Early internetworking connections

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Tue Aug 7 14:15:15 2001

Rumor has it that Bill Bradford may have mentioned these words:
>On Tue, Aug 07, 2001 at 11:35:32AM -0500, Jeffrey S. Sharp wrote:
>> I'll always hold in high esteem the 300 baud internal modem that let me
>> discover 'the Internet' in ~1991.
>
>Same here. For me it was a HP 110 "laptop" with internal 300 baud
>modem, dialed up to Tymnet's PC PURSUIT service. Shortly after that,
>an Atari 520STfm with a Hayes Smartmodem 300.

Holey-Moley - Y'all had the big toyz! ;-)

I started with my CoCo2 & a 300baud Radio Shack mumble-modem - the gray
matter is rusty, but it was their "lowest-end" & still cost around $150USD
- I remember hand-dialing then hanging up just right after the CD while
pushing the "connect" button on the modem... With practice, I could connect
correctly 2 out of every 3 tries... ;-) Nowadays in this
"Internet-Infested" world, if the modems are down for 5 minutes, I've got
100 angry customers calling... :-(

...And I was dialing 400 miles away (long distance out-of-state - was
cheaper than the nearest dialup in-state which was still 150 miles distant)
to Tymnet or Telenet to connect to compuserve in '86 or '87...

Lemme tell ya - 32x16 green-screen is *not* fun to attempt
telecommunications with... but if that's allz ya gotz... Aaahhh, the good
'ol days! ;-)

[[ and I doubt I could do it anymore, but I could *whistle* the characters
Q & R into the handset while the modem was connected... Needless to say,
back then that "talent" still didn't attract the chicks! ;-) ]]

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   ---   sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right???  Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Received on Tue Aug 07 2001 - 14:15:15 BST

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