiguration?
3:18 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Jules Richardson wrote:
Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 23 Jul 2008 at 22:08, Scanning wrote:
>
>> It has to be done in hardware otherwise why bother. If you want the respect
>> and awe of the group show us your gravitas and use a spool of fibre optic
>> cable as the "media" and blink your data in through an LED or LASER
diode. A
>> photo transistor or photo PIN diode at the end will read your data so that
>> it can be replicated at the beginning of the fibre and start the whole loop
>> over again. Makes me tingle just thinking about it.
>
> Crikey, I couldn't afford enough fiber to recirculate a megabit!
> Let's see--I'm after a 10MHz bitrate and the speed of light through
> glass is about 2.00x10**8 m/sec...
...
JOOI, what was the typical speed for original delay-storage technology? How
does your intended 10MHz compare?
Typical bit rates for magnetostrictive delay lines used in 1960s-era
calculators was on the order of 200 - 600KHz. I did calculations for
propagation speed and 'physical bit length' for one of these calcs at one time
but don't have the figures at hand.
What's the maximum bit rate on optical fiber these days? If one were to utilise
the full bandwidth of the fiber to time-slice the fiber into n channels,
recirculate the bits sequentially through each of those channels, one could
achieve a factor of n reduction in the length of fiber needed.
I had to make a variable-length binary delay line a year or two ago for a
project to get two 1950s-era Deskfax fax machines communicating (needed storage
for one line of the image because the drums were not synchronised, and could
start at an arbitrary phase relationship to each other). It was only a couple
thousand bits of storage needed but I ended up just using 1 bit-line of an 8*8K
static RAM and ignored the other 7 bit-lines. It was much simpler than trying to
optimise on a smaller 8*x or 4*x RAM and feed it with shift registers. The
variable delay was accomplished with two counters (read and write) started at
different times and multiplexed into the RAM address lines.
2:41 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
On 24 Jul 2008 at 14:18, Brent Hilpert wrote:
I had to make a variable-length binary delay line a
year or two ago for a
project to get two 1950s-era Deskfax fax machines communicating (needed storage
for one line of the image because the drums were not synchronised, and could
start at an arbitrary phase relationship to each other). It was only a couple
thousand bits of storage needed but I ended up just using 1 bit-line of an 8*8K
static RAM and ignored the other 7 bit-lines. It was much simpler than trying to
optimise on a smaller 8*x or 4*x RAM and feed it with shift registers. The
variable delay was accomplished with two counters (read and write) started at
different times and multiplexed into the RAM address lines.
One could even use an 8x SRAM to form 8 separate loops (or 16x to
form 16...). Select the appropriate loop using a little mux/demux
glue. No need for shift registers. Have to latch all the bits to do
a write, though, but still not too bad.
Thanks for the inspiration...
Cheers,
Chuck
3:40 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Brent Hilpert wrote:
Jules Richardson wrote:
There's been some big developments in the past several years on slowing
the speed of light, for future computer design applications, including
memory storage. It'll save far more space in your footprint with optical
fiber. Some experimental solutions have already decreased the speed of
light to slower than a baseball pitch using a gelled sodium solution
cooled down to near absolute zero. Maybe you can get your hands on these
recent new devices, such as the photonic waveguides from IBM which are
more practical but still need work on reducing the speed even further at
room temperature. It might be still $$$ too :)
http://tinyurl.com/6s6j96
=Dan
[ Pittsburgh 250th --- http://www2.applegate.org/~ragooman/ ]
*
*
Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 23 Jul 2008 at 22:08, Scanning wrote:
>
>
>> If you want the respect and awe of the group show us your gravitas and use a
spool of fibre optic cable as the "media" and blink your data in through an LED
or LASER diode.
>>
> Crikey, I couldn't afford enough fiber to recirculate a megabit
Typical
bit rates for magnetostrictive delay lines used in 1960s-era
calculators was on the order of 200 - 600KHz.
25 Jul
25 Jul
12:33 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
A reasonable bit rate these days is 100 Gbit / sec with the high dollar lab
stuff pushing into the Terabit range....
Chuck, using ECL Gbit stuff is do-able and would shorten the length of the
fibre...? A 1 Meg static RAM just sounds too easy.
Best regards, Steven
How
time
What's the maximum bit rate on optical fiber these
days?
Jules Richardson wrote:
>
> Chuck Guzis wrote:
> > On 23 Jul 2008 at 22:08, Scanning wrote:
> >
> >> It has to be done in hardware otherwise why bother. If you want the
respect
> >> and awe of the group show us your
gravitas and use a spool of fibre
optic
> >> cable as the "media" and blink
your data in through an LED or LASER
diode. A
> >> photo transistor or photo PIN diode at
the end will read your data so
that
> >> it can be replicated at the beginning of
the fibre and start the
whole loop
>> over
again. Makes me tingle just thinking about it.
>
> Crikey, I couldn't afford enough fiber to recirculate a megabit!
> Let's see--I'm after a 10MHz bitrate and the speed of light through
> glass is about 2.00x10**8 m/sec...
...
>
> JOOI, what was the typical speed for original delay-storage technology? does your
intended 10MHz compare?
Typical bit rates for magnetostrictive delay lines used in 1960s-era
calculators was on the order of 200 - 600KHz. I did calculations for
propagation speed and 'physical bit length' for one of these calcs at one
but don't have the figures at hand.
What's the maximum bit rate on optical fiber these days? If one were to
utilise
the full bandwidth of the fiber to time-slice the
fiber into n channels,
recirculate the bits sequentially through each of those channels, one
could
achieve a factor of n reduction in the length of fiber
needed.
12:04 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Scanning wrote:
A reasonable bit rate these days is 100 Gbit / sec with the high dollar lab
stuff pushing into the Terabit range....
Chuck, using ECL Gbit stuff is do-able and would shorten the length of the
fibre...? A 1 Meg static RAM just sounds too easy.
OK, going with the numbers provided earlier,
if the single-delay length required is
2*10^8m/S * 1Mb / 10Mb/S = 2*10^7m = 20,000km
and we can get
100Gb/S / 10Mb/S = 10,000 (10Mb/S channels)
out of the fibre, then we can reduce the fibre length required to
20,000km / 10,000 = 2 km
Just put the spool of fibre out in the garden...
10:11 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Scanning wrote:
It has to be done in hardware otherwise why bother. If
you want the respect
and awe of the group show us your gravitas and use a spool of fibre optic
cable as the "media" and blink your data in through an LED or LASER diode.
Storing 1 Mbit at 10 MHz in a spool of fiber would definitely inspire
awe of a sort, but perhaps not the kind you had in mind. You'll
definitely need lasers, not LEDs, and you'll have to splice an optical
amplifier into the spool for every few km of fiber. Just dealing with
the power consumption would be non-trivial. Got a substation next door?
Eric
25 Jul
25 Jul
9:18 p.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:11:05 -0700> From: eric
at brouhaha.com> To: > Subject: Re: Pointless question...> > Scanning
wrote:> > It has to be done in hardware otherwise why bother. If you want the
respect> > and awe of the group show us your gravitas and use a spool of fibre
optic> > cable as the "media" and blink your data in through an LED or
LASER diode.> > Storing 1 Mbit at 10 MHz in a spool of fiber would definitely
inspire > awe of a sort, but perhaps not the kind you had in mind. You'll >
definitely need lasers, not LEDs, and you'll have to splice an optical > amplifier
into the spool for every few km of fiber. Just dealing with > the power consumption
would be non-trivial. Got a substation next door?> > Eric
Hi
Why does everyone think that the bits need to be stored sequencially.
One could pack a lot more bits into a shorter cable and interleave the
bits.
