17 Jul
2004
17 Jul
'04
6:50 a.m.
Hello, all:
I was at VCFe yesterday and I have to say that the speakers and
demonstrations were great. Sellam did a fantastic job and where the event
was located at the Sun facilities worked out perfectly. One demo that I
missed was the ARPANET dial-up simulation which wasn't there when I left at
3:30.
Anyway, this demo brings-up an interesting question. What kind of dial-up
systems existed in the 70's before consumer-oriented services like
CompuServe? I remember the DowJones and CompuServe sign-up packs at
RadioShack in maybe 1979 (I joined CIS in 1988. I even remember my ID:
70153,3367). I also remember in high school (around 1983) using a DECwriter
to dial into the timesharing computer (at 300 baud; I don't know the host
system) at one of the local universities.
Just curious. Thanks.
Rich
Rich Cini
Collector of classic computers
Build Master for the Altair32 Emulation Project
Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/
/************************************************************/
17 Jul
17 Jul
7:24 a.m.
At 16:50 17/07/2004, you wrote:
Anyway, this demo brings-up an interesting
question. What kind of
dial-up
systems existed in the 70's before consumer-oriented services like
CompuServe? I remember the DowJones and CompuServe sign-up packs at
RadioShack in maybe 1979 (I joined CIS in 1988. I even remember my ID:
70153,3367). I also remember in high school (around 1983) using a DECwriter
to dial into the timesharing computer (at 300 baud; I don't know the host
system) at one of the local universities.
I was thinking of Prestel, a service I used in the early '80s. A google
for information it turned up:
http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/carlson/timeline.shtml
"The online timeline - A capsule history of online news and information
systems"
Looks like it will answer your question to some extend :-)
Rob
8:42 a.m.
"Richard A. Cini" wrote:
...
Anyway, this demo brings-up an interesting question.
What kind of dial-
up
systems existed in the 70's before consumer-oriented services like
CompuServe?
There were probably a lot, but I remember "Call/370", which I think was
one of the first commercial ones.
In 1977/78 I recall using Anderson Jacobson 300 baud acoustic couplers
(there's a entire story right there) and verious mechanical terminals,
all very large.
(but, able to fit in the back of a vw bus! :-)
-brad
2:21 p.m.
On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 11:50:44 -0400
"Richard A. Cini" <rcini(a)optonline.net> wrote:
Hello, all:
I was at VCFe yesterday and I have to say that the speakers and
demonstrations were great. Sellam did a fantastic job and where the
event was located at the Sun facilities worked out perfectly. One demo
that I missed was the ARPANET dial-up simulation which wasn't there
when I left at 3:30.
Anyway, this demo brings-up an interesting question. What kind
of dial-up
systems existed in the 70's before consumer-oriented services like
CompuServe? I remember the DowJones and CompuServe sign-up packs at
RadioShack in maybe 1979 (I joined CIS in 1988. I even remember my ID:
70153,3367). I also remember in high school (around 1983) using a
DECwriter to dial into the timesharing computer (at 300 baud; I don't
know the host system) at one of the local universities.
Just curious. Thanks.
Rich
When I started BBSing in the mid 80's I started out on a massive
DECwriter, a wide carriage printing terminal at 300 baud. I connected
it to an acoustic coupler, dialing out by hand on a regular telephone.
It was highly annoying that this was already the time when most people
had switched to 'glass TTY' CRT displays of one sort or another, and
sysops assumed anybody connecting had such hardware. It consumed feet
of wasted paper to get through the fancy 'welcome' screens on many
BBSes.
Within a few years, I was proud 'sysop' of my own BBS, running WWIV
3.21d (distributed only as Turbo Pascal 3.0 source code) on a non-turbo
XT clone with all 640K and a five meg hard drive. There were still
people then running C-Net boards on Commodore 64s with one or two floppy
drives as the only storage. My board was 1200 baud for the longest time
because it wasn't a 'file transfer' BBS, and most people couldn't read
text messages faster than 1200 baud anyways (and I was cheap). There
were times when I experimented with the hardware, i.e. the time I ran
the whole system out of a combination of RAM disk and only floppy disk
drives, which slowed the system up even more.
In that era, there was readily available CompuSERV dialup.
Lower-bandwidth connect time was only $6 an hour, not the regular
$12/hour you paid to dial in through the high speed (1200 baud) modem
pool. Near as I could tell, the only people 'hanging out' on CompuSERV
were people whose companies paid the connect time bill.
