20+ years online

So it just dawned on me I've been online for over 20 years. As a network engineer by trade I thought I would share my full and detailed ISP ratings with you.

Dialup BBS/Fidonet Good
Demon V.32 dialup Good
BT V.34 dialup Bad
Telewest Cable Bad
Pipex ADSL Good
Tiscali ADSL Bad
Talk Talk ADSL [censored]
O2 ADSL Good
Sky ADSL [censored]
ZEN ADSL Good

I still remember my Fidonet address. Them were the days. All fields.

Jase.

19 years for me.

Started with compuserve, plus helped setup and manage the AOL account at school/sixth form.

I can't remember all the connections I've had, but they include madasafish, NTHell, BT Broadband, Telewest, Namesco and Virgin Media.

I did not realize the internet was even available twenty years ago, my exchange only became enabled in 2005, think I started in 2006.

Yes, it was a bit slower back then though.

I had a 28.8 Kbps modem when I first got the internet.

Checkout these pages from Microsoft, their old homepage(s):

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/discover/1994/

Microsoft Blog re 20 years

I reckoned we were doing well when on the odd occasion I got to the heady speed of 3kbps. Now awaiting the promised native FTTP connection availability sometime from 31st December 2014 onward. That will be the day!

I thought Bill Gates invented the WWW in 1995? Before that, there was Gopher

In reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29:

The original Gopher system was released in late spring of 1991 by Mark McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Daniel Torrey, and Bob Alberti of the University of Minnesota in America. Its central goals were, as stated in RFC 1436:

A file-like hierarchical arrangement that would be familiar to users.
A simple syntax.
A system that can be created quickly and inexpensively.
Extending the file system metaphor, such as searches.

The internet has been around since the 1960s, starting in military I believe.

The web came later, circa 20 years ago - invented by Tim Berners-Lee

I believe this event brought about the switch from Gopher to HTTP

In February 1993, the University of Minnesota announced that it would charge licensing fees for the use of its implementation of the Gopher server. As a consequence of this, some users were concerned that a licensing fee would also be charged for independent implementations. Users were scared away from Gopher technology, to the advantage of the Web, which CERN disclaimed ownership of.

Tim Berners-Lee actually invented the WWW in 1989

Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee is an English computer scientist, best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He made a proposal for an information management system in March 1989, and he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet sometime around mid November of that same year.

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Aug-14 21:10:15)

That reminds me, I had been using dial-up from about 1973; and remember being asked to get others in the company to use an early form of e-mail in 1979.

Testing an early MAC in November 1984, complete with GUI, Mouse and WORD; and with the signatures of the Design Team moulded inside the back of the case.

The AMSTRAD PCW 8256 (Joyce) in 1985; and placing an 0n-Line order with MAPLIN about 1989. Using the PCW to dial in to the company machines from home, from 1986 until retiral in 1999.

My first Laptop was a ZENITH Z181, purchased in 1989, for about £250, when it should have been about £2,000!

In combination, the PCW and ZENITH gave me extremely good service. Locoscript and Lotus 123.

"Tak Tent o' Time, Afore Time Taks Tynt!"

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Aug-14 21:21:37)

Early bulletin boards didn't use the Internet at all. They were just dial-up links into modems connected directly to the server. Basically just a terminal session.

Usenet was established in the 1980's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

I was on the internet in the late eighties and remember using Trumpet Winsock for my connection. Does anyone remember that and is it still available in a usable condition?

It's basically an implementation of Windows Sockets which is now built into Windows http://thanksfortrumpetwinsock.com/

Edited by deleted (Thu 28-Aug-14 21:34:43)

Just over 20 years for me too� Like B31 I started on CompuServe (although I "joined" via ZDNet).

And I can still remember my CompuServe login number

Unlike B31 I didn't have a 28.8 Kbps connection though- my first modem was 2400 baud, using a local call to Reading and then the GPO's packet-switched network (at extra cost) to CompuServe's London POP. I think it was like that for about a year before CiS installed 9,600 baud modems at Reading and I could dial direct instead of via the PSN (which saved about $4/hour iirc).

Edited by billford (Thu 28-Aug-14 21:58:34)

Didn't know it was built into windows. Getting online back then used a disjointed method which started off with Trumpet Winsock. Think I've got a copy somewhere among my floppy disk collection. Them were the days when you had to really work at setting up a computer and internet access and I'm still learning thanks to you guys here on TBB. Anyone remember trying load memory high so to keep enough conventional memory to run programmes etc ?

I think the Commodore 64 had a modem in the 80s but I never got round to trying or buying it.

I remember my dad being on micronet which would of been pre 1994 since we moved house then and it would of been about 1991 at earliest 1993 at latest.

I used to spend all my free time and even skip lectures at college to go on chatrooms in 1999.

