Evolution - Good ole' days part 2

I read the other day that a secret society of higher education facilities and government offices use a high bandwidth connection light years faster than the T1, T3 and fiber we use today. Also, a helluva lot faster than the cable modem, point to point and and other consumer connectivity. And really really reeeeeeely faster than dial up.

This got me thinking about my last post, and the stuff about BBS's, IRC and the lot. When I first met the outside world, it was via the 300 baud modem. There was no place to really "call" mind you. I had the modem thing, and I knew what it was because I had seen, and actually used an acoustic coupler (read - telephone pushed into a plastic housing) that was part of a printer. This was a printing terminal. It was used to print reports from a computer remotely. You would dial the computer, listen for the tone, push the phone into the coupler and viola', if it worked properly, the printer would begin to bang away a report. (this is the simplified version)

Anyways, I got to talking to a guy about the modem I had, and complaining that I didn't know how to use it or even a place to call. He explained how the modem is no good without terminal software, and that the term program did the dialing and the bit-twiddling. He a program (tinyterm I think) gave me the number for dial-in access to a honeywell HVAC system he knew of, along with a password - if I promised to do nothing but poke around. Well, I went home and tried it, and sure enough, it worked!

This was soooooo cool. When I connected, all of the sudden, my screen had a complete controls menu. To me, it was like something out of Wargames. Note, I didn't say "Star Wars", I'm not a fan, plus, I don't think there's ever been a movie or show that captured how computers really operate like Wargames. Seriously. Every time you saw anything computer related it was like Start Trek, lots of blips, beeps, tones, colors, blah blah blah.. Even today you see people banging away at a keyboard on a screen that is obviously being driven by a mouse. Whatever.

Back to the point. I dialed this thing up over and over - resisting the urge to monkey with it. Time passed, and I met people with access to a few local BBS's, which I spent time on. My OL handle was "PorkeyPig", a throwback from my handle on Ham Radio. A 70's thing - I won't go there.

One of my more notable achievements was when a new disk jockey came to town. He started in local Chicago radio on the midnight shift, his name was, and still is, Kevin Mathews. One of his shticks was to gain access to the telephone numbers of famous people and call them at home. It was pretty funny. Well, knowing what I knew about modems and communication, I knew that all a modem really did was repeat the sounds the dialer makes into the phone system, and the system recognized the beeps and connected the call (again, OVERLY simplified).

I recorded his show one night, he had called Sha Sha Gabore or something. I'm not exactly sure. Next, I took my recording and digitalized it, and wrote a lil' program to play those notes into my modem. Yep, next thing you know, they answered!

I called Kev, and told him what I had done, he cracked up. For a while there, whenever a computer related question popped up on the show, I would call and answer it. He called me "Tom the computer guy". He would also use a fake voice (Jim Shorts) to yell "Take the Tones Off!" to himself before he dialed the phone from then on. I like to think that was because of me.

Well, BBS's were great for downloading programs, and minor communication, but weren't much more than that.

I had gotten my hands on the new "window and mouse" based operating system called "GeOS", pronounced "gee ohs" It was a truly graphical environment that ran from diskette.





GeOS came with a paint program, and a writing program. We take this for granted today, but in the olden days, there was no such thing as seeing fonts on the screen as you worked.

At the time, alternatives to local BBS's had sprung up; Compuserve, GeNie, a full color alternative called Prodigy, QuantumLink - later called called America On Line. These sites were "interactive". You could go to a number of different places and download software, you could play "on-line" games and things like that. Funny thing, most of the people I knew had no interest, and laughed at Prodigy and AOL. We all used GenIe. Compuserve was selling it's self as more of a business solution, with stock quotes and crap like that. The others were just serving up information, and a few download areas, but if you wanted Software, GEnIe was the place to go - plus, it was cheaper.

Now this was NOT the internet. These were very complex BBS's. You didn't have a "service providor, or ISP, you dialed it yourself. I liked GeOs even though it really did nothing for me. It was cool, and I liked cool. It wasn't long before AOL made an a new "Geofied" version of AOL - the precursor of what you see today. Well, I broke down and got a subscription, and used it for a while.

