Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/06/03/log-onto-a-bbs-1979-style-with.html
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The good old days weren’t really that good. I once had to modify the wire wrapped back plane on a PDP 11/84 to mount a SCSI disk.
You got a sense of accomplishment from achieving the simplest things.
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This is off topic…but I would love to see a study that evaluates how people react to the sound of training modems. Back in the day, that very specific and unique sound indicated one was about to get their Internet fix…sort of like Pavlov’s bell.
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Paying long distance to connect is going to get expensive fast.
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Maybe you could run a modem over skype?
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Never had a Trash-80, nor used the giant-size floppies, but I swear we had that exact off-green phone model and used it to connect to a bbs, utilizing continuous printer paper for output(!). Even back then it was the ‘old-school’ phone abandoned in the basement.
I love the video recommendations, keying off 1979 to suggest Billboard’s top hits of 1979, as well as Smashing Pumpkins from 1996.
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I used to run a BBS on a TRS-80 Model III, with a 300 baud modem. The modem didn’t have auto-answer, so I rigged up an auto-answer circuit using three relays arranged in a self-latching pattern. The relays came from Radio Shack, natch.
Those were heady days.
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My friends and I watching the movie were amazed that he found so many systems to connect to with a Bell 202 modem.
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the only good dogwhistle
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The TRS-80 in the picture has a number keypad. (Mine had a logo in its place.) Fancy!
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Did that work from a home phone? I thought it only worked from payphones.
2600Hz worked from any phone, but doing it from a pay phone was safer when the Bell cops came looking for you.
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Oh don’t be silly! We never paid for phone charges. That’s what blue boxes were for!
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When I was 14, my mother hit the roof when she got the $800+ bill for the charges I’d racked up connecting to CompuServe one month. It took an entire summer of mowing lawns to pay that back.
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Obligatory:
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I have TRS-80 model III. No disk drive. Tape drive.
I ran a BBS on a C-64 with 4 disk drives. Those were the days.
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Back in the day, when you couldn’t even install your own phone inside the house, I believe Bell Canada had some people who were actually law enforcement. (A narrow jurisdiction, but still.)
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