I was online on Dreamcast in 2000 but it was next to useless for browsing but perfect for online gaming, funny how a 28.8k modem on European Dreamcasts could go online with 56K US users and have no lag yet I get more slowdown on games today with lag.

Edited by deleted (Fri 29-Aug-14 02:02:53)

Remember them well, along with Prestel and the acoustic modem.

Yes. nearly 20 years for me too. Started with Compuserve (gave AOL a miss) but had so many problems getting online that I ended up going with a UK based company in Shepton Mallet - UKonline. 14.4kb modem coupled with a 486 DX4 100 (just been launched) with a Diamond Stealth graphic card. I can remember the upgrade to 16mb of ram cost well over £100. Downloads were a nightmare sometimes with the download freezing with 1kb to go. But for all that, while we might have faster boxes etc, not much has really changed for me. Still stuck with a slow line of 1.47mb. Yes, the UK is in the dark when it comes to fast speed. Just take a trip out to South Korea to see what I mean. Even your 50mb/s is dead slow. We might have invented the WWW but we certainly haven't led since.

And I still remember the sound of the modem connecting ..... noises all the way. You could even tell if it had failed to connect! Yes, those were the days!

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

I thought Bill Gates invented the WWW in 1995? Before that, there was Gopher

In reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29:

The original Gopher system was released in late spring of 1991 by Mark McCahill, Farhad Anklesaria, Paul Lindner, Daniel Torrey, and Bob Alberti of the University of Minnesota in America. Its central goals were, as stated in RFC 1436:

A file-like hierarchical arrangement that would be familiar to users.
A simple syntax.
A system that can be created quickly and inexpensively.
Extending the file system metaphor, such as searches.

No; the internet (The infrastructure part) has been around since the 1960s. The first successful packet switching network was ARPANET which came into existence in 1969 as a Military & Defence network in the US.

The World Wide Web which runs over the internet was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 and demonstrated for the first time in 1990 if I recall correctly.

In reply to a post by caley:

Anyone remember trying load memory high so to keep enough conventional memory to run programmes etc ?

Yes. I started working life doing support for PCs and one of the highest skills was eeking out the last byte of memory. We had a network called Pathworks at the time (from Digital Equipment Corporation) and it had so many different executables to fire up the network that you had to shift them all around to get enough memory left to run some of the programs.

Was a labour of love for me - probably did it many hundreds of times to tweak each individual PC for maximum available memory. I miss those days - tech support these days generally just do a google and if that doesn't give them the answer they haven't got a clue.

Was using CompuServe and the likes occasionally at work around 20 years ago but didn't actually get myself on the Internet until the late 90's. And didn't fully start using it at home until ADSL became available on my exchange around 2001.

In reply to a post by Jax2:

I did not realize the internet was even available twenty years ago, my exchange only became enabled in 2005, think I started in 2006.

Your exchange may have had ADSL enabled in 2005 but it had Internet years before that. Anywhere that had a basic phone line was capable of Internet connection (or bulletin boards before that). It just all happened to be digital rather than analogue.

I did you mean you only got the heady heights of 3Kbps? As ADSL started out as fixed 500Kbps then dropping to 3Kbps would be a pretty enormous fall in speeds.

Best I ever achieved in conventional memory was using only 9k of the allotted 640k. I was on cloud nine when I did that. Meant I could run anything almost. My first computer was a state of art £1400 386 dx40 with a whole high end 4mgs of ram and would you believe a 170mg hard drive. Windows 3 was the system of the day but soon went onto 3.1 then 3.11 which started the networking off. DOS 6 was the order of the day newly updated from DOS 5. Things are too easy today, programmes that configure themselves and plug n play. The fun was getting things to work.

Would I believe a 170MB hard drive - no... My first PC was an Amstrad 1640, 640KB memory (no extended memory), no hard drive, 2 x5 1/4" floppy drives and an EGA monitor.

My second PC only had a 10MB hard drive and still didn't have extended memory - but it did have a 3 1/2" floppy drive - an amazing technical leap.

I've been online for around 15 years, my connection history:

NTL dial-up - did what it said.

TalkTalk (ADSL, not Max nor LLU) - awful, wouldn't connect during peak times. This was when they offered 'free' broadband with their international calling plan.

Freeserve dial-up - trusty, used it when TalkTalk refused to connect.

Pipex ADSL - rock sold ADSL Max connection, would still be with them but when Tiscali bought them they wanted to lower my usage limit and increase the price I was paying. They were hell to leave, kept charging me and sending debt collection letters but I made a formal complaint after months of threats and they stopped.

Plusnet - as with Pipex, rock solid ADSL Max but I left for Sky LLU to benefit from ADSL2+ speeds.

Sky - reliable, fast, relatively well-priced but left for TalkTalk as their TV service seemed cheaper, what a bad idea.

