On 7/29/13 5:20 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 29 Jul 2013 13:32:04 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Mon, 29 Jul 2013 12:46:36 -0400, "Eisboch"
wrote:

This is pretty cool. TV news about the future of the Internet ....
from 1981

http://www.wimp.com/theinternet/

===

That is cool, brings back fond, and not so fond, memories of 300 baud
acoustic modems, Compuserve, TelNet (sp?), etc. It all seemed pretty
miraculous at the time but the equipment and service was slow and
cranky. You really didn't need a home computer for most of that. A
lot of work got done with teletype-like time sharing terminals or so
called glass teletypes. Some of the Compuserve bulletin boards were
first rate with actual factory reps participating.

It's hard to believe that all of that was over 30 years ago.

I knew some hams that transitioned to teletype in the late 70s but the
computer deal really did not get going until the Hayes modem kicked
amateur users up to a blazing 1200 BPS. I was on Prodigy shortly after
the 1984 rollout. It was free for IBM guys for a long time.
I had a "first day" ship PC1 but I got it used from an IBM guy when he
upgraded to an AT.


I bought an early 8088 IBM PC and popped hundreds more for a second
floppy drive. I think my first modem was a Hayes 300 bps. Sold the IBM a
year later and got an Eagle PC clone with an 8086 CPU and an AST
multifunction card. Hated the version of WordStar that was available
then, and got a copy of Volkswriter in, if memory serves, sometime in
1982. I liked it much better and a couple of years later when I was out
in Monterey, CA, I got to meet with Camilio Wilson, the primary
programmer of Volkswriter and then owner of its publisher.