Comments
by Scoper...
Computers Without an Internet
(They Called It BBS)
One of the more interesting
(and more ominous) things about writing for a web site is that you really
don't know whom you're writing TO. But I get the impression that - aside
from Gramps and Grammy doing the e-mail thing from St. Petersburg - the
World Wide Web is largely a young person's game.
So, depending on your age,
it might come as a surprise that there was an Intra-net before there
was an Internet. Bulletin Board Systems. They were the cork; your computer
was the thumbtack. With your permission, let's go back to those thrilling
days of yesteryear (1985-1990) and take a look at what was there. It wasn't
much, but it sure was funky!
First off, if you had a computer
at all 10-15 years ago, you were in the techno-nerd minority. You might
have had one of the original IBM PC's (green letters on black screen.)
Pentium? What's that? 486? 'Fraid not. Most likely, you had an Intel 8088
processor (fondly or pejoratively known as the "88.") Processing speed?
About 4 megahertz. You paid the same kilobucks for a tiny fraction of the
kilobytes.
It did everything it was
designed to do. Which basically made it a very new, very cool, very
expensive typewriter. As it caught on, it DID kill the market for Liquid
Paper, because after you got your text perfect on the screen, it came out
of your nifty dot-matrix printer exactly the same way, right up until the
cogs missed the sprocket-holes in your fan-fold paper, causing a perforated
train-wreck. We loved it!
Graphics? There were some
crude versions of such, assuming your machine could handle them. But where
was the money to pay for more software when you were still paying off the
hardware? Mostly you were stuck with text, and Bill Gates' cruel pre-Windows
joke called Disk Operating System. DOS
had absolutely no sense of humor. (Bad command or file name. Abort?
Retry? Fail?)
This was also when Mac users
were saying cute things such as "Nyah Nyah Nyah!" Interestingly, some of
them still are, though some of their computers today look like really large
Jolly Rancher candies. You decide what that means. (OK, truth. The "Steves"
at Apple developed the first really workable GIF, and whether Gates stole
the original idea or not, he took it to the finish line, which is why I'm
writing this on MS Word, and you're probably reading it with an Internet
Explorer browser. The rest is up to the courts.)
But back to the "olden days."
At some point, you decided that your computer would be more fun if it
could call another one. If you were "cutting edge," you bought a 12-hundred
baud modem. How fast is that? Remember, we're talking alpha-numeric text
here. You can read at 12-hundred baud. (Some modems were only 300-baud
acoustically-coupled; you actually put the telephone handset into it.)
The list of local "Bulletin Board Systems" came from your friendly computer
store.
Then you put some of the
phone numbers into an auto-dial program (mine was called Procomm) and tried
to find a bulletin board that would answer. Busy signals were the rule;
most "sysops" had only one phone line dedicated to the board, meaning only
one user at a time. A popular board (my favorite was Korova Milkbar) could
be busy for an hour or more, while someone named "Labyrinth" or some such
scrolled through all 462 messages and inserted comments into every single
one. You'd put your software on perpetual redial, but you couldn't go out
for pizza or take a nap, because if you didn't hear the "connection beep,"
you were kicked offline and had to start all over again.
Eventually, you were "in,"
and able to share arcane messages with a highly select group of people.
You know, the ones who bought a computer so they could say they had bought
a computer. The exchanges were fascinating. Of course, some people find
chess by mail fascinating.
DAY ONE: "Does your wife
have acute angina?"
DAY TWO: "That's all I get
from you, heartaches! Nothing but heartaches!
DAY THREE: "What happened
on STTNG last night?"
DAY FOUR: "Picard said to
engage something."
DAY FIVE: "I know where you
can get a 2400 baud modem for $179.95!"
DAY SIX: "What's the point?"
Isn't this fast enough for you?
My life was improving already.
What did I ever do without this machine?
DAY SEVEN: "Some of us are
going for beers at Rocko's this Friday at 7:30."
DAY EIGHT: "I am SO there."
Oh damn! Friday was yesterday.
Don't you see? This whole
World Wide Web is nothing but overkill! We had it made back then! Did I
mention that I had to walk to school 10 miles, uphill, (both ways,) in
the summer heat through snow up to here…
AL GORE DID NOT INVENT
BBS, EITHER. NO MATTER WHAT YOU'VE HEARD.
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