Dwight
_________________________________________________________________
Stay in touch when you're away with Windows Live Messenger.
http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_messen…
24 Jul
24 Jul
10:02 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
Chuck Guzis wrote:
I was musing today about the old recirculating stores
(mercury delay
line, magnetostrictive, acoustic, etc.) used for memory on old iron.
Suppose one wanted simulate one in modern components. How would you
do it, if you had, say, a million bits to store?
CCD memory, e.g., 16 pieces of Intel 2464.
Would you use a 1x1Mb DRAM and a counter to cycle
through the
addresses? Or an 8x128Kb SRAM with an external 8 bit shift register?
Oh, *that* modern. If I was just building one, I certainly wouldn't
bother with DRAM. Is there some reason you don't want to use a 1Mx1
SRAM, e.g., Cypress CY7C1007D-10VXI?
Eric
10:12 a.m.
New subject: Pointless question...
On 24 Jul 2008 at 10:02, Eric Smith wrote:
Oh, *that* modern. If I was just building one, I
certainly wouldn't
bother with DRAM. Is there some reason you don't want to use a 1Mx1
SRAM, e.g., Cypress CY7C1007D-10VXI?
Huh, I'd blown right by that one, quietly thinking that the part
description had to have been a misprint. Useful to know that 1Mx1
SRAM parts do exist.
Cheers,
Chuck
8:27 a.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
Ethan Dicks wrote:
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 06:41:04PM +0100, Liam Proven
wrote:
You could add TCP/IP to WFW. But as I recall (dimly) MacTCP beat WFW on
the pc to the Internet.
mmm. it's coming back to me. The pc based tcp/ip work done at
MIT. That was the first tcp/ip on a pc I think (unless you count a lisp
machine as a PC, which I would, since it was a 32 bit single user
machine with a graphics display and keyboard :-)
The pc/tcp code was ported to the Macintosh (at Dartmouth I think) for
use with the early gateways like the fastpath (and before that the
gateway based on the old SUN - as in Stanford - boards).
So, I guess the old pc/tcp code from MIT was first. That has telnet,
ftp and basic mail as I recall. Then the ports to the macintosh. This
was in the "ethernet is the thick yellow cable" era, around 1986. Well
before 1995. I remember using telnet on a mac to our various vaxen in
1986. I had to add a bunch of appletalk routing code to the fastpath to
get it to work. But telnet was faster than serial and way more fun.
2008/7/23 Eric J Korpela <korpela at
ssl.berkeley.edu>:
>> And what was the first operating system to have builtin support for inter
net
> >> access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just LAN
> >> networking?
> >
> > I'm fairly sure WfW had TCP/IP. > > Unix and Linux, yes. MacOS didn't have
built in TCP/IP until MacOS 8
> > in 1997.
I don't think that is correct. Unless you're claiming that MacTCP was
not "built in", which you could claim, but John Veizades would probably
have something to say about that. It was certainly available long before
1995.
The ip-over-appletalk working group inside the IETF was very active in
the late '80s.
-brad
8:58 a.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
> > Unix
and Linux, yes. MacOS didn't have built in TCP/IP until MacOS 8
> > in 1997.
I don't think that is correct. Unless you're claiming that MacTCP was
not "built in", which you could claim, but John Veizades would probably
have something to say about that. It was certainly available long before
1995. 
12:13 p.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
On Thu, Jul 24, 2008 at 08:58:54AM -0700, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
I don't believe neither MacTCP nor Open Transport were standard parts of
MacOS until, in fact, OS 8. When I installed 7.1 and 7.5 (gag), I had to go
scare up separate networking stacks. I don't remember if 7.6 had anything
built in but I'm pretty sure Open Transport was still sold separately then
too.
OpenTransport first shipped on the PowerMac 9500 with System 7.5.2, and
was bundled with System 7.5.3 and later. A standalone installer was
available for System 7.1 and later.
http://developer.apple.com/qa/nw/nw64.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20030407165534/developer.apple.com/macos/opentra…
> > Unix and Linux, yes. MacOS didn't have
built in TCP/IP until MacOS 8
> > in 1997.
I don't think that is correct. Unless you're claiming that MacTCP was
not "built in", which you could claim, but John Veizades would probably
have something to say about that. It was certainly available long before
1995. They were available, though, even MacTCP for System 6
IIRC.
Yes. MacTCP worked with any version of System 6 or later--I remember
using NSCA Telnet and the like on an SE running 6.0.7. It didn't
ship with the OS until System 7.5.
http://www.amc.anl.gov/ANLSoftwareLibrary/MacShareware(notsupported)/Commun…
http://www.tengutech.net/help/mac/mactcp.html
http://www.metronet.lib.mi.us/help/ConnectionProblems/SetupDocs/MacOS75.pdf
Cheers,
Brian Foley.
12:41 p.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
I don't think that is correct. Unless you're
claiming that MacTCP was
not "built in", which you could claim, but John Veizades would probably
have something to say about that. It was certainly available long before
1995.
I don't believe neither MacTCP nor Open Transport were standard parts of
MacOS until, in fact, OS 8. When I installed 7.1 and 7.5 (gag), I had to go
scare up separate networking stacks. I don't remember if 7.6 had anything
built in but I'm pretty sure Open Transport was still sold separately then
too.
1:11 p.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
Are you guys possibly forgetting "Trumpet Winsock" and the likes?
Intel LanDesk manager ring any bells?
Novell or Intel DOS (windows 3.11) disks, using VJ compression.
The late-great company known as Ascend (in the US), although ISDN came later, at least,
again, to public residential consciousness.
128K ISDN unlimited used to be $50 a month, you can't get that any more.
Hey I ran several FIDONet BBSes with links to NA-Net, and CRS, etc
If govts keep up with trying to overly police the net, we may just go back to BBSes yet.
Dan.
_________________________________________________________________
If you like crossword puzzles, then you'll love Flexicon, a game which combines four
overlapping crossword puzzles into one!
http://g.msn.ca/ca55/208
8:44 p.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
PCP-IP?
There was the comercial version, and then some guys at The Austin Code Works advertised in
Dr. Dobbs, started selling disks to those of us without access to the internet archives.
I bought all kinds of cool stuff from them, there moto was 'source code, of
course'
PCP-IP was the tcpip stack from Carnegie Mellon, it compiled just fine with MSC and
TurboC, and drivers for Novell ethernet boards. this was '86-87
Randy
From: dgahling at hotmail.com
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:11:05 -0400
Subject: RE: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on
the internet)
Are you guys possibly forgetting "Trumpet Winsock" and the likes?
Intel LanDesk manager ring any bells?
Novell or Intel DOS (windows 3.11) disks, using VJ compression.
The late-great company known as Ascend (in the US), although ISDN came later, at least,
again, to public residential consciousness.
128K ISDN unlimited used to be $50 a month, you can't get that any more.
Hey I ran several FIDONet BBSes with links to NA-Net, and CRS, etc
If govts keep up with trying to overly police the net, we may just go back to BBSes yet.
Dan.
_________________________________________________________________
If you like crossword puzzles, then you'll love Flexicon, a game which combines four
overlapping crossword puzzles into one!
http://g.msn.ca/ca55/208
_________________________________________________________________
Keep your kids safer online with Windows Live Family Safety.
http://www.windowslive.com/family_safety/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_fa…
11:10 p.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
Randy Dawson wrote:
PCP-IP?
I think you mean PC-IP. The history of it is explained here:
http://www.drizzle.com/~aboba/internaut/pc-ip.html
25 Jul
25 Jul
5:46 a.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
Eric Smith wrote:
Randy Dawson wrote:
If he lived in Austin in the mid-80s, he probably did mean PCP-IP.
;^)
Doc
PCP-IP?