But I am talking about much later than the era of the 70's being asked
about. Back in the 70's all I connected to were big University time
sharing systems, and the MERITS system when in High School. 300 baud
was the 'fast' terminal we all vied for. Normally one got stuck on the
110 baud teletype in upper case only.
20 Jul
20 Jul
12:12 p.m.
The obvious first BBSs were Ward & Randy's CBBS in Chicago. I dialed
into that thing many times from my homebuilt CP/M machine with a $100
surplus AJ accoustic coupler modem and a Model 500 dial phone, in Boston
MA. Busy-busting with a dial phone == no fun. Very late 1970's.
There were a few BBSs in the Boston area, NECS BBS, Andover Cnode (upon
which was first discussed a hare-brained idea, author unknown, for
linking BBSs that made me work out how to pull off FidoNet a few years
later), another club BBS that ran BYE, a fe wmore I cannot recall. All
late 1970's.
18 Jul
18 Jul
1:49 a.m.
On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 11:50:44AM -0400, Richard A. Cini wrote:
Anyway, this demo brings-up an interesting question.
What kind of dial-up
systems existed in the 70's before consumer-oriented services like
CompuServe? I remember the DowJones and CompuServe sign-up packs at
RadioShack in maybe 1979
CIS was several years old by 1979. Besides them, my memory of what was available
around 1977 was individual RSTS machines with no passwords or weak passwords
that we used to dial up from LA36s with acoustic couplers. These were individual
university or commercial machines, not a "service". We'd use them until
they
shut down or tightened up, then look for more.
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 18-Jul-2004 10:40 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -85.2 F (-65.0 C) Windchill -127 F (-88.40 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 11.9 kts Grid 037 Barometer 661.2 mb (11343. ft)
Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
20 Jul
20 Jul
12:21 p.m.
On Sun, 2004-07-18 at 03:49, Ethan Dicks wrote:
On Sat, Jul 17, 2004 at 11:50:44AM -0400, Richard A.
Cini wrote:
> Anyway, this demo brings-up an interesting question. What kind of dial-up
> systems existed in the 70's before consumer-oriented services like
> CompuServe? I remember the DowJones and CompuServe sign-up packs at
> RadioShack in maybe 1979
There was the ?telenet? service that linked many commercial computers. I
did not have a modem at the time (1975) but a homemade phone patch type
coupler, and played with a freq gen and got the remote modem to respond.
I was rather excited by that (bor-ing).
A few years later (1978?) I did dial into the local telenet modem, and
tried a few connect codes, got the login prompts of a bunch of
commercial machines, maade about a dozen weak attempts at login, and
gave up, never went back.
(You'd dial the number, listen for the answer tone, put your telephone
handset into the accoustic coupler. Wait a few seconds for the modem to
link up, then hit RETURN a few times to determine baud rate (110/300).
Then you got a prompt from the telenet system, something simple like a
colon or something:
:
THen you'd enter the connect command and the machine ID:
: C123,456
I think it was something like customer 123, machine 456.
You often had to hit RETURN again to get the computers attention then it
would present with whatever login prompt it used.
This is deep, dark, old, little-referenced memory, likely riddled with
errors and falsehoods. No warranty implied or expressed.
PS: I can't recall what I used for my very first modem program, but I
wrote my own simple one very soon, it grew in to one of Phoenix
Software's least popular programs, PTEL. I called it Telink until that
time, it was OK, did XMODEM, half-decent terminal stuff. No great shakes
there. It was written in BSD C, around 1977.
4:31 p.m.
On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 02:21:55PM -0700, Tom Jennings wrote:
PS: I can't recall what I used for my very first
modem program, but I
wrote my own simple one very soon, it grew in to one of Phoenix
Software's least popular programs, PTEL.
Never used that one. My first terminal emulator was the one that came
on cassette with the VICmodem. It was so bad, I wrote my own in VIC
BASIC. That's what I used for CompuServe at 300 baud c. 1982.
Before that, I used real terminals (borrowed, not my own), so there was
no need for a terminal emulator. I got my first ASCII terminal in 1984.
Still have it. Still use it (mostly as a console for the VAX 8200 and
uVAX-II in the basement).