TalkTalk (LLU) - connection okay but support pants as expected, OCEs on the forums seem to have less power nowadays. Upgraded to fibre in March of this year and IPTV channels stopped working, it took a complaint to the CEO's office to get it sorted.

Got a few months left on my contract with TalkTalk, I already have Sky TV back and I'm going to go to BT Infinity as soon as I can.

I've just checked mine and my first payment to Compuserve of $12.42 (£8.52) was 21 years ago tomorrow! I started with a 2400bps modem.

ISP history is something like:

Compuserve
Freeserve
Onetel
Freenetname
Madasafish
Plusnet

Edited by kasg (Fri 29-Aug-14 11:21:33)

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

I thought Bill Gates invented the WWW in 1995?

I nearly choked on that - unbelievable! Bill Gates held out for as long as he could and was very late to join the bandwagon, 1995 was, indeed, the year that he cottoned on to what was happening when he realised that Netscape was a serious competitor and started trying to wipe them out (successfully, as it turned out).

I believe for ages he said the web would never catch on. Then the panic to develop Internet Explorer.

In reply to a post by kasg:

I nearly choked on that ............

Same as I do when people think that Apple invented the GUI and mouse!

These were the fun days.......Memories

Edited by deleted (Fri 29-Aug-14 13:04:19)

Same here - my own dial-up connection to the internet was in '94, using Demon.

However, my first stuff online was at uni 10 years earlier - using some packet switch terminals to connect over Janet into a MUD server in Essex. Mind you, the server was so overloaded, that you rarely managed to get in & play.

Of stuff I had to actually pay for myself, I recall a 1200/75 modem connecting to Prestel a couple of years later.

My first experiences of the internet came around 1991, from having Sun desktops at work that weren't actually connected to the internet. However, you could use email to control a remote download server - which would download something from the internet (with FTP), then email you the results uuencoded in many, many chunks. My first Linux downloads & distributions came that way - and I probably still have some of the Slackware floppies from that time!

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Same here - my own dial-up connection to the internet was in '94, using Demon.

BT must have made a fortune from the dial-up call revenue in those days, I heard of people who spent hundreds on their phone bill back then just to connect to the internet.

Oh Xerox copied the idea from Douglas Engelbart's 1968 demo

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Oh Xerox copied the idea from Douglas Engelbart's 1968 demo

True, but, "As the seventies started, much of Engelbart's team departed ARC and went their own ways, with many of them ending up at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC). Among these people were Bill English, who would further improve upon the mouse.[2] Also migrating to PARC was Engelbart's former backer at NASA and ARPA, Robert Taylor.[16] Alan Kay, also in attendance at the demo, would go on to design an object-oriented computing environment called Smalltalk while he was at PARC.[12] By 1973 the Xerox Alto was a fully functional personal computer similar to the NLS terminal that Engelbart demonstrated in 1968, but much smaller and physically refined. With its mouse driven GUI the Alto would go on to influence Steve Jobs and Apple's Macintosh computer and operating system in the 1980s.[17] Eventually, Microsoft's Windows operating system would follow the Macintosh and use a multi-button mouse like the Alto and the NLS system did.[1]"

It's fair to say Xerox made a business out of copying.

Makes me go all nostalgic thinking about them days and the possibilities

Back then a PC upgrade actually meant it could do more than it did before. These days it is harder and harder to justify an upgrade because it makes little noticeable difference for most purposes. Used to enjoy looking through all the specs to get the best possible build but these days you don't really need to eek the last possible ounce of power out of the components.

How boring the world has become...

In reply to a post by caley:

Makes me go all nostalgic thinking about them days and the possibilities

Hard to imagine that we, Xerox, had a worldwide intranet working back in the 70's eh?

I started with CompuServe (an original pre-AOL account). I think the first modem was a 4800 and initially I was mostly using their forums rather than the internet. I didn't really start using the internet until they began to migrate the forums and by then I was on k56.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

I started with CompuServe (an original pre-AOL account)

Likewise, and they are still around in some form: http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/menu/about... - However, "The newest version of CompuServe, CompuServe 7.0" referred to on that page was launched in 2001!

Edited by kasg (Fri 29-Aug-14 16:54:18)

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by Andrue:

I started with CompuServe (an original pre-AOL account)

Likewise, and they are still around in some form: http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/menu/about... However, "The newest version of CompuServe, CompuServe 7.0" referred to on that page was launched in 2001!

Lol. From memory my account number was 100127,2643. I remember the excitement when they finally allowed us to pick a name for email address. I am not a number!

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Same here - my own dial-up connection to the internet was in '94, using Demon.

BT must have made a fortune from the dial-up call revenue in those days, I heard of people who spent hundreds on their phone bill back then just to connect to the internet.

I had a company phone line at home. For about a year I would dial into the New York CIS node because they had 19200 modems when the UK was only 9600. Ironically we were the first to get the next upgrade though.

