Started using Compuserve

[Alex Franke]

When I saw the title of this thread I misread "Compucarve" as "Compuserve." (Guess I'm more of a computer geek than a woodworking geek -- it's in my blood! ) Needless to say, that brought back some fond memories... Compuserve and The Source were my first truly online information services (not including all the BBS's). And there was one other that I can't remember the name of. (In fact I think it was even based here in NC.)

I actually ran a BBS back in the 80's, but only with two modems. I remember how thrilled I was when I upgraded one of them from a Hayes 300 to a 1200. I thought, "Wow -- look at those characters fly by! I can't even type that fast!"

So how did you all get your start online?

[cgallery]

I actually ran a BBS back in the 80's, but only with two modems. I remember how thrilled I was when I upgraded one of them from a Hayes 300 to a 1200. I thought, "Wow -- look at those characters fly by! I can't even type that fast!"

So how did you all get your start online?

Did anyone ever log onto Exec-PC? It was the world's largest BBS (kinda beyond that, actually) with hundreds of modems and other ways of connecting, too. It started right here (Shorewood, WI), and I developed the search engine for the file areas and all the messaging software.

It was eventually acquired by Voyager and then Voyager by Core and then Core by ATX (I think, you kinda stop following it).

The search engine I developed for the file collections and messaging software was marketed by ElectrikText, and eventually acquired by TexSys, which was in turned acquired by someone else. I still get calls from time to time for support (mostly because people don't understand short circuiting searches and hose it when they make modifications).

The front-end of the search software at Exec-PC was pretty simplistic, but the back-end searching performed elaborate parsing with boolean logic, setting, nesting, scoping, and short circuiting.

[JSUPreston]

I did a lot of BBS' in the early to mid '90s. I also was on AOL back when they had a DOS GEOS client. I did more of the BBS since it was a lot cheaper. My first modem was a Zoom 2400 ISA. I remember upgrading to 14.4 Zoom and being really PO'd at AOL, because I couldn't connect any faster than 2400. Never thought it fair that I paid the same price for connection as folks in larger towns that could get on 4 or 5 times faster.

I also used Prodigy for a while, which was quite interesting to me. I even worked for an ISP for about 6 months. I tried to host my own BBS one time, but I was in the dorm at college, and only had one computer and phone line...didn't last but a few days.

[JR]

I've been involved with voice and data communications for over 30 years. Before the WWW, though, I was never an on-line geek. BBSs were not interesting for me, but installing and maintaining arrays of modems or async data switches really got my motor running!

I've been in a lot shops over the years, but the coolest had to be the Los Alamos National Lab. 28 Crays, surrounded by ~80 VAXes, sourrounded by ~ 175 PDP-11s, which were interconnected by my companies' data switches (about 30 of them, totalling about 20,000 ports, IIRC). At the time that was awesome firepower, but you could probably do all that computing on any of today's typical server farms.

The liquid-cooled Crays had a thermometer on the side. If you touched the outside panel the thermometer would take a momentary bump, then settle back to nominal. Very cool.

JR

[crokett]

Wow. I was on a few dial-up BBSs in high school but my first email address was in college. I know I was one of the first guys at college to have a web page - I remember writing it in a text editor. That was when I picked up 'crokett'. I worked at a menswear store and one night I came back to school after work with no tie on. A buddy took one look and that has been my username ever since. He was a sys admin and a prankster so he changed my username to that.

[LCHIEN]

I had a Z80-based system on a S-100 bus chassis in 1977 - I bought or assembled boards or board kits and designed a dynamic memory board and I/O board myself, Had a couple of CPM systems in the late 70's early 80s and ran a CP/M-based RCPM BBS name "Phoenix" from the house for several years around 1987-1990 for the CP/M-Houston User's Group. It was named that since it was built entirely from hand me down parts of different S-100 computers and had for those days, a princely 5MB of 8" disk storage.

I could probably go on and on about those computers... Still have a couple stored in the garage.

[MilDoc]

My first usable home computer was the old Radio Shack TRS-80, hooked up to a 300 baud modem. What a new world that was! I too looked at Exec-PC, Compuserve, Prodigy, and far too many others I can't even remember. Then came the Internet, a whole new world.

My first "portable" was an Osbourne. I think it "only" weighed 20 pounds or so.

Back then it was upgrade after upgrade after upgrade. Lots of $$$ spent for faster modems, better video cards, more memory, etc. My first hard drive was an astounding 5 MB! I was in heaven!

Compared to my present 3GHz Dell those were soooooo slow, but back then who knew where we'd be today. Or where our kids might be in 30 years!

[LinuxRandal]

My brother bought and then sold to me, a Timex Sinclair 1000. He upgraded to an Atari 800, while friends and relatives had TI99's, Comodoores, Trash 80's, coco's, an IBM PC XT, that cost around $11,000 with a 10 mb hard drive and Wordperfect version 1, etc.

One friend was given a brand new Apple II, just around the time the schools started getting them, which he traded for a case of beer.

