3 ms·

This immediately reminded me of GIFLink. It was a layer over protocols like zmodem that rendered images as they downloaded. Think of that for a second. Modems

This immediately reminded me of GIFLink. It was a layer over protocols like zmodem that rendered images as they downloaded. Think of that for a second. Modems were so slow that you could watch the image line by line render to decide if you wanted to continue on with the download. Yes they were porn images.

Grishnakh 10y ago
I remember the "porn" images from the BBS days. They were pretty laughable really, usually just pictures of naked women, frequently showing only their bare breasts and obscuring the rest. I think they were frequently just scans from Playboy, which was rather tame. Compare to these days, where there's all kinds of crazy hard-core stuff available for free with a quick Bing search, in both still-photo and video.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  No disrespect but you weren't calling the right BBSs.
nsxwolf 10y ago
And if you were too overeager you'd be "finished" before the image got down to the first nipple...
DanBC 10y ago
Gif89 had interlacing, so people might not understand what GIFLink does. Here's the spec for gif89: https://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt https://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt Here's an example BBS file list (or CD Rom dump) with some utilities, including GIFLink (and others). http://www.terminate.com/download/factory.txt http://www.terminate.com/download/factory.txt GIFLK112.ZIP 198.803 19-10-93 GIFLink v1.12 - View transmitting GIF images while downloading What people might not know is that GIFLink cost money. $30! But that would easily be saved if it reduced the amount of images being downloaded. ftp://ftp.retronn.de/dos/dfue/TER500/DOCS/PROTOCOL.DOC GifLink Filename: GIFLK112.ZIP Price: $30 A Zmodem that allows you to view GIF images while you download. Maybe a nice feature if you really spend hours and hours downloading GIFs. I'm not sure when that price was active. (That text has a copyright of 1994 to 1997). Maybe the file is available here? http://cd.textfiles.com/expandin/BBSUTIL1/ http://cd.textfiles.com/expandin/BBSUTIL1/

Grishnakh 10y ago

I remember the "porn" images from the BBS days. They were pretty laughable really, usually just pictures of naked women, frequently showing only their bare breasts and obscuring the rest. I think they were frequently just scans from Playboy, which was rather tame. Compare to these days, where there's all kinds of crazy hard-core stuff available for free with a quick Bing search, in both still-photo and video.

nsxwolf 10y ago
No disrespect but you weren't calling the right BBSs.

nsxwolf 10y ago

And if you were too overeager you'd be "finished" before the image got down to the first nipple...

DanBC 10y ago

Gif89 had interlacing, so people might not understand what GIFLink does. Here's the spec for gif89: https://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt https://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt Here's an example BBS file list (or CD Rom dump) with some utilities, including GIFLink (and others). http://www.terminate.com/download/factory.txt http://www.terminate.com/download/factory.txt GIFLK112.ZIP 198.803 19-10-93 GIFLink v1.12 - View transmitting GIF images while downloading What people might not know is that GIFLink cost money. $30! But that would easily be saved if it reduced the amount of images being downloaded. ftp://ftp.retronn.de/dos/dfue/TER500/DOCS/PROTOCOL.DOC GifLink Filename: GIFLK112.ZIP Price: $30 A Zmodem that allows you to view GIF images while you download. Maybe a nice feature if you really spend hours and hours downloading GIFs. I'm not sure when that price was active. (That text has a copyright of 1994 to 1997). Maybe the file is available here? http://cd.textfiles.com/expandin/BBSUTIL1/ http://cd.textfiles.com/expandin/BBSUTIL1/