In reply to a post by caley:

Best I ever achieved in conventional memory was using only 9k of the allotted 640k.

4DOS + QEMM helped me beat that. I seem to recall that 4DOS could move everything except 400 bytes into upper memory and swap bits of itself in and out.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Lol. From memory my account number was 100127,2643.

100272,3403. I rarely forget numbers. (or was it 3407??? )

Edited by kasg (Fri 29-Aug-14 16:30:38)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

4DOS + QEMM helped me beat that. I seem to recall that 4DOS could move everything except 400 bytes into upper memory and swap bits of itself in and out.

4DOS - fantastic product, one of the relatively few pieces of shareware I chose to pay for. Take Command appears to be its successor - http://jpsoft.com/.

Corrected for URL running into a full stop!

In reply to a post by kasg:

Likewise, and they are still around in some form: http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/menu/about... .

Sounds like CompuServe 7.0 is similar to AOL Desktop. Same walled-garden?

I remember QEMM. Didn't it stand for Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager or something like that? Never used it myself but still managed to get a magic 9k of conventional memory. Wished I given it a try though. How on earth did QEMM manage to load everything except 400 bytes into upper memory? That was the real magic I think.

In reply to a post by caley:

How on earth did QEMM manage to load everything except 400 bytes into upper memory? That was the real magic I think.

Wasn't it 0x400, ie 400 hex?

Iirc, the first kilobyte was used for DOS's vector tables and assorted buffers which you played with very much at your own risk

Edited by billford (Fri 29-Aug-14 17:26:37)

In reply to a post by caley:

I remember QEMM. Didn't it stand for Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager or something like that? Never used it myself but still managed to get a magic 9k of conventional memory. Wished I given it a try though. How on earth did QEMM manage to load everything except 400 bytes into upper memory? That was the real magic I think.

It wasn't QEMM doing that - it was 4DOS. That was a command.com replacement and one of its tricks was to free up a chunk of lower memory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4DOS

Though it appears from here ( https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.msdo... ) that it was 4k, not 400 bytes. Still beats you though

Edit: Ooooh, I read a few replies down and someone is claiming 256 bytes if you relocated 4DOS into UMBs.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 29-Aug-14 18:14:13)

Wow how time goes by !
I remember having to pull plug on phone line to plug modem in generally peeing off rest of family.
DACS line too which gave problems when upgrading to "broadband" at half a meg.
After a year got 1meg and double the speed was fantastic.
Now on fibre 52/13 and still complaining !
edit...been with bt for ever it seems.

Edited by deleted (Fri 29-Aug-14 19:21:32)

All this is a big eye opener. Seems there are still folk around that had fun with their computers same way as I did. I think I've got an old 486 in the loft. All this discussion has given me the idea to get it down and have a fiddle. Wish I'd kept my 386 though.

And I seem to remember that Prince Philip's Prestel Account got hacked.

And there a way to get almost an extra 64KB above the 1 MB limit by addressing segment FFFFh. This gave a total address space of 1 MB + 64 KB - 16 B. Called HMA = High Memory Area.

In reply to a post by Stevenage_Neil:

In reply to a post by kasg:

I nearly choked on that ............

Same as I do when people think that Apple invented the GUI and mouse!

These were the fun days.......Memories

Yep can remember going to a demo (in Uxbridge I think) circa 1978/9 of a Xerox dedicated Word Processor. Had a monochrome screen which you could physically turn to display either a landscape or portrait view and it had a WIMP environment. You could only rent kit from Xerox in those days but most WP's from the likes of AES & Wordplex cost around £15K! Oh You could only do text on daisy wheel printers (lasers based on the Canon LBP8 engine were yet to arrive).
All noisy as hell (until you put 'em in a box to kill sound).

In reply to a post by brush:

Yep can remember going to a demo (in Uxbridge I think) circa 1978/9 of a Xerox dedicated Word Processor. Had a monochrome screen which you could physically turn to display either a landscape or portrait view and it had a WIMP environment. You could only rent kit from Xerox in those days but most WP's from the likes of AES & Wordplex cost around £15K!

The Xerox 860 - worked on that in Dallas for a couple of years. I didn't think it was introduced here in the UK until circa 1981

In reply to a post by brush:

Oh You could only do text on daisy wheel printers (lasers based on the Canon LBP8 engine were yet to arrive).

We, Xerox, had laser desktop printers back in the late 70's, for internal use, but the main revenue stream, for desktop devices, was the Diablo Daisy Wheel printer. Have a read here under History if you are interested

Just realised it's 50 years ago today I started work with English Electric Leo Computers as a junior assistant programmer, salary £520 pa. Though based in Hartree House, Bayswater, I spent my first week on an induction course in Kidsgrove in Staffordshire, a place where I was to spend a lot of time over the years.

