Prestel (Was: Re: What is this??? - Update)

From: Dan Williams <dan_williams_at_ntlworld.com>
Date: Tue Jun 15 11:27:58 2004

Rob O'Donnell wrote:

>
>>
>>
>> I'd love to see the server-side of things running somewhere again
>> though.
>>
>> It'd be nice to have a Prestel server at Bletchley with some assorted
>> 80's machines hooked up to it (bodging the phone network inbetween :)
>> but chances are that nobody's got a copy of the necessary server
>> software any more :-(
>
>
> This is something I would like to see, too.
>
> I should still have enough equipment and software about to set up at
> least two of the various BBC-micro based servers which I ran at various
> times, including the multi-user software that the GnomeAtHome ran on
> which I had an official copy of...
>
> Maybe when I finally get the spare room sorted out, I'll have enough
> space to stack a couple of machines up and run the BBS again, linked to
> a terminal server, I think, not the raft of phone lines I used to
> have... (Ah, the joys of building ring-detect circuits for cheap and
> nasty 1200 baud modems that didn't have them..)
>
>> Even if they did have the server software, I can't see them having a
>> snapshot of live data from the 80's which is what would make it really
>> interesting. I don't really fancy writing a few hundred fake pages :-)
>>
>> I've heard mention of some sort of viewdata server system there (not
>> Prestel), although I haven't personally stumbled across it in storage
>> yet (no room currently to have it on display!). PDP hardware IIRC. I'll
>> have to find some more details and then see how viable it is to get
>> running again...
>
>
> There was a viewdata server for internal use at Micronet's London office
> when I worked there back in the '80s. It was definitely a PDP11 of some
> flavour, (two waist-high white cabinets, three huge white disc packs.) I
> don't know what software it actually ran, but we used standard prestel
> terminals with it.. There was a normal console sat on top we used to
> run the backups on (swap packs, copy up, swap packs, copy down..) Maybe
> you got that, or something similar?
>
>
>
>
>> > It would seem that there is little point in finishing off the rough
>> > edges on my X-Windows Prestel terminal software ;-)
>>
>> See above :-)
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Jules
>
>
>
>
I think I could get hold of some dial-up terminals if anyone is interested.

Dan
Received on Tue Jun 15 2004 - 11:27:58 BST