I think you mean PC-IP. The history of it is explained here:
http://www.drizzle.com/~aboba/internaut/pc-ip.html
11:20 a.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
was FTP Software bought out by Novell, or am I thinking of Xerox ?
There's another quagmire of history right there.
Dan.
_________________________________________________________________
If you like crossword puzzles, then you'll love Flexicon, a game which combines four
overlapping crossword puzzles into one!
http://g.msn.ca/ca55/208
2 p.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
Dan Gahlinger wrote:
was FTP Software bought out by Novell, or am I
thinking of Xerox ?
There's another quagmire of history right there.
Netmanage.
I used to work for The Wollongong Group, who I think were the first
company to rework MIT PC-IP as a commercial product (WIN/PC).
(I didn't get involved with the PC stuff, except on the other side
of yelling matches, until about 1994. So you can blame me for
WIN/TCP for MPE/V and PathWay Runtime 4.0.)
The story I've been told by the guy who did the WIN/PC work is that
some of the PC-IP folks saw the advertisement which confirmed the
commercial potential they had suspected, started FTP Software, and
found a really good deal on some three-ring binders which happened to
be green. The first part of that fits with John Romkey's story.
-Frank McConnell
24 Jul
24 Jul
11:30 a.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
mmm. it's coming back to me. The pc based tcp/ip
work done at
MIT. That was the first tcp/ip on a pc I think
This would be Romkey's PC/IP;
http://www.apocalypse.org/~romkey/from.html
I think the original version handled only a single TCP connection at a
time!
Romkey went on to co-found FTP Software (whose clients (ie; FTP) bore
a charming resemblance to their old-time (PDP-10) counterparts).
The pc/tcp code was ported to the Macintosh (at
Dartmouth I think) for
use with the early gateways like the fastpath (and before that the
gateway based on the old SUN - as in Stanford - boards).
I think PC/IP was also used as the basis for "NCSA Telnet" on the Mac,
which despite it's name, also had an FTP server (there was a hotkey to
send an FTP command to establish a connection (back) to the Mac's FTP
server). I also seem to recall a PC version of NCSA Telnet.
I still have a tote bag from the May 1992 InterOp in Washington D.C.
The social was at the Smithsonian Air&Space Museum, and the sponsors
(either of the social, or the event) were FTP Software, InterCon, and
TGV -- all suppliers of third party TCP/IP (DOS, MacOS, and VMS
respectively).
My favorite 3rd party MacOS classic TCP/IP tool (probably MacTCP
based) was Dartmouth's "Fetch", whose "working on it" active
cursor
was a running dog. I think someone reincarnated the "Fetch" name in
recent history.
Neon Software also made TCP/IP tools for the Mac (Apple Supplied only
MacTCP-- the transport, but not any tools). The principal was Michael
Swan, one of the original principals at Kinetics, orginators of the
FastPath (a repackgaing of the Stanford SeaGate, which used a SUN
(Stanford University Network) 68000 multibus card, and a hand wired
SCC-based AppleTalk (LocalTalk) card. Intercon may have also been
founded by one of the Kinetics guys...
The ip-over-appletalk working group inside the IETF
was very active in
the late '80s.
Ah yes, I remember it well. Shiva and Cayman (Brad's company) were
both Boston based, and we joked that the developers of US AppleTalk/IP
gateways could be wiped out in a single plane crash.
Phil Budne
(Shiva FastPath 5 project leader)
25 Jul
25 Jul
11:56 a.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computeron the internet)
On Thursday, July 24, 2008, Phil Budne wrote:
Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> wrote:
> mmm. it's coming back to me. The pc based tcp/ip work done at
> MIT. That was the first tcp/ip on a pc I think
This would be Romkey's PC/IP;
http://www.apocalypse.org/~romkey/from.html
I think the original version handled only a single TCP
connection at a
time!
Romkey went on to co-found FTP Software (whose clients
(ie; FTP) bore
a charming resemblance to their old-time (PDP-10) counterparts).
Until they didn't.
We had a problem with FTP Software's product on Windows: We could not
get a
new release to work when attempting to transfer files to anything other
than
the login directory on a TOPS-20 system. I called them to find out what
was
going on, and was told that we had the wrong syntax for a TOPS-20
directory
specification, and should change our software.
This was at XKL. We had purchased the 36-bit intellectual property
rights from
Digital, all of us had been using TOPS-20 for years--in some cases for
decades
--and these people were telling *us* that *we* had the syntax wrong.
When I
insisted that they did not know what they were talking about, and
explained why
I believed this to be true, their response was to remove TOPS-20 as a
possible
remote system type from their product rather than to fix the problem.
Rich Alderson
RichA at vulcan.com
Server Engineer, PDPplanet Project (206)
342-2239
Vulcan, Inc., 505 5th Avenue S, Seattle, WA 98104 (206)
465-2916 cell
29 Jul
29 Jul
3:31 p.m.
New subject: early desktop TCP/IP implementations (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
> > Unix
and Linux, yes. MacOS didn't have built in TCP/IP until MacOS 8
> > in 1997.
I don't think that is correct. Unless you're claiming that MacTCP was
not "built in", which you could claim, but John Veizades would probably
have something to say about that.
11:09 a.m.
On 23 Jul 2008 at 10:24, Eric J Korpela wrote:
Depends on what you'd call an "Operating System", I suppose. WFWG
was built on DOS, couldn't run without it. Network support wasn't
"built in", by any means, but offered as a standard component of
WFWG.
NT 3.1 perhaps?
I've still got a system or two that run MSLANMAN--add TCP/IP support
and you've got one big memory hog, though, particularly on an 8088-
class system.
Cheers,
Chuck
And what was
the first operating system to have builtin support for
internet
access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or
was that just LAN
networking?
I'm fairly sure WfW had TCP/IP.
11:24 a.m.
On Wednesday 23 July 2008 14:09, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 23 Jul 2008 at 10:24, Eric J Korpela wrote:
Depends on what you'd call an "Operating System", I suppose. WFWG
was built on DOS, couldn't run without it. Network support wasn't
"built in", by any means, but offered as a standard component of
WFWG.
NT 3.1 perhaps?
I've still got a system or two that run MSLANMAN--add TCP/IP support
and you've got one big memory hog, though, particularly on an 8088-
class system.
I found it much easier to load a crynwyr (sp?) driver for my card, and use
the ftp client from the NCSA telnet package. There was one other ftp client
I got later that turned out to be a good bit faster, but I don't recall how
that package was called, just ftp followed by some number...
Worked well on my BBS machine to get things into and out of it when the rest
of the LAN were boxes running linux, though I had to get out of desqview to
do that.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
And what
was the first operating system to have builtin support for
internet
access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or
was that just LAN
networking?
I'm fairly sure WfW had TCP/IP. 
4 Dec
4 Dec
7:44 p.m.
madodel wrote:
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just
LAN networking? OS/2 Warp had dial up internet access for IBM's ISP as
well as a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released in 1994, but not a
full TCP/IP stack until Warp Connect in 1995. I assume Unix, Linux,
AppleOS or AmigaOS must have had this prior to that? I remember all
those damn AOL floppy disks for all the windows users. FORMAT A: was a
good use for them.
I used PPP (or it might have been SLIP) on Ultrix LONG before 1995. And
it also makes a difference as to what you mean by "internet access".
UUCP could fall into that criterion, and has been built-into certain
operating systems for a *very* long time.
Peace... Sridhar
8:21 p.m.
madodel wrote:
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just
LAN networking? OS/2 Warp had dial up internet access for IBM's ISP as
well as a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released in 1994, but not a
full TCP/IP stack until Warp Connect in 1995. I assume Unix, Linux,
AppleOS or AmigaOS must have had this prior to that? I remember all
those damn AOL floppy disks for all the windows users. FORMAT A: was a
good use for them.
