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I was just saying to someone that we had IM on IBM mainframes (the chat facility) or the (confusingly named) Ethernet on DEC VAXes back in the mid 80s. What we
by gordonguthrie 14y ago
I was just saying to someone that we had IM on IBM mainframes (the chat facility) or the (confusingly named) Ethernet on DEC VAXes back in the mid 80s.
What we used them for was 'are you going for tea?' and other social chit-chat between the various terminal rooms up the Uni...
- dhimes 14y agoyep- just installed ytalk on my Debian dev box for this. Works great!
- zaptheimpaler 14y agoI just discovered the 'kibitz' command on linux, which is basically remote desktop assistance for linux (well, remote terminal). Apparently, this is used for chatting quite often too (i.e open up a text editor). EDIT: screen can do this too! screen -x can attach to a non-detached screen session.
- KC8ZKF 14y agoCan't you just use talk(1)?
- dredmorbius 14y agoIn a quaint bit of online archaeology, Douglas Hofstadters' Metamagical Themas describes his experiences using some of the early Unix communications tools, particularly talk (predecessor to IRC) and the dynamics it triggered. They're very, very similar to what emerged later as IM and SMS became prevalent. Modulo the rather smaller share of users in possession of PhDs in mathematics, computer science, or other technical disciplines.