At the end of 1983 I got a job working at a bank developing an
accounting software package for the DEC Rainbow, and later the IBM PC.
The bank was the Farm Credit Bank, which provided financial services to
farms and farming co-ops. They marketed an accounting service for the
clients whereby the client could fill out forms with their income and
expense information, and other financial transactions, and mail it in.
It would be batch processed, and they?d get various reports back in the
mail such as check registers, income and expense statements, etc. The
system was good, but cumbersome to use due to the mail factor. The bank
decided they wanted to write a microcomputer version that could run on a
computer in the farm office. Pretty far ahead of it?s time in 1983, I?d
say.
Although I was primarily working on the account project, the bank?s
minicomputer was a VAX 11/780 (or two). We backed up our source code to
the VAX system, so I had some limited contact with the VAX. I was
intrigued, because I wanted to know how this VMS was similar, and
different from RSTS/E.
I became interested in working on the Technical Services team, which
were the guys who maintained and did all the technical stuff with the
VAX. Once we had a shipping release of the accounting software, they
allowed me to work half-time in Technical Services, more or less as an
apprentice. I latched on to a guy named Tom Vaughan, who taught me a lot
about VMS. One of our projects was to write a printer symbiont that
would allow one to submit a print job on one VAX, but have it print on a
printer connected to another node. This was before VMS offered any such
capabilities.
The Technical Services department also had a VAX 11/730 which was
designated to them for ?testing?. Well, it didn?t get used much, and Tom
didn?t mind if I used it for learning purposes. He let me set up a
privileged account on it, and I set up access so I could dial in from
home and ?play? at night.
I had always been interested in ?Talk? programs ? from the days of
RSTS/E, where there were ?good? talk programs, to the huge Cyber system
at U-Mass, to the programs of the online services like CompuServe?s ?CB
Simulator? which was primitive, but cool because you could talk with
people all over the country. I had used all these programs quite a lot,
and had things from each that I did or didn?t like. One of my main pet
peeves of almost every system was having other people?s messages come
across while I was in the middle of typing something.
I wondered about the VAX, and how I might go about writing a talk system
for it. Tom told me there was something called ?mailboxes?, and at
first, it took me a while to get over the term itself. I kept wanting
them to be related to the MAIL system. After reading some documentation
I had a few ideas of how I might implement a talk program using
mailboxes. I decided that a server process should keep track of
everything, and each user?s client would only interact with the server
process. I put together a small prototype, and the concept actually
seemed to work.
This was definitely a part time project, and it was over a period of a
few years (say, from 1985 to 1987) that I refined the program to a point
that I considered to be usable. Unfortunately, we only had 2 or 3 dialup
lines at work, and no one during the day was able to give the program a
good workout. I didn?t want to create accounts for friends and give them
access to my work dial-ups. The live testing was very limited. I decided
to post the program on the VAXFORUM of CompuServe and see if anyone
might want to try it out.
One day, in the spring of 1988, I got a call from a guy in Houston Texas
who was involved with a system called DATASEEK. At the time I thought he
was in charge, but I later realized that he wasn?t, I think he was just
a consultant. He said DATASEEK was a company that provided computer
services to the oil industry (or something like that) during the day,
but at night their computers weren?t doing anything, and they had a
system where local people could dial in, get information about local
restaurants, activities, etc. and it had a ?CB simulator? where they
could chat with each other. He said the current CB software was awful
and they wanted to replace it with something different. Could mine work?
I asked if he could give me dial-up access, and he said yes. That night
I uploaded the software to their computer, and we gave a few (maybe 2 or
3) users access. Testing quickly showed some bugs, and some desperately
needed features. I made some code changes, and they picked a handful of
avid users for beta-testing. Maybe 15 or 20 people had access to Talk.
They suggested more features, and I programmed them as fast as people
could request them. Eventually Talk replaced the old system, and it
became quite popular. Lots of people called DATASEEK just to use Talk.
The original intent of local information and advertising got obscured by
the desire for people to use Talk.
As Spring turned into summer, I was using the system a lot, and use it
to talk to people as much as develop Talk (well, using it was a good way
to learn what was good and bad). I made a lot of friends, and planned a
trip to visit Houston in late summer. DATASEEK was starting to complain
that their system was full all the time (they had 24 dialins, and they
would be consistently busy from 7:00PM when Talk opened, until 2:00AM).
They wanted some way to put limits on how much time users could spend on
Talk. There were a few other things I wanted to add that would be a
major change, so I planned to write them locally and bring the new
version when I went on my visit.
I had a wonderful week in Houston, and met a bunch of really nice people
who went out of their way to make me welcome. Of course, I was their
?hero? because I was the author of the software they were addicted to.
The installation of the new software went fine, although the time limits
DATASEEK imposed weren?t all that popular. But it did help give more
people a chance to use Talk.
In the Fall of 1988 DATASEEK decided they wanted to make Talk into a
subscription service. This didn?t go over well, as it?s hard to ask
someone to pay for something they?ve been getting for free. Some people
did subscribe, but the user base went way down. In the beginning of
1989, DATASEEK went away. I really don?t know what happened, and I was
never clear what their ?daytime? business really was.
I continued to play with Talk development locally for a while. I had
some features I was working on, such as linking multiple VAX Talk
servers together. I also had other ideas about making PC Talk clients,
and fancy version for VT100+ terminals. Some of this work is started,
but not completed. The node linking was hard to test, and I didn?t know
of anywhere that it would actually be used, so I lost interest in
finishing it. Without an avid Talk user base, it was less interesting to
work on Talk. My last version is dated 1990.
I did hear that a few other facilities were using Talk, although I don?t
know for how long, or how popular it was. I have totally lost contact
with everyone who used my Talk program at DATASEEK in 1988. I would love
to hear from some of those people.
In retrospect, Talk seems small in comparison to the networked IRC
servers of today. The most users I recall on Talk was 31, that was all
of DATASEEK?s 24 Dial-In lines, plus all of their local terminals. The
main thing about Talk was its user friendliness and ease of use, and
customizability. How does it compare with IRC and IM programs of today?
It doesn?t have fancy colors or graphics, but to just sit down and talk
with a group of people about whatever, I think it?s still a great
program.
I?ve recently set up a VAX system using SIMH, and Talk still runs under
VMS 7.3 just fine.
- Bob Lafleur
Springfield, MA USA
Received on Sun May 12 2002 - 03:35:58 BST
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