"BUILT-IN" ? or "BUNDLED"?
such as terminal dialup to a Unix shell account and using FTP, gopher, and
later lynx
There was a LOT of internet access long before Windows For Wankers.
You've got a very reasonable question. But, with a subject line of
"first" computer on the internet
you will not be taken seriously.
Sorry.
Besides, everybody knows that AOL invented the internet on a Mac in HTML,
in 2000, in order to sell WWW porn, under orders from Meg Whitman. And
then Hayes invented the modem, and DOD based arpanet on the Fry's website.
CD-ROMs were invented for the sole purpose of preventing AOL from dropping
the bottom out of the diskette market.
8:46 p.m.
On Dec 4, 2011 9:22 PM, "Fred Cisin" <cisin at xenosoft.com> wrote:
madodel wrote:
> And what was the first operating system to have builtin support for
> internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just
> LAN networking? OS/2 Warp had dial up internet access for IBM's ISP as
> well as a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released in 1994, but not a
> full TCP/IP stack until Warp Connect in 1995.
not quite true. OS/2 extended
edition included a TCP/IP stack as early as
v1.1 iirc.
5 Dec
5 Dec
6:41 p.m.
John Willis wrote:
madodel wrote:
>And what was the first operating system to have builtin support for
>internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just
>LAN networking? OS/2 Warp had dial up internet access for IBM's ISP as
>well as a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released in 1994, but not a
>full TCP/IP stack until Warp Connect in 1995.
>
> 
6 Dec
6 Dec
8:01 a.m.
On Dec 5, 2011, at 9:41 PM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
not quite true. OS/2 extended edition included a TCP/IP stack as early
as
v1.1 iirc.
I think that it is fair to include an operating system which has
distinct device drivers for all hardware as having built-in support
for that hardware. For example, support for MSCP (or SCSI)
hard drives first became available under RT-11 around 1985.
Note that DEC itself did not have a SCSI host adapter at the
time - CMD produced a 3rd party Qbus host adapter. But
SCSI hard drives could be used. The other PDP-11 operating
systems each had their DU device drives.
Just because the DU.SYS device driver was a separate file
should not preclude fact that the operating system did not
have built-in support for SCSI hard drives - even though DEC
did not support SCSI hard drive use until the RQZX1 host
adapter many years later.
As far as I know, no PDP-11 operating system had support for SCSI. They may have
supported MSCP drives, and SCSI may have been a popular implementation pathway for MSCP,
but the underlying operating system had no knowledge of anything to do with SCSI. RT-11
will work with an RQDX3 (not a SCSI controller) as well as it will with a CQD-220.
I'm not as familiar with VMS, but I assume it probably had more direct interfaces with
SCSI than just MSCP (totally a guess, though; VAXen and Alpha machines had built-in SCSI
and it seems like it would be prohibitive to build in MSCP-serving hardware just to drive
the SCSI chipsets).
John Willis
wrote:
madodel wrote:
> And what was the first operating system to have builtin support for
> internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just
> LAN networking? OS/2 Warp had dial up internet access for IBM's ISP as
> well as a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released in 1994, but not a
> full TCP/IP stack until Warp Connect in 1995.
> Likewise, my opinion is that the PDP-11 (and probably
other DEC systems) could be said to have internet access
via a device driver which handled ether net or in some cases
other software using dialup modems. The question of an
TCP/IP stack is not software I am familiar with, but again,
just because that software was in a device driver (assuming
that to be the case) should still not prevent a user from saying
that there is built-in support for the internet.
That's a tougher nut to crack. If you wanted, you could call a VT100 "Internet
compatible" because you could dial up a modem with it (assuming you are able to type
protocols, which is something of another matter). I think the presence of a working
TCP/IP stack (whether it's an add-on or not) is probably a more appropriate
definition.
Another metric is whether it was available at the time of the system's release (or
within a relatively short time). You can retrofit an IP stack onto lots of things; hell,
you can do it on an Apple II if you're running Contiki, but no one is going to say the
Apple II was released with Internet support.
- Dave
8:29 a.m.
David Riley wrote:
On Dec 5, 2011, at 9:41 PM, Jerome H. Fine wrote:
That's a tougher nut to crack. If you wanted, you could call a VT100
"Internet compatible" because you could dial up a modem with it
(assuming you are able to type protocols, which is something of another
matter). I think the presence of a working TCP/IP stack (whether it's
an add-on or not) is probably a more appropriate definition.
I agree - but the original post seems to have mentioned "Internet access"
rather than the use of TCP/IP, and arguing semantics while guessing
original intent on this list is always fun ;)
Now you've got me wondering about various old routers with console
interfaces - can they conceivably be classed as computers and hence be
thrown into the discussion? :-)
cheers
Jules
10:40 a.m.
From: Jules Richardson
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 8:29 AM
Now you've got me wondering about various old
routers with console
interfaces - can they conceivably be classed as computers and hence be
thrown into the discussion? :-)
Are you talking about things like the early cisco Systems products? Those
used SUN-1 boards as their processor, which was a re-purposing of a generic
workstation processor. (A friend of mine designed the board and hired Andy
Bechtolsheim to build it. :-) Later boards like the CSC-2 and CSC-3 (another
friend of mine) were more specialized, but could have run something more
generic than IOS.
Just sayin'.
Rich Alderson
Vintage Computing Sr. Server Engineer
Vulcan, Inc.
505 5th Avenue S, Suite 900
Seattle, WA 98104
mailto:RichA at vulcan.com
mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org
http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/
7 Dec
7 Dec
5:39 a.m.
Rich Alderson wrote:
From: Jules Richardson
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2011 8:29 AM
Yes, that was what immediately sprang to mind, although I'm sure there are
others (Toby's mention of the IMPs is an interesting one).
I'm not sure what the timeline is like for the Cisco equipment though; I
didn't really play with any of that until quite late in the game (latter
half of the '90s).
Of course my guess is that the OP wanted a general-purpose computer running
a non-specialised OS which came with its own TCP/IP stack built-in rather
than as an add-on (and possibly with a suite of programs to actually make
use of Internet connectivity), but "firsts" discussions always end up with
a bunch of diverse answers! :-)
cheers
Jules
Now you've got me wondering about various old
routers with console
interfaces - can they conceivably be classed as computers and hence be
thrown into the discussion? :-)
Are you talking about things like the early cisco Systems products? 
6:29 a.m.
On 7 Dec 2011, at 13:39, Jules Richardson <jules.richardson99 at gmail.com> wrote:
Of course my guess is that the OP wanted a
general-purpose computer running a non-specialised OS which came with its own TCP/IP stack
built-in rather than as an add-on (and possibly with a suite of programs to actually make
use of Internet connectivity), but "firsts" discussions always end up with a
bunch of diverse answers! :-)
If you insist on a general purpose machine with a built-in TCP/IP stack then you
aren't looking at a true representation in my mind. I had been using the Internet for
2 years (on Windows 3.1) before we got a computer with a TCP/IP stack built into the OS
(Windows 95) and we couldn't move our Internet machine to Win 95 until we got a
working PPP/SLIP script for it.
The Amiga never did get one until OS 4.0 which came out in 2005 ish (and doesn't run
on anything I'd call an Amiga unless you use the Classic PPC version). I still have
to use Miami Dx on 3.1 and 3.9. Amigas have been on the net since the year dot.
Hell, OpenVMS never has had a built-in TCP/IP stack, it's always been an optional
add-on (although in 8.3 it's offered in the main install).
Those are 3 examples I can think of, I'm sure there are more.
My definition would be:
- General Purpose computer
- User interactive Console
- A program or program's capable of utilising an Internet-based service be that
Gopher, FTP, UseNet or WWW or anything similar.