I remember my brother buying that 300 baud modem, and we read an article on how to get it to something like 480, so it was modded and used to get on BBS's (he was a cosysop for a friends BBS). The one part of Wargames that I remember as accurate, was BBS's were the way to get the games that weren't out yet. Some of the companies never even made it to production. The other part of Wargames that several of us played with, very limited, was the computer voice. I was always hopefull that would go further then it did.
When one friends father got a new pc, he aliased all the dos commands to the Unix commands he knew from working at AT&T.
Lot's more, but I ramble
Then I got out of it for a while, due to being tired of being asked to write programs for people (thank goodness I haven't written since the Apple II days). When Windows 3.1 came out, and you could buy your programs rather then coding them, I got back into it, as it was useful, and I didn't get asked to do the stuff.
Then people started asking me to fix their pc.

That is part of the reason I got away from Microsoft.

[JSUPreston]

Linux, don't knock MS too much, they make sure I keep my job.

[milanuk]

Lesseehere... Trash80 @ school in 3rd-4th grade, Apple IIe's after that until about the middle of high school, then we got some XT and AT clones. Went into the military, think the first PC I purchased myself was in 1992 sometime, maybe early 93 and was a midrange 486 from Gateway. Played around w/ some CompuServe and AOL accounts. A computer or two later, I was interested in programming but about had a hairball seeing what M$ wanted for Visual C++ at the time. A friend suggested trying Linux (back in the 1.0xx kernel days) as it had a boat load of programming languages for *free*. Silly me. That was the beginning of a long and dark road, spending my free time on usenet, iirc, compiling kernels and other programs from source (never did get around to learning much more than some basic bash & korn scripting as far as actual programming), and finally said the heck with it when Apple re-vamped the Mac OS with a BSD core. By then I was ready for a toaster that I didn't have to fight to get sound and video and everything else working right (Linux/FreeBSD) and that didn't crash randomly (Windoze). After a few years happily plugging away with an eMac, I did finally get a PC again... still love my 'puter games like C&C Generals, etc. and there are a few programs that just don't run on Macs, period. Now that Macs use Intel chips... I'm in heaven!!!

[atgcpaul]

I started BBSing in 1991/2. Prodigy (rival to Compuserve) sent me a free
30 day trial and a free modem. I ditched prodigy pretty fast but was hooked
on the local BBS. My choice of college dorms in 1993 was heavily weighted
to the one with the 10BaseT internet hookup in the room. I wrote my first
web page from scratch the same year. I started with Mosaic as my browser
and then moved to Netscape.

Most schools didn't have much of a web presence so I got around from school
to school using their gopher servers, finding other kids online with finger, and
communicating through ytalk. By 1994 I had penpals on all 7 continents.
My grades suffered accordingly.

I also spent some time playing some space trading game. You'd travel from
planet to planet mining minerals and building your fleet all the while trying to
avoid the Borg-like Cabal.

Paul

[Sid]

I started on a TI-99. Can't remember for sure the cost of the 48KB (yes KB!) memory expansion box and card--at least $200! First 8-wire dot matrix printer was $400. Moved up to an Atari 1040, a 300 baud modem, and subscribed to the Genie online service.

Later had Gateway and Dell PC's but am now an Apple convert, very satisfied with my iMac and MacBook.

Sid

[leehljp]

1964 - High School Physics teacher taught us Binary language

Early 80s - played with a friends Commodore (just remembered) if I remember correctly.
1986 bought Apple 2c.
1987, December got "online" to a bulletin board for the first time; it was Tokyo's first bulletin board service and had been in operation for about 3 or 4 years at that time.
1989, Springtime, signed up with Compuserve in the US; joined a unix BB in Tokyo in the fall. Received my first real "email" internationally.
1991, joined AOL, ended that in 1997
1997, Got CABLE!
2000, Went wireless.

NEXT BIG thing: With free wireless places in plethora here and in the States, I am biding my time until I can purchase a decent and fast web-browsing (smart) phone.

[BasementDweller]

I also cut my teeth on a TI99, but I was pretty young and didn't really know what I was doing. But I wrote some Basic programs and had fun. I got serious in the early 90s when I started working on a Kapro CPM system someone had given me for free.

Not long after that I upgraded to MS DOS, that was fun I was now running the same OS that my schools were. Soon after that I found the online world! I loved it. Was on Fido all the time, and was soon running my own WildCat BBS! board in my parents basement. I had registered door games and was a apogee (sp?) download site for their shareware games.

Started playing around with AOL soon after it became AOL and started to learn the power of Telenet. Shortly after that this thing called the Internet got hooked up and you could Gopher and WIAS (or was it WAIS) to find files. . . I never found what I needed . . .Lol...

Once Berns-Lee worked his magic on the Internet I jumped out of BBSs and proprietry ISPs in favor of generic "on-ramps". Ah memories.


- BD

[TB Roye]

My fist computer was a Tandy(Radio Shack) with a whopping 640k of memory, color monitor, 2 floppies. a 10mb hard drive was $600 and a 20 was $800 didn't get either as it was it almost$3000 out the door. Good old DOS 2.11 and Basic, DOT Matris printer. First upgrade was a modem 1200 BAUD, which I had to set up 1st month visting BBS racked up over $300 in long distance charges. it was fun and learned a lot. I think my oldest son still has it some place I saw it at Thankgiving. Next trip to Idaho I need to bring in back.

DTom