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.