- A TCP/ IP stack of some type connected by some means, be that a modem and PPP or SLIP or
howsoever.
--
Mark Benson
http://markbenson.org/blog
http://twitter.com/MDBenson
15 Dec
15 Dec
2:42 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Of course my guess is that the OP wanted a
general-purpose
computer running a non-specialised OS which came with its
own TCP/IP stack built-in rather than as an add-on
Mark Benson wrote:
If you insist on a general purpose machine with a
built-in
TCP/IP stack then you aren't looking at a true representation
in my mind.
A true representation of what?
The idea Jules describes, of "a non-specialized OS which came with its
own TCP/IP stack built-in", existed at least as early as August 1983, in
the form of BSD 4.2. Since the TCP/IP internet only came into existence
on January 1. 1983, there aren't likely to be too many that were
earlier. (BSD 4.1a had TCP/IP in April 1982, but was not intended for
public distribution.)
If you include NCP, the predecessor of TCP/IP, then TOPS-20AN qualifies
and was released before 1978.
I had been using the Internet for 2 years (on Windows
3.1) before
we got a computer with a TCP/IP stack built into the OS (Windows 95)
There was certainly not any non-specialized OS for PCs (or other
microcomputers) with bulit-in TCP/IP until *much* later than BSD 4.2.
Microsoft need not apply.
6 Dec
6 Dec
1:58 p.m.
On 07/12/11 3:29 AM, Jules Richardson wrote:
David Riley wrote:
Are you thinking of BBN IMP and such?
--Toby
On Dec 5, 2011, at 9:41 PM, Jerome H. Fine
wrote:
That's a tougher nut to crack. If you wanted, you could call a VT100
"Internet compatible" because you could dial up a modem with it
(assuming you are able to type protocols, which is something of another
matter). I think the presence of a working TCP/IP stack (whether it's
an add-on or not) is probably a more appropriate definition.
I agree - but the original post seems to have mentioned "Internet
access" rather than the use of TCP/IP, and arguing semantics while
guessing original intent on this list is always fun ;)
Now you've got me wondering about various old routers with console
interfaces - can they conceivably be classed as computers and hence be
thrown into the discussion? :-)
cheers
Jules
5 Dec
5 Dec
9:57 p.m.
madodel wrote, apparently several years ago:
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just
LAN networking?
WfW 3.11 didn't include Internet support, it was an addon. Anyhow, WfW
3.11 wasn't introduced until 1993, while BSD 4.2 included Internet
support and was introduced in August 1983. BSD 4.1a had Internet
support, and was "released" in April 1982, but was not intended for wide
distribution. Since the IP-based Internet only came into existence on
January 1, 1983, it is unlikely that there were too many operating
systems with Internet support introduced earlier than BSD.
If you count support for ARPANET, the direct predecessor of the
Internet, TOPS-20AN existed at least as early as 1980.
10:12 p.m.
On Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Eric Smith <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote:
If you count support for ARPANET, the direct
predecessor of the Internet,
TOPS-20AN existed at least as early as 1980.
Using a hasty definition of "Internet" as loosely connected machines from
different organisations which could at least pass email/files around, how
does UUCP fit into this timeline? Note the map from 1981 shows some
interesting players in the UUCP-world:
http://www.uucp.org/history/uucp-map-1981.html
UUCP was part of UNIX V7 in 1979; I couldn't find any earlier UUCP maps
other than the one from 1981 above.
10:47 p.m.
On 06/12/11 4:57 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
madodel wrote, apparently several years ago:
Surprised it took so long for this to be mentioned, thanks!
--Toby
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just
LAN networking?
WfW 3.11 didn't include Internet support, it was an addon. Anyhow, WfW
3.11 wasn't introduced until 1993, while BSD 4.2 included Internet
support and was introduced in August 1983. BSD 4.1a had Internet
support, and was "released" in April 1982, but was not intended for wide
distribution. Since the IP-based Internet only came into existence on
January 1, 1983, it is unlikely that there were too many operating
systems with Internet support introduced earlier than BSD.
If you count support for ARPANET, the direct predecessor of the
Internet, TOPS-20AN existed at least as early as 1980.
4 Dec
4 Dec
8:30 p.m.
On 2008 Jul 20, at 6:32 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
madodel wrote:
On 2008 Dec 11, at 7:30 PM, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that
just LAN networking? OS/2 Warp had dial up internet access for
IBM's ISP as well as a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released
in 1994, but not a full TCP/IP stack until Warp Connect in 1995.
I assume Unix, Linux, AppleOS or AmigaOS must have had this prior
to that? I remember all those damn AOL floppy disks for all the
windows users. FORMAT A: was a good use for them.
I used PPP (or it might have been SLIP) on Ultrix LONG before
1995. And it also makes a difference as to what you mean by
"internet access". UUCP could fall into that criterion, and has
been built-into certain operating systems for a *very* long time.
Peace... Sridhar According to what I've read, the Burroughs B5000
and Manchester
Atlas were both Harvard architecture and the GE-645 was von
Neumann. Am I correct in my understanding?
Peace... Sridhar
That's funny, these two messages relate to threads from 2008 but they
don't show up in the cctalk archive. Looks like they've been waiting
3 years to get out.
8:48 p.m.
On Sun, 4 Dec 2011, Brent Hilpert wrote:
That's funny, these two messages relate to threads
from 2008 but they
don't show up in the cctalk archive. Looks like they've been waiting
3 years to get out.
Some of those PRE-internet computers didn't always send messages by the
most efficient possible route!
Never realized that there were nodes that many light-years away!
Sorry.
I didn't even notice that the message that I was commenting on was old.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
6 Dec
6 Dec
12:37 a.m.
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
madodel wrote:
I don't think you can include UUCP as "internet access", though it is/was
a networking system.
I would argue that the Internet was built upon the Internet Protocol which
was initial described in a research paper published in May 1974 (Cerf and
Kahn), though it wasn't in it's current form at that time. TCP and IP were
described as a single protocol.
RCF8 describes Arpanet in 1969, but I don't have a copy of it. It is my
understanding Arpanet was a completely different protocol, and the
Internet was built on the wiring of Arpanet, but little else.
Of course, my memory could be completely flawed in all of this too.
Clint
And what was the first operating system to have
builtin support for
internet access? Did Windows for Workgroups have this or was that just LAN
networking? OS/2 Warp had dial up internet access for IBM's ISP as well as
a SLIP dialer for other ISPs, when released in 1994, but not a full TCP/IP
stack until Warp Connect in 1995. I assume Unix, Linux, AppleOS or AmigaOS
must have had this prior to that? I remember all those damn AOL floppy
disks for all the windows users. FORMAT A: was a good use for them.
I used PPP (or it might have been SLIP) on Ultrix LONG before 1995. And it
also makes a difference as to what you mean by "internet access". UUCP could
fall into that criterion, and has been built-into certain operating systems
for a *very* long time.
Peace... Sridhar
20 Jul
20 Jul
10:53 a.m.
On Sunday 20 July 2008 13:15, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Sun, 20 Jul 2008, Sean Conner wrote:
Hey, anybody else out there remember fidonet? I was a user, then a point,
then a node, and finally an NC before I pulled the plug on it -- in late
2006! Not to mention moderating a whole bunch of "echos"...
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Depends upon the service. AOL with USENET and
email in 1993.
Compuserve probably a bit before that. Heck, still remember the Trumpet
IP stack for Windows.
Compuserve started in 1969!
When internet access started becoming popular, like AOHell, it even tried
to compete with the internet for a while, with forums, etc.
Now it is owned by AOL?
Remember when Netcom, etc. put their own wrappers around internet content?
Remember Prodigy? 
11:03 a.m.
On Jul 20, 2008, at 19:53, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Hey, anybody else out there remember fidonet?
