Days Before The Internet


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92 ish, the only way electronically mail the world was through mail packets via a BBS (Bulletin Board System) These were small local friendly systems, with access to Fido Mail. Each board was called a Node. Every BBS 'Sysop' had to compress and transfer mail packets by phone every day. These packets were merged into larger packets at fido hubs for onward transmission to the USA. The return mail was transfered in the same way and distributed to the Nodes. Amazing really how reliable this was.

Local Nottingham BBS's included.

Mission Impossible BBS

Viper BBS (Bulwell) Sysop John ?

Cobra BBS (Retford) Sysop John Cooke

Outer Limits BBS

The Fonty Towers BBS

Maxima BBS

Escape From Reality BBS

I could be found on Viper and Cobra, Any other ex BBS users here ?

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  • 2 weeks later...

The Coming of Diamond Cable to Snottingham was a revolution for data transfer.

News spread through the BBS communities. of the coming of the internet. (Innotts.co.uk)

The new company had a massive 15 lines. We had been spoiled with having 2 nodes on Viper BBS.

Sadly this 15 line monster killed the local BBS's. :(

The calls to both BBS's and the Internet fed on Diamond Cable lines was free after 6, and at weekends, in those days. :D

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Mid 90's Diamond cable stated they no longer allow free internet calls but would charge 1p a minute off peak. Voice calls would remain free.

DC users were up in arms. Meetings were held at different pubs. A demonstration was arranged for a Saturday. It was held at DC headquarters 'Diamond Plaza' Colwick. The militant Internet users gathered to find tha DC had laid on a Marquee with food and drink. The hungry crowd were soon tempted in. I have to give it to DC. for turning the whole thing round to their advantage. What a publicity coupe.

Of course we all ended up paying 1p a minute :o

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  • 4 months later...

When I first got licensed as a ham radio operator in 1991 I got involved in Packet Radio and set up a digipeater with mailbox for use by other hams, 28kbs if I recall All sent and received on the two metre band.(144mhz) Seems the internet has just about killed off packet radio on VHF now.

John

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  • 3 years later...
Local Nottingham BBS's included.

Viper BBS (Bulwell) Sysop John ?

Viper BBS (Bulwell) was run by John Baker.

I believe he moved to the USA.

What happened to him?

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This takes me back,,, not too far tho' !

I dabbled with BBS,,,, but not much.

I had not long been into 'computing'.

Before this - My mate had a Commadore,,,, & we had minutes of fun on it after the pub,,,,, as it was mainly a Game Console.

I decided I wanted a computer,,,,,, not just a games thingy so went on the prowl,,,, it wasn't long before I came upon the Atari 800XL

This was an actual computer, capable of,,, well,,, computing !

No monitor - it just plugged into the TV. My first 'learning curve' was to write logo's etc on the screen,,,,, but being a bit clever, I connected my Atari to my Video recorder. With a bit of piggery jokery I managed to put writing/logo's on programs & pictures.

No CD drives either - yet. The only 'input' was via a cassette tape. This was followed rather swiftly by a Floppy drive (the 5 1/4" version).

I didn't know at the time, but these great computers also had some musical capabilities and hundreds of people used them for composing & playing music. When these machines stopped being the 'main-line' people were still buying them (as I think they still do) just for this music bit.

(*Anyone want a absolute great cond Atari 800XL & cassette player ? Will be selling mine soon,,,, along with few games & magazines etc(if I can find 'em).

Another mate then bought (through my company) a proper Hyundai computer (not called PC's yet)

This had 30mb hard drive. 5 1/4" & 3 1/2" floppy drives and a Wide carriage dot matrix printer. We were getting somewhere now.

(* Anyone want one of the first REAL computers - this will also be for sale soon - as will the printer)

As usual, "I wanted one"

I scraped the considerable amount of £2k together & ordered my machine. It was a PCU brand - with built-in modem (hence the BBS bit),,,, but mine boasted 52mb hard drive,,,,,,,, my mate Roger said "you'll never need all that,,,,,"

The bug had bitten - and this was before a little thing called Windows - only DOS system available.

(* Anyone want a PCU with modem & MASSIVE 52mb HDD ? Mine will be for sale soon (tho' CPU is buggered)

I had the Modem version, mainly to send/receive faxes, as I used to fax all over the world. (I faxed a mate New Year greetings once, whilst he was working on the QE2 in the Indian Ocean,,,,,, caused a bit of a stir at the time,,,,)

((*anyone want to buy a slightly used QE2 ? ooops, it's sold)

Since then, never been without a computer. The trouble is that I was working hard at the time, & using the computer as an aid,,,,,, & didn't get to learn 'actual' computing,,,, which I am now sorry for,,,,,

(((am putting post on computer bit,,,,,, have a look,,,, I need help !!)

cheers folks

BAZ

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Yep! I was on IND3X and EFR many years ago. We lost touch for 10 or so years but have now reunited on facebook. It's not quite the same as chatting on the BBS but it serves its purpose.

92 ish, the only way electronically mail the world was through mail packets via a BBS (Bulletin Board System) These were small local friendly systems, with access to Fido Mail. Each board was called a Node. Every BBS 'Sysop' had to compress and transfer mail packets by phone every day. These packets were merged into larger packets at fido hubs for onward transmission to the USA. The return mail was transfered in the same way and distributed to the Nodes. Amazing really how reliable this was.

Local Nottingham BBS's included.

Mission Impossible BBS

Viper BBS (Bulwell) Sysop John ?

Cobra BBS (Retford) Sysop John Cooke

Outer Limits BBS

The Fonty Towers BBS

Maxima BBS

Escape From Reality BBS

I could be found on Viper and Cobra, Any other ex BBS users here ?

