I remember when I discovered BBSes. Must have been sometime in the mid-eighties. I found a number in magazine, probably Byte. And I called it, using a TI Silen

I remember when I discovered BBSes. Must have been sometime in the mid-eighties. I found a number in magazine, probably Byte. And I called it, using a TI Silent 700 terminal, which was an acoustic coupler 300-baud modem married to a thermal printer. It was called Silent to differentiate it from noisier (and slower) impact-printer based competitors, such as the IBM 2741, which used the Selectric typewriter bouncing type ball. The 700 could print out text at 30 characters per second on a roll of thermal paper. When it answered, I was presented by a set of menus leading to all sorts of interesting hacking-related text files. But the most interesting text file wasn't a hacking screed. Rather, it was a directory of other BBSes, their areas of interest, and their phone numbers. Think the internet over PSTN. Touring the BBS network of the time, I went thru quite a few rolls of paper and made a significant contribution to the company's phone bill!