Most certainly!
I dialled into a BBS to get my email, and also access to several
usenet groups. This was my internet (Internet?) access until I went to
university and got direct access via their Unix workstations at the
faculty, and a little later via dial-up shell access at home. (Still
through the university servers; public ISP's didn't surface in the
Netherlands for another year or so.)
All this on my good old Philips MSX NMS-8255 with a 1200 baud modem.
Good times!
,xtG
.tsooJ
--
When someone asks if you're a god, say "yes."
--
Joost van de Griek
<http://www.jvdg.net/>
21 Jul
21 Jul
9:40 p.m.
On Sunday 20 July 2008 14:03, Joost van de Griek wrote:
On Jul 20, 2008, at 19:53, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
Heh. I *ran* a fido-internet gateway for a bit. And had a dialup shell
account to the guy who was feeding the newsgroups as well.
There were some appliance operators in those days, but everything I ran used
config files that I had to edit and it was an interesting chore to get all
the bits working with each other and then batch files and whatnot to tie it
all together...
Much more "technical" than most of my employment has been over the years,
unfortunately.
I was 1:270/615 when I stopped, and various other node numbers along the way.
Also NC270, and moderated as many as eight echos at one time. Way too much
of that stuff shows up in archives still when my last name gets punched into
google. :-)
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Hey, anybody else out there remember fidonet?
Most certainly!
I dialled into a BBS to get my email, and also access to several
usenet groups. This was my internet (Internet?) access until I went to
university and got direct access via their Unix workstations at the
faculty, and a little later via dial-up shell access at home. (Still
through the university servers; public ISP's didn't surface in the
Netherlands for another year or so.)
23 Jul
23 Jul
11:38 a.m.
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Roy J. Tellason <rtellason at verizon.net> wrote:
Heh. I *ran* a fido-internet gateway for a bit. And
had a dialup shell
account to the guy who was feeding the newsgroups as well.
Ahh the joys of email gateways. In 86 or so I had an account on a
FIDO (node 121/1 I think) that also did UUCP. At work I had an email
account on a VAX that was on HEPNET. One of the joys of the time was
seeing how many mail gateways you could go through... The easy way to
forward my work email to my FIDO account was to go HEPNET to SMTP to
UUCP. I don't have it here but and I'm sure I've got the gateway
names wrong and I'm missing UUCP nodes
MAILGATE::smtp%"ucbvax!three!other!systems!fido121!korpela at gateway.dec.com".
Yes, open forwarding of email was a necessary thing. And yes, I had
to route mail through Massachusetts and California to get it from
Stoughton, WI to Madison, WI. At least I didn't find an easier route.
You could waste days thinking about how to mail someone or how they
could mail you. When I came to Berkeley, I was still on HEPNET
(BKYAST::KORPELA) and through the bitnet gateway my address was
korpela%bkyast at ucbjade. BKYAST had multinet with SMTP installed so I
got my first real smtp address (korpela at bkyast.berkeley.edu) in 1988.
That's why I'm still considered a newbie.
Or was it some other VMS TCP/IP package? Outgoing SMTP was addressed
as PONY%"user at node.domain.edu". Pony express?
Eric
21 Jul
21 Jul
11:11 a.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
I don't know about ... Just reading a box some thing like -- Pacific
Tomato Growers... product of Florida.
For example,
when was the first NON-COMPUTER oriented advertsing
containing a URL?
I knew the world was coming to an end when I first saw a URL on a banana.
--
Will
18 Jul
18 Jul
11:32 a.m.
Dan, you are grossly over-reacting. Yes, some people here made light of
your email, but then don't join a list passionate computer geeks if you
can't tolerate some criticism.
Fact is, you brought this on yourself by writing things such as "where
E-Mail was first created."
E-mail, as YOU noted, is hardly limited to the Internet. It existed long
before the mainstream, modern Internet was born. I would argue that the
telegraph was the first electronic mail system.
So then, why did you wrote "where E-Mail was first created," knowing full
well that such as claim is wildly off-base?
People are only attacking you because of the sweeping generalization that
you made. If you were to say SPECIFICALLY what this guy created, with
details, then that's great. But to come along say he "created" email for
any network is pretty silly. It's like saying Henry Ford "created" the
automobile or (more appropriate for this list) IBM "created" computers.
Maybe that's acceptable for ordinary drivers or computer users, but don't
try pulling it here.
>>>> I was there, I lived through this
(blah blah blah ........)
That's nice. Use your experience and knowledge to tell us something new
and interesting about it.
11:33 a.m.
The internet didn't become a really public thing
until around 1994.
Sure it existed in various forms, but when you talk about the "Internet"
(Capital "I"), the public wasn't aware of it or using it until late 1994.
Wow, hair splitting EXTREME!
If you count the creation of the _I_nternet as the point at which the
academic networks went public in the early/mid 1990s, well that all
this NSFnet junk in my shop would probably qualify. One clock pulse
after the official ruling, then all these RS/6000s would then be
contenders to be "first". Depending, of course, on which machine got
their clock pulse first.
But I think the _I_nternet was being referred to with the big _I_ well
into the 1980s.
--
Will, ex william at ans.net
11:56 a.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
It was certainly available to me, and I was using it, before 1990.
Peace... Sridhar
The internet
didn't become a really public thing until around 1994.
Sure it existed in various forms, but when you talk about the
"Internet" (Capital "I"), the public wasn't aware of it or using
it
until late 1994.
Wow, hair splitting EXTREME!
If you count the creation of the _I_nternet as the point at which the
academic networks went public in the early/mid 1990s, well that all
this NSFnet junk in my shop would probably qualify. One clock pulse
after the official ruling, then all these RS/6000s would then be
contenders to be "first". Depending, of course, on which machine got
their clock pulse first.
But I think the _I_nternet was being referred to with the big _I_
well into the 1980s.
11:59 a.m.
On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 02:33:36PM -0400, William Donzelli wrote:
I remember having to sign a piece of paper so we could use the entire
"_I_nternet". How things have changed.
The internet
didn't become a really public thing until around 1994.
Sure it existed in various forms, but when you talk about the "Internet"
(Capital "I"), the public wasn't aware of it or using it until late 1994.
Wow, hair splitting EXTREME!
If you count the creation of the _I_nternet as the point at which the
academic networks went public in the early/mid 1990s, well that all --
Will, ex william at ans.net
--
- db at FreeBSD.org db at db.net http://www.db.net/~db
11:59 a.m.
But I think the _I_nternet was being referred to with
the big _I_ well
into the 1980s.
It was. The distinction between Internet and internet
was used by Comer in his classic TCP/IP book, the first
edition of which is from 1988. How long that distinction
had been in place, I don't know. That was also the year
of the Morris worm. Public popularity (or lack thereof)
doesn't change the fact that the worm transported itself
across the Internet and exploited a debugging backdoor
of sendmail, also establishing email as a very pre-90s
thing. At the time the public was added to the Internet,
none of us thought of it as a new or different network:
just that it was now "perpetual September."
BLS
12:42 p.m.
From: "William Donzelli" <wdonzelli at gmail.com>
I never knew who came up with it, but it sure fits.
The worst part is that when it was just the September
phenomenon, most of them would eventually learn
the community's netiquette. Now it seems pretty
much a lost cause.
BLS
At the time
the public was added to the Internet,
none of us thought of it as a new or different network:
just that it was now "perpetual September."
A term coined by one of the RCS/RI guys, no less... 
12:10 p.m.
A co-worker sent me this link a little earlier today. Seems a decent
history and just might be germane to this conversation.
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/07/internet200807?printable…
Jim
18 Jul
18 Jul
11:47 a.m.
Dan Gahlinger wrote:
...
