4 ms·

Worth mentioning since it's unimaginable to many kids today, in the BBS days, there was no multitasking. When you kicked off a download that took 40 minutes, yo

Worth mentioning since it's unimaginable to many kids today, in the BBS days, there was no multitasking. When you kicked off a download that took 40 minutes, you couldn't do anything at all with your computer while it was transferring. (at least for MS-DOS users, who were the vast majority) All you had on your screen was the progress meter, some statistics, and an abort button. One day I came across a drop-in replacement for the zmodem transfer executable called "super zmodem" that let you play ascii Tetris while a transfer was going on and it blew my fricking mind. In total I probably played more Tetris on that download screen than I did with my Nintendo Gameboy that only had three games.

ruslan 5y ago
Many Fidonet mailers, like Binkley or T-Mail supported Hydra which was novel multi-streaming bidirectional serial protocol. You could download several files while uploading your outbound mail at the same time. It was very useful for those lucky possessed 28800 baud modems like ZyXEL Elite or US Robotics Courier (mid/late 90th).
bink 5y ago
You couldn't do anything unless you had software like Desqview. That was a revolution.
- timbit42 5y ago
  OS/2 was better. It had pre-emptive multi-tasking like the Amiga, but with memory protection to prevent crashes. A friend ran a DOS BBS so I left him my OS/2 Warp so he could use his computer while the BBS was up.
ryandrake 5y ago
Not if you used DESQview [1]. I think everyone serious about BBSing used DESQview to multitask in DOS. Then along came DESQview/X... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  Yeah DESQview was interesting but you couldn't do everything in it because most serious programs would need all the resources of the computer, or they'd interfere with the IRQ assignments, leading to many crashes. We're talking a time before even as much as cooperative multitasking of course. DESQview was multitasking programs that were not even meant for it. Most people I knew didn't use it for that reason. If I really wanted to multitask while BBS'ing I'd just grab my Amiga I had beside the PC (which in itself actually had a real pre-emptive multitasking OS in ROM!). There were a few programs that could do something else while a download was happening, like Telemate. It gave you at least a text editor and a file manager IIRC.
  - jboy55 5y ago
    I did all my BBSing with my Amiga 500. I don't think I ever dared do too much multitasking while I was downloading. First, had to download to RAM:, because if you did something that involved disk, you could get a timeout. If you messed up the transfer, and you got disconnected, then you'd have to try and redial to get back on, which could take hours.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      This is true... Disk access on Amiga was pretty crap, indeed. Often causing errors. And a HDD was super expensive so I didn't have one (just like a floppy drive was in the 8-bit age) To be honest I didn't do much downloading at all in those days.. Just didn't have the patience for it. If I did do it I would do so over packet radio that I could just leave running all night. I had a third old PC just for that :) Another reason that I didn't BBS much on my Amiga was that my modem was inside my PC on an ISA card for most of the time I used BBS'es. So I had to run a program on the PC to forward the modem data over a null-modem to the Amiga so either way I couldn't use the PC. So usually my PC was for modem use and the Amiga for other stuff.
      - jboy55 5y ago
        Something else just flashed into my mind from my Amiga days, I believe right clicking paused the serial port. Depending on the protocol, it could resume, but I usually ran Ymodem-G, with little issues with data corruption, but could eek out an extra 5-10% data speed. It also didn't resume all that reliably, another mark against using Multi-tasking while downloading on the Amiga.

ruslan 5y ago

Many Fidonet mailers, like Binkley or T-Mail supported Hydra which was novel multi-streaming bidirectional serial protocol. You could download several files while uploading your outbound mail at the same time. It was very useful for those lucky possessed 28800 baud modems like ZyXEL Elite or US Robotics Courier (mid/late 90th).

bink 5y ago

You couldn't do anything unless you had software like Desqview. That was a revolution.

timbit42 5y ago
OS/2 was better. It had pre-emptive multi-tasking like the Amiga, but with memory protection to prevent crashes. A friend ran a DOS BBS so I left him my OS/2 Warp so he could use his computer while the BBS was up.

ryandrake 5y ago

Not if you used DESQview [1]. I think everyone serious about BBSing used DESQview to multitask in DOS. Then along came DESQview/X... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview

GekkePrutser 5y ago
Yeah DESQview was interesting but you couldn't do everything in it because most serious programs would need all the resources of the computer, or they'd interfere with the IRQ assignments, leading to many crashes. We're talking a time before even as much as cooperative multitasking of course. DESQview was multitasking programs that were not even meant for it. Most people I knew didn't use it for that reason. If I really wanted to multitask while BBS'ing I'd just grab my Amiga I had beside the PC (which in itself actually had a real pre-emptive multitasking OS in ROM!). There were a few programs that could do something else while a download was happening, like Telemate. It gave you at least a text editor and a file manager IIRC.
- jboy55 5y ago
  I did all my BBSing with my Amiga 500. I don't think I ever dared do too much multitasking while I was downloading. First, had to download to RAM:, because if you did something that involved disk, you could get a timeout. If you messed up the transfer, and you got disconnected, then you'd have to try and redial to get back on, which could take hours.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    This is true... Disk access on Amiga was pretty crap, indeed. Often causing errors. And a HDD was super expensive so I didn't have one (just like a floppy drive was in the 8-bit age) To be honest I didn't do much downloading at all in those days.. Just didn't have the patience for it. If I did do it I would do so over packet radio that I could just leave running all night. I had a third old PC just for that :) Another reason that I didn't BBS much on my Amiga was that my modem was inside my PC on an ISA card for most of the time I used BBS'es. So I had to run a program on the PC to forward the modem data over a null-modem to the Amiga so either way I couldn't use the PC. So usually my PC was for modem use and the Amiga for other stuff.
    - jboy55 5y ago
      Something else just flashed into my mind from my Amiga days, I believe right clicking paused the serial port. Depending on the protocol, it could resume, but I usually ran Ymodem-G, with little issues with data corruption, but could eek out an extra 5-10% data speed. It also didn't resume all that reliably, another mark against using Multi-tasking while downloading on the Amiga.