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I started with a Commadore64 way back in the early 80's, at work we had a local software pirating circle with some of the lads down at the local power station. Yeh even back then, software was expensive, so we shared it!

My next machine was a Commadore Amiga 1000, not a terribly popular machine, the 500 and 2000 were the selling ones. It had loads of ram, 1mb!!! Well it was big those days! 3.5 floppy too!

Then in the late 80's PC's had lowered enough in price to purchase one. I also had an old 8086 chipped machine for learning morse code on and later used it for packet digital radio via a TNC, (modem).

First internet connection was around 14 years ago now, 28.8kbs! But the actual connection was much slower living in a country region.

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First Modem was a 2400, later upgraded to a 'lightning fast' US Robotics 14,400.

First computer was a 486/25 bought from Atom Computers Stapleford. About £500 I think? A lot of money in the early 90's

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The first PC we had, or rather the missus was a 286, with 40mb HD and 250k or Ram!! With printer cost over a thousand bucks, that was in 1989.

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First computer was an Atari 520 ST back in about 1985. Upgraded to a mega four with 100 meg HD. Good machine but Atari never overcame its video game image and expired. Still have the mega four. Need to sell it one of these days or will it ever become a real collectors item?

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  • 2 months later...

mighty atom BBS run by some pip squeek call rob henton in aspley.

my first computer was a comadore 16 plus 4,

along with a vic 20, then a 64..

an amiga, atari st etc etc..

first real PS was an amstrad 086 with 10mg HD and 640k base ram..

woo, i use this for decoding data on amateur radio..

then progressed to running a amateur radio BBS and node same as a PC/internet BBS but over a radio instead.

now i have about 5 PC rigged up in the house on a home network and run two cable modems at 20mg each..

run a live CB stream on the net and hopefully adding a second channel..!!!

how times have changed,

and the amateur radio thing ??? knocked it on the head..

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My first PC was a Sanyo 550 - 512K of memory, two SINGLE sided 5-1/4 floppy drives and a 4.77Mhz 8086! It came bundled with WordStar and a spreadsheet program. Worked great and got me started into PCs - since then I think I have had one of each of the processors - 80186, 80286, 80486 etc.

These days I don't bother so much - what I have seems to work fine - but a 25" flat-screen LCD monitor did make a huge difference!

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  • 2 months later...

Viper BBS was run by John Baker of Top valley, i helped out with it has a kid.

What killed it off wasnt any other killer BBS (i can remember the bigger boys coming to see my dad lots of times for help) it was actually the internet.

I believe that somewhere i might still have the backup tapes for Viper, it was running the wildcat! system.

I used to sit there sometimes spying on the nodes and screwing with you all by pressing random keys to freak you out :)

It was through this... i think that Mick got to know my Dad?

Happy daze!

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Ayup Matt welcome aboard (I'm sure Mick'll get back to you when he can find a minute)

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  • 5 months later...
  • 6 months later...

I had a ZX81....black and white...terrible graphics..wobbly ram pack that plugged in the back and kept falling off....but "I WROTE MY NAME ON MY TELLY SCREEN" ( very impessed at the time....within a few weeks i could make my name move too.)

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The days before the internet, before 1993ish, I used to play packet radio on two metres, (144mhz) Slow as hell compared to the high speed packets we have over the telephone lines now.

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  • 3 months later...

packet radio.....ah...

i used to run GB7KAP and KAPPA node from Hucknall a few years back, still hold the NOV for it too..

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Riding shotgun with Phil the Iron Cross early 80's I came face to face with some Alphas, Tracked turkying on Gedling Rec.

What ever happened to Phil I wonder.

Now wheres that Dummy Load?

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  • 4 months later...

The Fido Nodelist still exists.

There were 1000's of bbs's around the world.

What happened to all of those Sysops?

Some Local BBS's from

FidoNet Nodelist for Friday, February 9, 1996

ind3x_[1],Nottingham,Simon_Gledhill,

Ami-D_BBS,Nottingham,Jimmy_White,

Fast_Attack,Nottingham,Paul_Talik,

Cobra,Retford_Notts.,Michael_Cowgill,

Diamond_Line,Nottingham,Jay_Severn,

Fonty_Towers_[1],Nottingham,Steven_Holme,

Viper_BBS,Nottingham,John_Baker,

Neptune,Nottingham,Peter_Gill,44-115-9559859,

Rivendell,Kirkby_in_Ashfield_Notts.,Paul_Dingley,

The_Avenue,Kirkby_in_Ashfield_Notts.,Alfie_Geeson,

Plains,Nottingham,Nick_Button,

Fonty_Towers_[2],Nottingham,Steven_Holme,

Enigma,Nottingham,Gary_Saxton,

zzApp,Bingham_Notts.,David_Moody,

Sherwood_Thieves,Retford_Notts.,Glyn_Carnell,

Utopia,Warsop_Notts.,Steve_Olechnowicz,

Attention,Nottingham,Glen_Bel-Geddes,

Fonty_Towers_[3],Nottingham,Steven_Holme,

Maxima_BBS_[1],Nottingham,Gary_Collins

Maxima_BBS_[2],Nottingham,Gary_Collins,

Fonty_Towers_[4],Nottingham,Steven_Holme,

3000,Leicestershire_Hub,Leicester,Nick_Petkovich,

Formal_Dress_Not_Essential,Leicester,Nick_Petkovich

The_Night_Owl's_Mailer,Sutton_Bonnington_Leics.,F_W_Dajani,

Fast_Attack_BBS,Loughborough_Leics.,David_Pytel,

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