To give you some idea, the ISP I worked with in Sept
1994 had an ARIN user registration number 79.
Yes, the 79th person to register with ARIN. That's pretty damn EARLY!
Wikipedia says:
"ARIN opened its doors for business on 22 December 1997[1] after
incorporating on 18 April 1997"
So enough with your stupid jokes and mockery, this
isn't a scam or slight,
it's the real thing, speaking from a public perspective anyhow.
I don't think anybody has accused you of a scam, just of making claims
that are provably false.
Hey I was there in the mid to late 80's using
NA-Net, etc as well, but that WASN'T the internet.
And hey, I was sending "email" via university systems back in the mid to late
70's too, but that's not what we call "email" today.
there wasn't TCP then, at least where I was (It was Dec-net and PAX).
TCP has been around since at least 1981.
BTW I helped WRITE TCP-mail, the predecessor to
pine/elm, so I think I know a bit about
what I'm talking about.
You are talking about clients, not protocols. I have no doubt that
people were writing new email clients in 1990 or whatever. The original
message sounded like you were claiming the email protocol was developed
on a machine that wasn't available until many years after the protocol
had already been in use.
12:09 p.m.
You are talking about clients, not protocols.
[and other pointed discussions of email]
Keep in mind that the email began* as an application
of the ARPAnet file transfer protocol. Very soon
after the first nodes were hooked up in '69/'70,
people began using the file transfer capabilities
to leave notes for each other. It didn't take long
at all before someone said, "hey, lets put together
an addressing and delivery mechanism" and you had
email. Everything since, has just been refinement
of protocols and particular implementations. The
"first" of one of these warrants very little historical
interest.
*Here I'm talking about email between distinct
computers at geographically separated locations.
Leaving notes for each other on the same machine
predates even that.
BLS
12:35 p.m.
Keep in mind that the email began* as an application
of the ARPAnet file transfer protocol. Very soon
after the first nodes were hooked up in '69/'70,
people began using the file transfer capabilities
to leave notes for each other. It didn't take long
at all before someone said, "hey, lets put together
an addressing and delivery mechanism" and you had
email.
Something the military had been doing for some years, already...
--
Will
12:45 p.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
And PROFS came out in 1981. I started using PROFS around 1987.
Peace... Sridhar
Keep in mind
that the email began* as an application
of the ARPAnet file transfer protocol. Very soon
after the first nodes were hooked up in '69/'70,
people began using the file transfer capabilities
to leave notes for each other. It didn't take long
at all before someone said, "hey, lets put together
an addressing and delivery mechanism" and you had
email.
Something the military had been doing for some years, already... 
11:54 a.m.
Dan Gahlinger wrote:
To give you some idea, the ISP I worked with in Sept
1994 had an ARIN
user registration number 79. Yes, the 79th person to register with
ARIN. That's pretty damn EARLY!
I think we call all accept that if one defines terms in a tortured
enough way that you can make the semantics fit. The question is whether
anyone else cares to embrace those tortured semantics. For those of us
who had InterNIC handles in the '70s having an early ARIN number is a
major yawn.
So enough with your stupid jokes and mockery, this
isn't a scam or
slight, it's the real thing, speaking from a public perspective
anyhow.
So it's a "real thing" only in the presence of ignorance?
Hey I was there in the mid to late 80's using
NA-Net, etc as well,
but that WASN'T the internet. And hey, I was sending "email" via
university systems back in the mid to late 70's too, but that's not
what we call "email" today. there wasn't TCP then, at least where I
was (It was Dec-net and PAX).
RFC793 is dated September 1981. RFC 821 is dated August 1982, well in
advance of the machine in question.
BTW I helped WRITE TCP-mail, the predecessor to
pine/elm, so I think
I know a bit about what I'm talking about.
The lineage of a specific *client* defines email? Who wants to break
the news to Mr. Allman?
And yes, I know there was other stuff too, in the 80s,
networking
like Envoy, but that too, wasn't the Internet.
Then what, prey, is the "Internet"? Certainly there's nothing about the
networking stack or applications that were available in the Sun4 family
that were not available in the Sun3 family that would been heralded as a
major shift.
I think there are two aspects, the research network,
NA-Net, Arpanet
and so forth, and what we, the public now refer to as the Internet.
Sure the worlds FIRST website was built 6 August 1991 but that's not
when the public was aware of it.
Websites having what to do with the Internet, aside from some using the
Internet as a transport mechanism?
So you can see, the 1990 release of the SLC is very
much in-line with
this time-line.
What is this? Proof by intimidation?
I was there, I lived through this, I helped the
universities build
their system for students so they could reserve research materials
from the Canadian National Archives.
If that's your basis for the claims you're asserting you really needed
to get out more.
The "properly" public internet didn't
really come into full view, I
would say until sometime around 1996, perhaps to some, 1995, but
really.
There it is again, the hint of some unique definition of "the Internet"
that is used as the basis of your argument.
That's why "first" was in quotes. I
wasn't trying to skewer dates or
make some big claim, but I still think it's an important piece of
history.
An opinion obviously not universally shared.
So go ahead, continue making your immature little
jokes about
sneakers, if someone is serious on the list, drop me a note.
*plonk*
--
Chris Kennedy
chris at mainecoon.com AF6AP
http://www.mainecoon.com PGP KeyID 108DAB97
PGP fingerprint: 4E99 10B6 7253 B048 6685 6CBC 55E1 20A3 108D AB97
"Mr. McKittrick, after careful consideration..."
11:57 a.m.
On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Dan Gahlinger <dgahling at hotmail.com> wrote:
no, I didn't misunderstand. perhaps it was the last one Einar had. But it was what he
created Email on.
Check the Wiki for him.
The internet didn't become a really public thing until around 1994.
Sure it existed in various forms, but when you talk about the "Internet"
(Capital "I"), the public wasn't aware of it or using it until late 1994.
To give you some idea, the ISP I worked with in Sept 1994 had an ARIN user registration
number 79.
Yes, the 79th person to register with ARIN. That's pretty damn EARLY!
So enough with your stupid jokes and mockery, this isn't a scam or slight, it's
the real thing, speaking from a public perspective anyhow.
Hey I was there in the mid to late 80's using NA-Net, etc as well, but that
WASN'T the internet.
And hey, I was sending "email" via university systems back in the mid to late
70's too, but that's not what we call "email" today.
there wasn't TCP then, at least where I was (It was Dec-net and PAX).
BTW I helped WRITE TCP-mail, the predecessor to pine/elm, so I think I know a bit about
what I'm talking about.
And yes, I know there was other stuff too, in the 80s, networking like Envoy, but that
too, wasn't the Internet.
I think there are two aspects, the research network, NA-Net, Arpanet and so forth, and
what we, the public now refer to as the Internet.
Sure the worlds FIRST website was built 6 August 1991 but that's not when the public
was aware of it.
So you can see, the 1990 release of the SLC is very much in-line with this time-line.
I was there, I lived through this, I helped the universities build their system for
students so they could reserve research materials from the Canadian National Archives.
The "properly" public internet didn't really come into full view, I would
say until sometime around 1996, perhaps to some, 1995, but really.
BTW I also built the FIRST, Canadian National backbone network link in March of 1994, and
yes, really the first, in Canada.
So been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
That's why "first" was in quotes. I wasn't trying to skewer dates or
make some big claim, but I still think it's an important piece of history.
So go ahead, continue making your immature little jokes about sneakers, if someone is
serious on the list, drop me a note.
Dan.
Is this thing going to turn into your "OS/2 for the PDP-11" debacle
all over again?
http://www.classiccmp.org/pipermail/cctalk/2008-January/253028.html
I'd swear we were being trolled.
John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
3:31 p.m.
> And hey, I was sending "email" via
university systems back in the mid
> to late 70's too, but that's not what we call "email" today.