In 1967/68 I was writing comms. software including some special stuff for an Australian Bank. Because the hardware was being developed in Kidsgrove and the software in Hartree, we had to dial up to the hardware in Kidsgrove. At the time the Kidsgrove premises had a operator connected switchboard. Quite frequently, after getting through to the hardware box's extension and doing tests, we'd get disconnected. The operators would occasionally listen in and hearing only buzzes and crackles and no talking, would think the call had ended and disconnect us .

Those were the days

Me too. Add one to the list of those who started - at home, anyway - with CompuServe in 1994: http://www.perifrith.org.uk/st585/st585v5.htm

However my first use of email was not via CompuServe but hosted on a VAX 11/750 minicomputer at a client site. This was at the beginning of the 1980s. It was brilliant to be able to leave a message for an engineer to read once he arrived for his shift at 10pm. I dialled in using a 1200 baud modem to connect directly to the VAX. (1200 sounds immensely slow by today's standards, but it was a great advance over the previous 300 baud acoustic coupler.)

JPL

My first use of email was around 1980 I think using EXAC - EXecutive ACtion - that ran on ICL VME mainframes.

Seemed a quite amazing capability.

In reply to a post by JPL:

.........but it was a great advance over the previous 300 baud acoustic coupler.

In the main due to the GPO's stringent connection requirements and approvals process.........only slightly simpler than Germany's Bundespost!

Edited by deleted (Mon 01-Sep-14 13:23:40)

I seem to remember that email didn't come to my part of ICL until the mid-80's with OfficePower dedicated terminals that provided most of what would now be MS Office functionality. It was the devil's own job to send an email onto the real Internet; it was really for sending internal emails. Before OfficePower we sent each other paper memos.

So, on our desks we had an OfficePower terminal mainly for Word processing & email, and a locally-only networked PC/DRS for doing our programming.

I worked as a programmer in the early 80's, on a DEC PDP 11/34 which was replaced by a VAX 11/750. When we got the VAX it came with remote diagnostics, and a 1200/75 baud modem.

I figured out how to reverse that on the phone line, by making a new cable with 2 pins swapped, if I remember correctly. This was connected to a dumb VT100 terminal, in the days before PC's that is. I was then able to call bulletin boards over the dedicated phone line that had been put in for the modem, which was only used once a month unless we had a problem.

At first things were limited to whatever a particular board had but then they were interconnecting via Arpanet and/or Janet and some of the message areas were linked between boards all over the world, an early form of Usenet.

I remember getting my first email address, via a local BBS, that ended in .UUCP. It looked good on business cards at the time

Until then messages had to be collected using a ZIP package that you downloaded, logged off (to save on the phone bill), unzipped, read, answered, and made a ZIP packet to upload your replies.

We went up to a 2400 baud modem and then got an early PC in one office, which was used with the modem to download rather crude graphics in black and white, made up of ASCII characters. If you squinted hard you could just about make out the intended image.

I changed companies, still no official email through them and a boss who didn't like me using a modem at all. It was mainly for official stuff, I was linking direct to Lotus in Texas for developer support quite a lot. He eventually got me sacked for sending Lotus a message in the firms time - about the work I was doing.

I had won a competition with Dr Solomons anti-virus and got a 33.6k modem of my own. That kept me happy for a while. Eventually I was up to 56k and using a phone line from Ionica that happily dealt with that speed, my old BT line couldn't. When Ionica went under I joined Yorkshire Cable and was one of the first to have a Cable Internet connection, at 512k ...

Do you know, when I were a lad you could get a tram down into t'town, buy three new suits an' an ovvercoat, four pair o' good boots, go an' see Frank Randall at t'Palace Theatre, get blind drunk, 'ave some steak an' chips, bunch o' bananas an' three stone o' monkey nuts an' still 'ave change out of a farthing.
We'd lots o' things in them days they 'aven't got today - rickets, diptheria, Hitler and my, we did look well goin' to school wi' no backside in us trousers an' all us little 'eads painted purple because we 'ad ringworm.
They don't know they're born today!!!
(with acknowledgement to the late Tony Capstick)

You are absolutely correct about MilNet, although I can't confirm the dates for sure, but what I can confirm is that I used MilNet for the first time in 1976, it was incredibly slow, but then just to add to it's slowness, if that makes sense, is that we made each message go through cypher before being sent then de-cyphered at the other end, it was sllllooooowwww.

As an aside, we also used a fax machine, the same year 1976, except it was called MuFax. You put the original on a drum that spun round whilst an electrical kind of optical arm "read" it. it was then transmitted the same way cypher, de-cypher over MilNet and then on the receiving end you put a wet "special" paper on the receiving spinning Drum and an electrical arm burnt a replica of the original, all good stuff, except when the paper kept ripping !!!!

I was in the Royal Corps of Signals!
Things did improve, although a lot of it is still classified. Some journalist wrote a book on the work I did between 1976 and 1981 in Northern Ireland, yes I was there for five years, and he is now due in court before Christmas, and his book in languishing in some government warehouse somewhere, so it is obviously still a touchy subject !!!