-ethan
--
Ethan Dicks, A-130-S Current South Pole Weather at 21-Jul-2004 01:20 Z
South Pole Station
PSC 468 Box 400 Temp -105. F (-76.5 C) Windchill -138.9 F (-95 C)
APO AP 96598 Wind 5.6 kts Grid 073 Barometer 657.4 mb (11491. ft)
Ethan.Dicks(a)amanda.spole.gov http://penguincentral.com/penguincentral.html
7:25 p.m.
David V. Corbin wrote:
<snip>
Of Course , that is so he can keep his beer cool. :)
I think the real reason he has left most of his toys at
home is so he can get some work done for his job.
Ben.
>>Still have it. Still use it (mostly as a
console for the
>>VAX 8200 and uVAX-II in the basement).
>
...<snip>....
>>South Pole Station
>
Must be a pretty cold basement...... 
19 Jul
19 Jul
1:06 p.m.
Anyway, this demo brings-up an interesting question.
What kind of
dial-up systems existed in the 70's before consumer-oriented services
like CompuServe? I remember the DowJones and CompuServe sign-up packs
at RadioShack in maybe 1979 (I joined CIS in 1988. I even remember
my ID: 70153,3367). I also remember in high school (around 1983)
using a DECwriter to dial into the timesharing computer (at 300 baud;
I don't know the host system) at one of the local universities.
A few thoughts for early 80s:
"The Source" as a consumer service was running Rev 18 PRIMOS in '81 or
so, and upgraded to 19 not too much later. They'd been around for at
least a few years by that point. Access was via Telenet or Tymnet.
You'd dial your local number, connect, smack enter, answer the
terminal type prompt, get presented with an "@" prompt. You could
log in, if you needed to connect somewhere that didn't accept collect
connections, or simply start connecting: "c 30147" for The Source.
There was some relationship between area code of the host and the
address it was assigned. As The Source was headquartered in Maclean,
VA, I've been prone to wonder how they were related to the current AOL.
A number of X.25-based networks were fairly mature by '82 or so, and
in many cases were interconnected, even internationally. Lots of
what we'd probably call B2B today used them. A number of research
services, e.g. Dialog, BRS, etc. are good examples.
The MERIT network in Michigan existed since the late '60s, providing
dialin access to its three founding partners' mainframes, and later
to other members' systems. MERIT's network was run on homegrown
communications processors based on PDP hardware. MERIT later became
the contractor who managed NSFnet, so they started calling the state
network MichNet, and converted to Livingston Portmaster hardware
and TCP/IP.
The scary part is I recall too many of the details for some of
this stuff. Washington DC telenet was 202-429-7896, Lansing MI was
517-372-5400. The Source support userid was TCA088. I could go on,
but I think I've proven to be a sick puppy already.
This leads me to ask the group if anyone can tell me about a piece
of hardware I once used. Part of the time when I was accessing
telenet, it was through a satellite data comm system operated by the
US Treasury, linking where I was in the Middle East with Washington.
To make a call in Washington, you'd dial the local access number.
When connected, you'd send a ctrl-A, the system would eventually answer
with a "B". You'd send a ctrl-B, the phone number (with a leading 9,
so it was behind someone's PBX), and end with a ctrl-O and a ctrl-C.
I never got to see what hardware did this work, but am curious as to
what it was. Anybody see anything familiar?
De
7:15 p.m.
Ward Christianson and Randy Suess rolled out CBBS (Chicago BBS) in 1978
on CP/M boxes - details at
http://www.portcommodore.com/commodore/bbs/cbbs.html. Not long after
that a number of RCP/M systems arose... I started my first BBS on Apple
][ in 1984 on a 300 bps Hayes Micromodem :)
"Hey, who needs more than 300 baud, it's not like you can read any faster!"
Regards,
Gord
Richard A. Cini wrote:
Anyway, this demo brings-up an interesting question.
What kind of dial-up
systems existed in the 70's before consumer-oriented services like
CompuServe? I remember the DowJones and CompuServe sign-up packs at
RadioShack in maybe 1979 (I joined CIS in 1988. I even remember my ID:
70153,3367). I also remember in high school (around 1983) using a DECwriter
to dial into the timesharing computer (at 300 baud; I don't know the host
system) at one of the local universities.
7309
days inactive
7311
days old
11 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
brad＠heeltoe.com -
classiccmp.org＠irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk -
dickset＠amanda.spole.gov -
drb＠msu.edu -
dvcorbin＠optonline.net -
gtulloch＠shaw.ca -
rcini＠optonline.net -
sastevens＠earthlink.net -
tomj＠wps.com