It wasn't? We called in email in the 1980s
What difference do YOU consider important?
Spam? (howzbout DEC product announcement? (5/2/1978 according to
Stefferud); it and the responses sure looked like email to me)
"ransom-note" abuse of fonts?
dancing kangaroos?
Microsoft Outhouse?
> there wasn't TCP then, at least where I was
(It was Dec-net and PAX).
Is THAT how you are defining email?
(What were the dates for TCP/IP?)
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
1:13 p.m.
On Fri, 18 Jul 2008, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
no, I didn't misunderstand. perhaps it was the
last one Einar had. But
it was what he created Email on. Check the Wiki for him.
The internet didn't become a really public thing until around 1994.
. . .
So go ahead, continue making your immature little jokes about sneakers,
if someone is serious on the list, drop me a note.
I'm serious. You are full of it.
You are off by a full decade.
By 1994, Netscape replaced Mosaic, Cantor & Siegel sent their "Green
Card" SPAM, and damn near every Walmart shopper knew about the internet.
Those are not the BIRTH of the internet, those are its pubescent antics.
Check the dates for Usenet (1980), FTP (1985), Gopher(1991), even WWW
(1993).
Watch Hyperland for the point of view of what internet users in 1990
expected in the near future.
E-mail was in use onf CTSS in 1965.
My first use of e-mail was in 1969 (NASA).
I didn't send e-mail from a home computer until 1979. (Source, Compuserve)
There are plenty of email discussion groups similar to this one that are
older than YOUR perception of the birth of the internet, albeit many have
changed servers a few times.
As to your having written predecessor to PINE, . . .
PINE is easily traceable back to 1989.
PINE is variously backronymed to Pine Is Not Elm and Pine Is Nearly Elm.
ELM's first release was 1986.
Sorry, but the fact that YOU and my grandmother weren't aware of the
internet until 1995 does NOT mean that it didn't exist then.
Grow up.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
2:22 p.m.
On Jul 18, 2008, at 4:13 PM, Fred Cisin wrote:
Yeah, I've got to agree with Fred here. Even my employer at that
time was selling Internet access commercially to end users well
before 1994. And several years before that, I was slurping down free
software via the Internet and taking it home on 10MB Bernoulli
cartridges. Good grief, 1994? Talk to someone who was actually
*there* rather than guessing about it...many are right here on this
list.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL
no, I
didn't misunderstand. perhaps it was the last one Einar had.
But
it was what he created Email on. Check the Wiki for him.
The internet didn't become a really public thing until around 1994.
. . .
So go ahead, continue making your immature little jokes about
sneakers,
if someone is serious on the list, drop me a note.
I'm serious. You are full of it.
You are off by a full decade.
2:46 p.m.
On 18 Jul 2008 at 17:22, Dave McGuire wrote:
Yeah, I've got to agree with Fred here. Even
my employer at that
time was selling Internet access commercially to end users well
before 1994. And several years before that, I was slurping down free
software via the Internet and taking it home on 10MB Bernoulli
cartridges. Good grief, 1994? Talk to someone who was actually
*there* rather than guessing about it...many are right here on this
list.
Heck, I've still got email on my PC that predates 1994. Of course,
it was picked up using UUCP, but there ya go.
Cheers,
Chuck
3:08 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Heck, I've still got email on my PC that predates
1994. Of course,
it was picked up using UUCP, but there ya go.
Being on an NSFNet hub (UIUC), we called it the Internet as soon as we
started. I don't have anything archived from < 91, but here is a 1992,
non UUCP message:
Received: from a.cs.uiuc.edu by uxa.cso.uiuc.edu with SMTP id AA01950
(5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for <jlb31348 at uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>); Wed, 12 Feb 1992 10:
>> 24:48 -0600
Received: from relay.tek.com
by a.cs.uiuc.edu with SMTP id AA29216
(5.64+/IDA-1.3.4 for jlb31348 at uxa.cso.uiuc.edu); Wed, 12 Feb 92 10:25:0
>> 1 -0600
Received: by relay.tek.com id
<AA18567 at relay.tek.com>; Wed, 12 Feb 92 07:
>> 33:32 -0800
Received: from
tekgen.bv.tek.com by tektronix.TEK.COM (4.1/7.1)
id AA29834; Wed, 12 Feb 92 07:34:31 PST
Received: from aice.BV.TEK.COM by tekgen.bv.tek.com (4.1/7.1)
id AA11368; Wed, 12 Feb 92 07:33:28 PST
Received: by aice.BV.TEK.COM (5.17/6.24)
id AA27454; Wed, 12 Feb 92 07:35:49 PST
From: stephenc at aice.bv.tek.com (Stephen Coan)
Message-Id: <9202121535.AA27454 at aice.BV.TEK.COM>
Date: Wed, 12 Feb 92 07:35:47 PST
To: brain at cs.uiuc.edu
Fcc: inbox
Subject: Re: PET info to give and IEEE info wanted
Lines: 21
Status: RO
X-Status:
X-Keywords:
X-UID: 22
3:35 p.m.
Dan Gahlinger wrote:
no, I didn't misunderstand. perhaps it was the
last one Einar had. But it was what he created Email on.
Check the Wiki for him.
You've been sold a bill of goods. Einar didn't "create email", and
certainly not on a Sun workstation. Internet email was created in 1971
by Ray Tomlinson:
http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html
Sum Microsystems wasn't even *founded* until 1982, so there's no way
that a Sun product was involved in the original creation of email.
Eric
4:13 p.m.
> You've been sold a bill of goods. Einar
didn't "create email", and
certainly not on a Sun workstation.
Maybe what he actually said was, "This was the computer I which I created
email," as in, "This is the computer on which I happened the SEND my
emails".... Maybe someone just took his use of "created" a bit too
literally.... Think about it.... By clicking "new" and then typing and
clicking "send", I just created (an) email. :)
17 Jul
17 Jul
10:04 p.m.
New subject: Another "first" available for sale (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
I've got the "first" sneaker ever used for sneakernet, back in 1988. I
paid quite a bit of money for it due to the obvious historical interest,
but I'm running out of storage space, so I'm willing to entertain offers.
10:13 p.m.
New subject: Another "first" available for sale (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
I've got the "first" sneaker ever used
for sneakernet, back in 1988. I
paid quite a bit of money for it due to the obvious historical interest,
but I'm running out of storage space, so I'm willing to entertain offers.
Does it smell bad? I want an authentic stench.
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- To describe bitter medicine will not improve its flavor. -- Charlie Chan ---
19 Jul
19 Jul
5:34 p.m.
New subject: Another "first" available for sale (was Re: "first" computer on the internet)
Eric Smith wrote:
I've got the "first" sneaker ever used
for sneakernet, back in 1988.
I paid quite a bit of money for it due to the obvious historical
interest, but I'm running out of storage space, so I'm willing to
entertain offers.
I'll send you a can of foot spray that should keep it good for a few
more years.
18 Jul
18 Jul
3:11 p.m.
On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, Dan Gahlinger wrote:
It's also the system where E-Mail was first
created.
It's a Sun SLC workstation, owned by Einar Steffard.
There doesn't seem to be ANY mentions anywhere of an Einar Steffard.
Can we assume that you are talking about Einar Stefferud?
(He did do some important work, but didn't "create E-Mail". (I wrote a
program named EMAIL.COM; does that mean that _I_ created EMAIL?))
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
(computers since mid-1960's; no significant contribution until 1984)
4518
days inactive
5763
days old
160 comments
59 participants
participants (59)
-
alexandre-listas＠e-secure.com.br -
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Paul_Koning＠Dell.com -
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ploopster＠gmail.com -
ragooman＠comcast.net -
ray＠arachelian.com -
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