In reply to a post by bbjiggy:

I still remember my Fidonet address. Them were the days. All fields.

I never managed a Fidonet address but had an ARPANET email address briefly when I first went online in 1989 (VT320 on a Gandalf network - press 'break' for a connection). ARPANET shut down early in 1990 by which time I'd been given a shiny new internet email address..

My first internet connection at home was dialup in 1994 but since then I've been through two leased lines, ADSL and finally to VDSL (a few weeks ago) so 'broadband' since 1998.

In reply to a post by kasg:

Lol. From memory my account number was 100127,2643.

In reply to a post by Andrue:

100272,3403. I rarely forget numbers. (or was it 3407??? )

Mine was 100761,3303

Wondered if any of you used INETNEW, INETPUB, NETSCAPE, or any of the 'Go Graphics' forums? I was a SysOp/WizOp in some of these forums!

I never had a Compuserve ID (nor AOL) but I remember almost all of the static IP addresses I've had in the past

Been on the Web long enough to have used Netscape (Navigator).

And wasn't there something like "Alta Vista"?

Also vaguely remember writing a few early, simple HTML scripts.

It was Mozilla before becoming the Netscape browser - I threw out my CD with registered version of Netscape a while back.

Alta Vista was what we used before Google searches

"Back in my day", ( mid "70's), our ethernet was a single, thick, co-ax cable running throughout the building and one connected to it by attaching a "tap" that bolted onto the cable with a sharp point that pierced the cable. see here.

Imagine laying this throughout your house!

We had a combination of thick wire (with taps), thin wire (some of which had the proper connectors to allow you to connect a drop wire without taking down the whole network) and token ring.

Oh, and of course lots of serial cables running around for connecting all the VT terminals. And whatever the mainframe terminals used to connect (can't remember what sort of cabling was used for them as I didn't support them).

IP running over cat3 was a godsend for replacing all these horrible networks.

I think that "Mufax" would be an abbreviation of "Muirhead Facsimile", a machine much used in transmitting photos from sources etc to newspaper offices.

Although I never used one of that species, I remember it being part of the Telecomms Course at the Heriot-Watt College (now University) in the mid-1950s.

It may surprise many that the Facsimile Machine was invented in 1842-

http://strowger-net.telefoonmuseum.com/tel_hist_fax....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Bain_(inventor)

------------------------

I did use a much more recent fax to prove out our company (private) international intranet connections in the 1990s.

It had existed for some years within the UK; and had recently been extended to include our various North American sites.

Amongst the specifics, a MAC-type printer was listed in Los Angeles.

I wanted to ensure that the particular connection existed; and decided to send a page to it over the intranet, asking anyone who viewed it in LA to fax it back.

Then I produced the message on an (early) MAC, sending it in to the intranet via the "Localtalk/Appletalk", almost immediately being converted to Ethernet standards by a Kinetics Fastpath (KFP) onwards and outwards by the phone network, satellite etc to "eventually" arrive at that LA Printer.

About 15 minutes later as I returned to my office, I took a look at our local fax machine - and there it was!

It must have been a real "early bird" in LA, for it to have been taken to their fax and transmitted back.

Traitor! I was the engineering manager for fax and electronic typewriters for Rank Xerox back in the late 80's early 90's!

In reply to a post by eckiedoo:

And wasn't there something like "Alta Vista"?

Pioneering early search engine developed by Digital Equipment Corporation, first one I used and for years was the default start page on the PCs at work. Could have been great but overtaken by Google. Bought by Yahoo, finally retired in 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista

"Vampire Taps"; and you had to be very careful and pedantic, to ensure that it was done properly. (A simpler version is available for making "live" connections to water pipes.)

Also the "Thick Ethernet" had markings about every 2.5 Metres; and you had to make sure that this was the minimum distance between adjacent taps, otherwise there could be standing/reflected wave problems.

I have fitted many of them; but one stands out, as it fed a particularly critical department.

As a result I had to climb a 25 foot, 4 part extension ladder, to reach the location up in the roof structure, carrying the required parts tucked in to my shirt and pockets.

No platforms etc, teetering and manoeuvring at the top of a shoogly (shaky and "buckling") ladder, two Works Engineering staff trying to steady it at the bottom; and because of it being in a "corridor", unable to get the ladder over to the best angle from vertical.

And being up in the roof - extremely warm.

The first operation was to fit a clamp, an essential part of the Vampire Tap Unit, on to the cable, making sure that all four Allen screws were properly bedded down, not trapping any insulation.

If even this "simple" operation was not done properly, the actual pointed tap, which was later screwed in to the clamp, would not fully penetrate the coax cable and reach the centre conductor.

In that aspect, all dimensions affecting the tap penetration were critical.