One night, after "chatting" (leaving notes) with some guys on AOL, I had a note in my mail box (not email, mailbox). Asking if I was interested in Beta Testing the "New AOL". The "New AOL" was going to be written for this Microsoft Operating system called "Windows". I knew Windows, I've used it. At this time, I had already worked building and selling PC compatible computers, as well as designing networks using a product called "Novell 86", yea.. haha. I had been given a version of Windows (and all the disks, I think there were 4 or 5). I had a customer that wanted me to set him up with remote control for his Wondows PC. OK, reality check. This was the day of 1,200 and 2,400b modems. If you had money, you could get a 5,600b. Windows over remote would draw the screen pixel by pixel. If you twitched the mouse, it started over. Crap.

This was also Windows version none. Not the version 3.1 most people remember.



I had just gotten my own PC, from Kaypro. This was an "AT" box. There was XT, and AT at the time, oh, and the "386" for those with tons of cash. I accepted the invite, and began my first Beta Test. Yes, I was one of the original testers of AOL. One thing I remember that drove me BANANAS was that your "inbox" could not be emptied. You had to read a mail, the choose to delete it, then hit OK to confirm it. Now, if you were away from the PC for a few days, your inbox would pile up with notes from AOL, and other testers. Sometimes 100 or more. Imagine having to open, read, delete and confirm each one? Thank god they fixed that quick.

If memory serves me, it actually was written for the original Windows 3.0 though. It didn't matter. What mattered is that I had a free account for nearly 4 years.

A few years went by, and I had met a kid that went to college in St. Louis. He asked me if I had access to the "internet".

The "Internet" hadn't grown up to be a noun yet.

I had no idea what he was talking about. He said if I could get a dialer, and something called TCP/IP working, I could get on it. Now, I came from the frame of BBS's, you don't just "Get On" something. You need to access it, use passwords and all that. No, you really just "get on it", I found out. Once you were "On" it however, there wasn't much to do. It wasn't until the Browser came along that the Internet had anything to offer the common man.

Well, again, at the time you could either hammer together your own solution, or get a "providor" program to do it for you. This was a subscription based service that would send you a diskette, and a dial up number with a password. Once you dialed up the access number thy gave you, you were greeted with their "home page". You would push pre-defined buttons to move you around the "internet".

In fact, heres a sidebar; One of the original hosting companies that gave you "access" to the internet was "On Ramp". This successful provider was founded by none other than the famous, and one of the original MTV DJ's; Adam Curry.

If you poked around on the disk, which most people didn't do, there were usually a few extra apps, one being the "IRC" or Internet Relay Chat.

This thing was COOOL. Now, I had used "chat" before on AOL, but you could only "Chat" with other AOL'ers, not the outside world. The IRC was the wild wild west of chatting.

There were, and still are, "channels" devoted to ANYTHING you can think of. Yes, including any place your gutter mind chose to go. Well, I don't have a whole lot of gutter in my mind, so I spent most of my time on "#30something", apparently named after the cheesy show.

Every single night, the same group of people would meet there. We would talk, and talk, and talk. Friendships were made, relationships were made, people fell in "love", people fought and behaved the same way you would in any smallish community. A lot of things were discovered here, including testing your marital boundaries. There was debate after debate if "netsexxing" (the precursor to Cyber) was considered cheating. You could ask someone to "go private", and if they agreed, you would open up a private little channel just for the two of you. You could also connect directly to one another, having your own conversation outside the channel, while still being in it. You could tell around 11:00 or so, the channel got very quiet, yet, it was full of people, it was rendezvous time.

I didn't really participate in the Netsexxing so much. I did it once or twice, for the same reason you try drinking, smoking pot, and mechanical bull riding. I'll try anything once.

Well, I IRC'ed a lot, but after a while, as things do, the attraction faded. I came back to IRC for a while and hung on the "#40something" board. My nik on both boards was "Printerz". ( this is my attempt at the 6 degrees thing). We even had a "Channel Party" at a local bar here in Chicago. I think, as much as it was fun, it was the end of IRC for me. That was just too creepy. They were cool and all, but the idea of getting together to hang out with a bunch of people that hung out in the dark on a computer, all alone, hit me that night. I hung up my keyboard for a while.

It wasn't until Yahoo chat came around that I even had an interest in chatting, but again, I just dabbled. I would get on, meet people for a few months, and disappear.

I just can't seem to get the desire to go the chat route any more, I dunno why, I don't even "text".

