Comment Feed for Twit the new BBS (Coffeehouse on Channel 9)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

Bent Rasmussen — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:29:50 GMT

Around 1:20 there is a demonstration of using the screwdriver -

Computers sure are exciting!

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

Bas — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:03:03 GMT

Before the C64 there was the TI 99/4A, and it was superior in every way solely because I had one instead of a C64.

Also: screwdriver to rewind was okay, but the preferrable way to do so was to stick a pencil through it, and then quickly spin the tape on the pencil over your head.

Our first computer was an MSX2 which had a 3.5" floppy drive. It wasn't even really ours, it belonged to the school my dad worked for and he sometimes brought it home for the holidays, and very occasionally weekends.

Oh hey, MSX computers for schools: did yours have the name of the school branded into the plastic case? Because ours did, and that always fascinated me as a child for some reason. Branded as in somebody pressing a hot metal stamp on it to melt the name into the plastic.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

Sven Groot — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:02:50 GMT

I somehow managed to skip the whole tape drive thing. Although I had plenty of friends with computers with tapedrives, we never had one. Our first computer was an MSX2 which had a 3.5" floppy drive. It wasn't even really ours, it belonged to the school my dad worked for and he sometimes brought it home for the holidays, and very occasionally weekends. Later he did the same with one of their first 286 PCs with a 40MB hard drive and Windows 3.0.

The first PC that my parents actually bought for themselves was a 486DX2 66MHz, with a 420MB hard drive, Cirrus Logic video card and some cheap Sound Blaster compatible sound card. :)

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

Bent Rasmussen — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:50:09 GMT

Oh yes, remember using the screwdriver to tune the tapedrive to be able to read the games for the C64. Most famous line? "Press play on tape" :-) Before the C64 there was... well, I don't want to remember further back.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

Dorian Muthig — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:18:17 GMT

Hey, I still have a 5.25" 1.2MB Floppy disk drive around. I know modern BIOSes still support those on the FDD channel, if I go dig the cable out of my box with decade old computer parts. However, support for 1.2MB floppies was kinda broken since XP SP2. Will that work again in Windows 7? I would like a new icon for it, too. :P

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

AndyC — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:39:11 GMT

Indeed. I remember when upgrading storage meant using a C60 instead of a C15.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

blowdart — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:32:24 GMT

You were spoiled. Disk drives indeed.

Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

DCMonkey — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:57:54 GMT

Our first family PC had not one but two floppy drives! That was like 320K storage alone! And then we got a Iomega Bernoulli Drive with 5MB and 10MB cartridges the size of a coffee table book!

I never got into the whole BBS thing, though I do remember downloading a game patch from some BBS once. My fist Internet experience was via a Netcom shell account. I contented myself with Usenet for about a month before my friend convinced me to install TIA and Netscape and check out this "World Wide Web" thing.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

PaoloM — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:23:41 GMT

Apple Disk Drive ][

Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

W3bbo — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:17:35 GMT

My first, a 1996 Dell, had a 1.52GB HDD (oh yes, 3 significant figures) and 16MB of RAM.

My computer has 1.5TB of HDD, and combined my 4 most recent computers have 16GB of RAM (6/2/4/4).

Thousand-fold increase in 13 years, not bad.

Re: Twit the new BBS

Scott — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:08:21 GMT

Heh, while we're reminiscing, let me fire up my Apple II/C and play some Space Rogue (which is oddly similar to the current Eve Online, but not online).

My first internet experience was with Prodigy over a 1200baud modem on a 386sx 16MHz with a 10MB hard drive. My username was BWX54E (the first five were the account, and I was the fifth member of the family).

As far as the thread's topic goes, I agree. All the popular sites nowadays are just fancy newsgroups/chat rooms.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

Christian Liensberger — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:31:28 GMT

They still had one of these green screens at the math institute at my university a few years ago... it was the device you needed to use to sign you up for an exam. It had a weird screensaver running... There the screensaver had a real purpose, I guess. It's gone now. I wonder what happened to it.

Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

blowdart — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:16:09 GMT

170k?

I wonder how much space was on a C15 tape.

Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

PaoloM — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:25:58 GMT

My first computer had an overall storage capacity of 170KB. My current setup is just shy of 4TB.

23.5 million times in 24 years.

Scary when written like that, eh?

Re: Twit the new BBS

Bent Rasmussen — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:16:28 GMT

Oh those were the days. US Robotics and ZyXEL modems. 300- or was the 1200 Baud and Max'sBBS on a CA1200. Some 313373 BBS's were off-limits for anything under 9000 Baud modems. That was after reading in some C64 demo text scroller about someone using/accessing a BBS on the C64. Someone else attached a multi-gigabyte harddive to a C64 at some point - that was coolness. Back then some people were bragging about 100 MB harddrives to the extent that at one BBS, I forget the name, the sysop had spelled out the capacity - "one hundred and twentyeight megabytes". Better stop before someone links to a certain Monty Python sketch...

Re: Twit the new BBS

Bas — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:34:53 GMT

You're not cool unless you've been on Sierra's The Realm.

Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

figuerres — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:35:15 GMT

Yep, i did that also.... vic-20, c-128

Voodoo i recall havin the dual voodoo rig back then...and Vesa-Local-Bus graphics cards and IDE controller cards from Promise Tech.

Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

SlackmasterK — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 10:10:35 GMT

Hmm, all I recall was S3 and Voodoo.

Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

blowdart — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 08:54:37 GMT

And the news on twitter was generally wrong to boot. But then that's been glossed over. A lot.

Re: Twit the new BBS

brian.shapiro — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:25:03 GMT

I hate how the news media was crediting Twitter with all of the information coming out during the protests in Iran. Ten years ago, that would have just happened on some other technology, like IRC.

Not that Twitter isn't cool in itself. That type of reporting just feeds into all the buzz and trends and delusions of self-importance you have in the tech evangelist side of the blogosphere.

Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

Minh — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 02:53:20 GMT

Hey... old geezers are reminiscing... haha

Anyone remember Q-Link on C-64? They eventually became AOL...

Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

William Stacey — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:43:13 GMT

yggdrasil, post was no intended to be taken so literal. :-)

Re: Twit the new BBS

Yggdrasil — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 23:57:04 GMT

And what do these have to do with twitter? Just because you could leave short messages doesn't make it into twitter. Twitter's interesting uses come from the fact it's updated everywhere via SMS or mobile internet, and the fact that memes spread virally via RTs and hashtags. That's twitter, the social aspects, not the technical.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

William Stacey — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:40:13 GMT

:-) and xmodem

Re: Re: Re: Twit the new BBS

figuerres — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:29:31 GMT

and ymodem ??