The next operation was to drill in to the cable, via the tap threaded hole in that clamp; but with a special, hand operated drill.

Basically a short drill bit about 1/4 inch long (6mm) mounted in a handle.

Generally the clamp and tap hole was on the far side of the cable, so one had to reach beyond that point, then bring the drill bit back towards oneself; but in that hole.

Then twist the drill etc anti-clockwise as viewed, pulling it towards oneself, hand and wrist bent at right-angles, to aid the penetration of the cable - generally the opposite direction to conventional drilling.

Making sure that the hole was cleared of swarf, the tap was fitted in to the clamp, again having to be fully screwed in to ensure the proper penetration to the inner conductor.

Mount the main body of the tap unit to the clamp, then strapping it in this case to the inverted L-shaped roof beam.

Connect up the drop cable, in this case a particularly long and heavy one; and strapping it to the beam at least twice, using three nylon straps to each strap group.

What would be the centre strap of each group was tightened on the beam alone first, placing the cable over/outside/not trapped by this strap, followed by the other two enclosing the drop cable, either side and as close to the centre strap as possible, thus forming a shallow "omega" in the cable giving extremely good retention.

Additionally, to help ensure good connections at the main tap unit, ensuring that the immediate part of the cable had some slack which was absorbed as some compression in to the tap unit.

This was done by ensuring that the leading edge of the shroud reached the main end face of the tap unit, tightening the two restraining straps in the first group, then pulling the cable connector back slightly, to offer up to and enter the corresponding connector on the tap unit, thus compressed or "forced in".

The second (and occasionally more) group of ties helped ensure that any subsequent minor movements of the drop cable would not affect the tap unit connections.

Wearily and warily descend the ladder, to connect the lower end of the drop cable to the Server, with its onward connections to the PCs or terminals; and ensuring that all were working correctly.

Make my way back about 1/3 mile (600 Metres), to resume my program writing, systems analyses, general trouble-shooting et al.

Also many a caper with Thin Ethernet and Appletalk.

==================

On another occasion when we had taken over another building, the local management insisted on employing a networking company to make 5 similar connections to a new, thick Ethernet cable, at about 7 foot (2.2 metres) above floor level etc and easily accessed,

I subsequently had to re-do four of them, basically the clamps had not been properly mounted, showing slack in the Allen screws, trapping etc, so all the rest of the operation suffered.

Edited by deleted (Thu 04-Sep-14 12:00:52)

Methinks that J Arthur Rank and also the Xerox pioneer, Charles Carlson, were not even "twinkles in their fathers's eyes", when Muirhead was working!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Muirhead

Edited by deleted (Thu 04-Sep-14 14:15:41)

I think I have a Muirhead signal generator in my shed!

"Thinwire" Ethernet and LocalTalk/AppleTalk.

More technical this time; and no ladders!

I was called late one afternoon, to a newly-arisen problem, in a location where the user, Jim, had an early MAC connected by AppleTalk (AT) to a Kinetics FastPath, KFP, which altered the protocols appropriately from AT to Ethernet for outgoing packets and the other way round for incoming packets.

Jim was accustomed to sending Print Files from his MAC to an Ethernet printer, a short distance away; and them taking about 4 to 5 minutes to actually physically print (long document, many pages).

Suddenly that day or afternoon, this job was taking over 4 hours; but all other print jobs and the PC/Terminal users on Ethernet were not encountering any problems, to them every thing was normal.

I had a quick look around, restarting the KFP, printer etc, not spotting anything, so off home.

The following morning having run my "Dawn Patrol" procedures on our 3 large DEC VAX computers, which included amongst other things, sending a Test Signal to equipment in a remote building about 3/4 mile away (1 Kilometre) over BT Kilostream and getting a reply confirming that generally all was well, I returned to Jim's location and that printer problem.

I had a more thorough look around, still not seeing anything untoward.

Then talking to Jim some distance away from his desk, I spotted that another desk had been moved; and that the ThinWire Ethernet network in the immediate vicinity had been interfered with, a single longish co-ax cable of uncertain origin, therefore impedance, had been added to the vertical of the "T" piece connector, which normally would have been connected directly in to the equipment on that moved desk, this "extension" being substituted to reach the desk's new position.

I immediately removed the extension from the T piece, followed by removing it from the desk equipment.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

The printer immediately speeded up on Jim's job, returning to its customary 4 minutes approximately.

The other user started to protest that he had lost "2 hours work" because of my rapid corrective action - he had only been in about 1/2 an hour.

"Did you do any 'SAVEs' during that work - "No".

He threatened to report me to "Senior Management" etc; and ranted on in similar vein - until I pointed out to him that this would make HIM open to "Immediate Dismissal for Unauthorised interference etc of any of the Networks" (Staff Conditions of Employment) as he would have to have confessed to having done so.