My favorite thing at Disneyworld has always been the "Giant Ball" as my kids put it. Inside it, there is an attraction called "Spaceship Earth", and when it was designed, it was supposed to show the evolution of communication over time. I scoffed at the idea that a little kid could lie on his bed in front of a "laptop", and "talk" with someone on the other side of the world, and actually "see" them when the do it. This was in the late 80's mind you. WOW, those guys are good.

Funny thing though. When my kids want to communicate, they go on MySpace or Facebook, and leave notes for one another (BBS'ing), or they just "text" one another (IM'ing).

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I little history

Someone lent me a great book recently, it's called "Commodork". I suppose "Great" is a relative term. If you don't now about Commodore, or were not part of the culture, you wouldn't really consider it great. You probably wouldn't even consider it mediocre, but I did indeed find it great.

Commodore was, in the 80's, "The little company that could". They actually made their first computer in the 70's I'm, pretty sure, the PET computer (and no, I don't have any pet's name Commodore - that would be dorky).

Now, when *I* was a lad, it was the most exciting period in technology in my opinion. Say what you want about the Internet, but I would take 1977 - 1990 any time.

I had just recently graduated high school with no prospects for anything, much less employment. For Christmas, 1982, my parents decided to buy the "family" a home computer. Not any home computer mind you, no, this was the flashy new 2 kilobyte Timex Sinclair with the Z80 chip. This computer didn't have a monitor, no, it plugged into the TV. No storage either. It was a clean "membrane" keyboard on top of a completely self contained computer.


Now I knew nothing about computers, much less this one. Seriously, N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I was lucky however, that my older brother was home for the holidays. He, while at Brown, had done a little programming for college and was at least familiar with programming. So, we broke out the manual, and poured over how the thing operated. He explained to me what computers do, and what they are for, and so on. We got the think hooked up to the small black and white TV we had, (8 inch screen or something), and we "wrote" a program.

What we decided to "write" was a dice rolling program. I don't know why, probably because that's what *he* had to write in college, I have no idea. I do know he's an engineer and a statistician, so my guess would be yes. Anyways, he made me go through the though process of what happens when you roll dice, about randomness, et. and we keyed away. The result was a nifty little program that displayed a line of text "One Die or two?", and depending on your choice, you would get a single digit, or two digits - completely random. WOW!!

OK, so, not so WOW, but for me it was amazing. Simply AMAZING. Here was a little black box. All I had to do was to figure out what I wanted the result to be, and by writing a bunch of stuff, I could make it happen!. Well, I totally took to it.

It was wierd in the sense that, at the time, I was pretty much a looooser. Seriously. I had graduated just barely. I had a 2.nothing GPA or something, I failed math so bad, that I had to take a summer school class with my gym teacher that passed me either to A) get me out of his school, or B) He liked me. I failed so many classes, that I was summer school fixture. I couldn't even get *in* to community college without passing the entrance exam - on which I cheated mightily. I didn't intend to, but the math section literally had the answers attached to it. I changed some and got a few wrong on purpose though. I still had to pass basic math first. We're not talking Algebra here, we're talking basic math. THEN I had to take Algebra I, which I failed at the community college level.

NOTE: Teachers who teach a subject because they have to, have no business teaching it.

This guy was WAY over my head, and he kept getting frustrated that I didn't "get it". He wasn't able to go back in time in his head when "he" didn't get it, he just blew right by me. It came so natural for him that it totally escaped him that it *didn't* come natural for others.

Sooooo.. I had failed this class too, and had to take "applied mathematics" to get my math credit. Let's rewind; I failed general High school math, I was put into Algebra I as a Junior, even though I wasn't qualified to be there, because I was so far behind. I failed that, took it over Senior year, and failed it, took business math in summer school, passed by a nose, failed college math, failed college Algebra and guess what? I PASSED Applied Math.

The Applied Math teacher was an old guy who taught part time. He would explain math in terms that made sense. He would take the time time to explain *why* math did what it did. He showed me where it was used, how it was used. He introduced me to ratio's, and the value in business and life they had.

OK, so WHY on earth did I bore anyone with this? Because NOW I had a BOX that could to the MATH for me!!! All I needed to now was how the math worked!

