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

From: Rob O'Donnell <classiccmp.org_at_irrelevant.fsnet.co.uk>
Date: Tue Jun 15 18:42:19 2004

At 18:46 15/06/2004, you wrote:

>On Jun 15, 9:31, Jules Richardson wrote:
>
> > 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 :-(
>
>If only for local use, a small PBX or a few line emulators would do.
>
> > 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
>:-)
>
>You might be able to get some pages from peopel who used to run BBC
>BBSs. Or people Rob and I know might have some dusty archives.

Um yes, somewhere in my email I have contacts for a few people, plus the
BBS stuff of course...


> > 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.
>
>Some of the commercial systems did indeed use the ubiquitous PDP-11,
>but the real thing ran on GEC hardware.

I used to have edit access to the viewdata system run by British Rail,
accessibly via a gateway from Prestel itself. I may still have some of the
docs for the bulk upload interface, but I have no idea what hardware it ran
on... It was rare that we ever saw the actual hardware that was at the end
of a modem or comms link :-)


Rob
Received on Tue Jun 15 2004 - 18:42:19 BST