I was the only person directly authorised to extend and/or modify any of the networks, over several buildings and dispersed sites, except if any other person was working to my instructions.

Plus his lack of professionalism and expertise by not having carried out any "SAVEs" over an extended period.

My recommendation was that a "SAVE" should be done about every 10 minutes, even if the change was a single key-stroke; and if there were any significantly larger changes such as merging other files, then the saving should be done immediately afterwards.

Also that users should occasionally create their own back-up copy of the file/s with appropriate changes to the names, slightly difficult under the old 8.3 naming regime.

Whilst he was calming down at the possible prospect of Instant Dismissal, I organised the proper extension, using two cables, with a T Piece into his equipment; and making the necessary changes at the original T Piece.
-------------------------
The Design Engineers involved had little practical experience of networking, transmission lines, reflections etc, so were not immediately aware of possible effects of using the wrong type of co-ax cable, dummy loads etc, with the Ethernet impedance being 50 ohms, whilst so much other co-ax being about 75 ohms, with little visual difference.

The purchase of an early TDR, Time Domain Reflectometer or my Pocket Radar Set, made a big difference to maintaining the Ethernet networks, helping by locating any reflection, the approximate distance to most faults; and the testing of any new cabling both whilst being produced and assembled.

Later I would place the new section in its intended working location, do some tests with the TDR, then do a quick swap, the latter could interrupt the run of Ethernet for up to about 15 seconds before causing observable problems to the users.

Bigger changes particular any involving cutting a long run and re-terminating had to be done in "quiet time". If the long run was readily accessible, then the previous method was used.

Experimentally I tested Thinwire Ethernet out to about 2,000 feet (600 Metres) using reels of cable, for an urgent extension of about 1500 feet (450 Metres).

That extension worked for many years, until abandoned due to the building changing hands.

Oh yes, I was aware of it's history, the earlier versions were horrendous, but the principle was there and they worked !!!

We used ours for Up to Confidential material, maps, photos etc. Nothing above Confidential was ever sent via MuFax and I never understood why because it went through the exact same process as all our other kit. So there must have been a flaw somewhere or perceived flaw somewhere in the kit!
Never did get to the bottom of it!

Anyone remember using Gopher
Edit to correctly call it the Gopher protocol !!!
Makes it easier to lookup on google if it rings a bell with you

Edited by TrevorSP (Wed 10-Sep-14 17:22:14)

Oh oh oh, and CiX internet Exchange too, that was my first "social" line into the house
You could send emails using AMEOL, and the rest was just a BB Forum !!!

Edit to add, they still exist at http://www.cixonline.com/
Edit AGAIN, just to add they have JUST been sold on......

Edited by TrevorSP (Wed 10-Sep-14 20:16:55)

Ketchup! http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general/t/4354455-2...

Oi, I read all the threads

I am an old(ish) bloke now, forgive me the odd error here or there !!!! Especially on here, one of the more civilised forums around !!!

I was also a member of CiIX Conferencing with a 1200 baud modem initially, from an Amstrad 1512 with a 20Mb hard Disc, with Ameol. The earliest email I have from those days is dated Jan 97, though I am sure I have email before that - if no one to send to.

Very much enjoyed this thread. It has brought back many happy memories.

I'd forgotten about CIX� I liked that one

Reminded me that I was also on Delphi for a while, didn't think too much of that.

In reply to a post by TrevorSP:

Anyone remember using Gopher
Edit to correctly call it the Gopher protocol !!!
Makes it easier to lookup on google if it rings a bell with you

Indeed - I used the university's "Experimental Gopher Service" which went live in 1994.

Edited by caffn8me (Thu 11-Sep-14 12:10:32)

Yes, I have enjoyed this thread too, brought back many a happy memory

Punch cards, sticking selotape dots on them to change the odd character here and there, but before that I used Murray tape (punched paper tape with a capacity for five data holes and one sprocket hole width ways) and then after that it had an extra three data holes added and they gave it the stunning name of "8x punched computer tape"!

We used murray tape (the thin one) for transmitting data back and forth, but the eight hole tape for distributing cryptographic keys in tamperproof canisters to the many people communicating with us

Edit to add that I have stacks of photos somewhere, must dig them out for you all sometime, see if I can get some more memories going

B R I T I S H F O R C E S (and proud of it) !!!!
We led the world in some fields in the early 70's through to the 90's.
In some fields, that I can't mention, we still lead the field

BT







NNNN

Edited by TrevorSP (Thu 11-Sep-14 15:22:23)

In reply to a post by TrevorSP:

........ brought back many a happy memory

How many here remember programming in ALGOL 60?

In reply to a post by Stevenage_Neil:

In reply to a post by TrevorSP:

........ brought back many a happy memory

How many here remember programming in ALGOL 60?

I did a bit at uni. also Algol 68. Algol 68 was great for writing entire programs in a single line!