61–70 of 96 posts
5:7211/1.27 here - though I think this address is long long gone. I'm gobsmacked that I can remember it. :-) We got fidonet in Zimbabwe in the early 1990s. It was utterly revolutionary for us - more than the internet that came later really. For the first time we could communicate with my two brothers overseas without paying for extremely exorbitant international telephone calls that lasted a couple of minutes at best…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(This is being taken as snark, and fair enough, it's not a high-effort comment, but I'm being sincere. I operated a relatively popular FidoNet-adjacent (same protocol different network) system in the mid-1990s. Reddit is the closest thing we have to the user experience (Reddit is substantially better).
Yes, I was around the same time and had a moderately popular local BBS. Reddit (and arguably HN) do feel like the closest thing we have to BBSes today.
I have very fond memories of fidonet: discussions, friends made, parties held. I wish i was back there :)
The most surprising thing about early and mid-80s hobbyist computer culture (BBSes, users groups, etc) is despite being so open, egalitarian and easy to join, more than half of everyone you'd meet would be someone cool, interesting and worth knowing. I still have several close friends who I met in those days through random computer clubs. All of my little group of friends went on to have fairly notable careers involv…
Now you can have crippling health issues and still post on the internet. In fact, you're probably more inclined to spend time online if interacting with the offline world is so tough. This was much harder from '85-05.
There was a FidoNet clone in Turkey called HitNet (short for “Hi Türkiye Net”). Its node addresses were like “8:103/119”. İ developed a Netmail server for Hitnet called HitBase in 1995 or so. It allowed people to discover others around their city to meet. Possibly the earliest thing that resembles Facebook. Similarly, it was a privacy nightmare too, luckily short-lived. HitNet introduced me to great people some of wh…
Forgot to add, I also developed a BlueWave-compatible offline-reader called Wolverine that worked for all Fido-style networks: https://github.com/ssg/wolverine It was quite popular in Turkey in the 90's. You can try it out in DOSBox here with some random HitNet packages: https://github.com/ssg/wolverine/releases/tag/2.32
2:463/1161 here. Nostalgia is strong with this one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The most surprising thing about early and mid-80s hobbyist computer culture (BBSes, users groups, etc) is despite being so open, egalitarian and easy to join, more than half of everyone you'd meet would be someone cool, interesting and worth knowing. I still have several close friends who I met in those days through random computer clubs. All of my little group of friends went on to have fairly notable careers involv…
There was a minimum level of stability you needed in your life at that time to be able to own a computer and pay the phone bills needed back then (I came later in the mid 90s-00s but it wasn't too much different by then.) Kids needed parents who had that stability, and most of those parents probably kept a decent eye on their kids. Even then, I remember some real characters in the computing scene from when I was a ki…
True. I was fortunate to grow up middle-class in suburban California with a college grad dad and stay-at-home mom. Still, I had to mail-order my 4K computer to get it for $400 instead of the $500 MSRP, and even that was a BIG ask. By far the most expensive single thing my parents had ever bought for me. I had to settle for a Radio Shack Color Computer, even though I desperately wanted a Commodore 64. The C64's $600 MSRP was just too much to even consider suggesting and I didn't even dream of an $800 Atari 800 (but I do now own every 1980s Atari, Apple, Commodore and Sinclair computer). :-)
Turns out, that Coco was accidentally perfect for me because the CPU wasn't the usual 6502 or Z80 but the unique Motorola 6809, a true 8/16 hybrid (the same way the later, very similar, 68000 was a 16/32 bit hybrid). The 6809 was far more powerful per clock than the 6502 or Z80 and had a huge, orthogonal "PDP-ish" ISA with dual stacks, multiple 16-bit index registers and maskable interrupts enabling advanced code that was position-independent, re-entrant and multi-tasking. But the trade off was the Coco was all CPU and no dedicated graphics or sound chips, so the screen was memory mapped and we had to move each pixel on every frame with only the CPU.
So, never having touched a computer before and starting from zero with no help, I had to first teach myself BASIC from the Radio Shack's manual and then how to push the hell out of that sweet 16-bit CPU with highly-optimized, hand-coded assembler. It took years and was painfully slow and difficult. But it turns out the brutal discipline of cycle-counting down to the metal while racing the CRT beam every 63.5 microseconds was the best foundation imaginable for my future. A future I had no way of knowing would include the Amiga 1000 in 1985, on to 2D graphics, real-time broadcast video, 3D rendering (including working on new movies and shows in the science fiction franchises that shaped my childhood) and being there for the birth of the first GPUs. Not being able to afford the computer I wanted and having to teach myself computing due to flunking out of college, led directly to a multi-decade career as a serial tech entrepreneur. So, bad grades, early failure and stumbling along with no coherent plan can occasionally work out surprisingly well.
> some real characters in the computing scene
Oh, yes indeed. I had to sneak into my first couple Comdex, CES and NCC trade shows due to being too young, not 'in the trade' AND being broke. But I met (and partied with) OG legends like John Draper (Cap'n Crunch), young Bill Gates, even younger Steve Jobs, and a whole zoo of eccentric characters including a guy who legally changed his name to R2D3, and a guy who dressed like Gandalf every day. Of course, these days there's a clerk at the local UPS store who wears a Gryffindor cape daily but in the mid-80s that stuff was wild for a suburban kid. But as I said in my first post, nearly everyone I met in 80s computing was interesting, worth knowing, and usually happy to help a random kid who wasn't interesting OR worth knowing.
2:463/1161 here. Nostalgia is strong with this one.
2:463/1161 here. Nostalgia is strong with this one.
Guys, I don't get it. Were you all node sysops, or did your region just not have that last part — the point? Zone:Net/Node .Point
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forgot to add, I also developed a BlueWave-compatible offline-reader called Wolverine that worked for all Fido-style networks: https://github.com/ssg/wolverine It was quite popular in Turkey in the 90's. You can try it out in DOSBox here with some random HitNet packages: https://github.com/ssg/wolverine/releases/tag/2.32
WOW! Your FatalVision (1) is absolutely shiny! Wish I'd had it in the 90s. Respect for the file_id.diz (2)! I thought mine was the last one on GitHub. 1. https://github.com/ssg/fatalvision 2. https://github.com/ssg/fatalvision/blob/master/file_id.diz