Well one thing led to another. It wasn't long before I outgrew the 2k, and had to add the 16k memory add-on. I also had to get a cassette recorder for storage. Yes, a cassette recorder. All the home computers of the day used cassettes. Data is nothing more than "blips" Those blips can be recorder as sound, and then played back into the computer. In other words, you would "modulate" the data out to the cassette player that was recording it, and "de-modulate" the data as it was being played back into the computer. Get it?, Modulate?, De-Modulate?, MoDeM?

Well, I outgrew that one too. I saved some cash, because I washed cars at the time, and bought the fancy Texas Instruments TI-99 4/a. The TI had a built in programming language; TI BASIC, it had COLOR, and a real keyboard. I wrote tons of stuff on that box. The magazine of the day, COMPUTE supported only a few computers; Commodore, TI, APPLE and the TRS-80. You could buy the magazine, read about a program, and all of the source code was right in the magazine. All you had to do was type it in.

By this time, I was a math-a-holic. I had gotten a book called "Practical Mathematics", it was a HUGE green book from the 60's. It had everything there was to know in it. I really wanted to know how to do 3-D. Not like "Doom" 3-D, that was light years away. I wanted to be able to write a program like "Tank Command", which required an X, Y and Z axis.

I remember vividly writing a program that would plot functions on an axis. I worked for days on it. I never turned off the computer, because my tape recorder took a dump, so there was no way to save what I was doing. I didn't plan on saving it anyways, I just wanted to know IF I could do it. So, after days of toiling, I got it right. I would type in a formula, and poof, a grid would appear, with the X and Y locations plotted right there. Kinda childish by todays standards, but there was a lot of gymnastics to do something like that. Remember, this "computer" only had 256k, and a 16k video chip. I was SO excited, I tore away from my desk to get my mom and show her, and my foot got stuck on the cord - POOF, all was gone in an instant.

Next, I bought a used Commodore VIC-20. This computer had a 20 column capability, and still used a TV. It was actually a downgrade from the TI, it only had 5k of RAM, with about 3.5 usable. The guy I got it from had all the expansion stuff, including the extra memory cartridge, and, the VICMODEM.

WOW.. A REAL modem. I can't remember how fast it was, by I imagine something along the lines of 150 baud or slower. I say that because I had a 300 for my C-64, then dropped a TON of money on an Anchor Automation 1,200 baud.

When I got C-64, that was nirvana. It was actually, a crappy computer. But, it did have an audience, a HUGE audience. What that meant was Lots of programs, Lot's of support, Lot's of articles on how to use it, Lot's of books on programming it, and LOT's of BBS's (Bulletin Board System) supporting it.

Herin lies the key young computer guys.... It doesn't have to be great, to be great.

The 64 was cool on so many levels. It had great color, it had a great, somewhat "open" BASIC language. You could "peek" and "poke" around the memory, keyboard mapping, video and sound chips; you could pretty much do anything you wanted. Seriously now, anything. I had a program that would actually "bang" the floppy drive head out of alignment. You could do that if you wanted to. You didn't have to write to the OS, you could write to the device. You could easily re-map unused keyboard keys with "sprites" to be able to write games. It was sooo cool.

For business however, it sucked. There was "Bank Street Writer", and some cheesy spreadsheet, but that was about it. I then got the Commodore 128, with the dual drive. The works baby!!!! This unit ran CP/M, a common business OS for the times. It was the default OS for the Kaypro products, the leader in small business computing for a time.

Between the 64, and the 128, I spent HOURS online. Uploading to BBS's, downloading from BBS's, figuring out that if you uploaded with "Ymodem" protocol, and turned on check digits, you you would earn TWICE as many download credits using "XModem". So, I always had a 2-for 1 ratio going for me. BBS's were great, there was always someone to leave a message with. They weren't real-time until later, when they had "doors". You would just post a message, get off, and get back on later to see if anyone answered you. You would NEVER just stay on line, that was sacrilegious. BBS's only had a few inbound phone lines, so to tie one up with something as trivial as "chatting" was a sin. If you were a member, and had special privileges, you could go into a "door", and actually have somewhat of a relay-chat (like the IRC - which by the way, is an upcoming topic) though.

This brings me back to "Commodork"... If you lived through the C-Age, then it is a must read. You'll laugh at every page turn re living your past, you'll be reminded of games, programs peripherals and things that you've long forgotten. You'll re-live those long nights trying to download "F15-Strike Eagle" with having the phone hang up, or someone pick up another line 2 hours into it..

Go to Amazon or Borders and pick it up.. it's fun...