3 ms·

I got my first 300 baud modem in 1983. It was life changing. The world that was opened to a kid in Jr High was amazing. It was the Wild Wild West. I had gargage

by baldfat 12y ago

I got my first 300 baud modem in 1983. It was life changing. The world that was opened to a kid in Jr High was amazing. It was the Wild Wild West. I had gargage bags of floppy disk of games and would trade with people in UK. Learned how to hack in Assembly for my C-64. Saw criminals who stole credit cards for tens of thousands of dollars get caught and than hired by Compuserve. Had two brothers who I did game trading with get arrested because they stubled upon a military (Pentagon) server when randomly dialing looking for servers (That was a lot of fun in the day) it was a mystery and the /help or /? would almost always get you in. My Uncle even got me some security work at 15 years of age. The face he made when I broke into his unhackable system (Basically you logged into the server than it hung up on you and called back the phone number that the user name was tied to) To bad you still had to have a root for everything to work and there were HUGE holes in almost everything out there at its time. PS CompuServer was the WORST and never understand how they survived for so long. BBS was the best system ever except for the horrible busy signal because someone was signed on.

300bps 12y ago
I was right behind you in 1985 with a 300 baud Mitey Mo Modem on my Commodore 64. The opportunities that my parents created for me when they saved money for months to get me that system are incalculable. It's one of my biggest struggles today - how do I provide the same level of opportunity to my three children that my parents provided to me?
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
>BBS was the best system ever except for the horrible busy signal because someone was signed on. By the mid-80s multi-line BBS's were supported, the question is whether the operator could afford them. When I was a kid I was dialing into a multi-line chat BBS in the Chicago suburbs. I also dialed into a few traditional BBS's that had 2-4 lines. The BBS revolution was ultimately self-limited. Phone lines were very expensive and that limited who could call you and how many users you could support. It was tough to monetize BBS's as everyone just kept redialing the free ones as opposed to busy-free access to the paid ones (sound familiar?) BBS's were a stop gap measure until we could get real digital connections to the home. Its incredible how the phone monopoly never really understood this outside of super-expensive and super-slow ISDN. Why we didn't have a DSL-like product in the mid to late 80s is beyond me. The demand certainly was there as geeks and businesses were butting their heads on POTS limitations by then. I guess that's just how phone monopolies work. In my neck of the woods the first available broadband wasn't DSL. It was Comcast cable. For all the shit cable providers get, in the early days, they helped keep the phone monopolies honest. The same way google fiber is keeping them honest today and how 2gbps Comcast service is keeping AT&T gigapower honest, etc.

by baldfat 12y ago

300bps 12y ago

I was right behind you in 1985 with a 300 baud Mitey Mo Modem on my Commodore 64. The opportunities that my parents created for me when they saved money for months to get me that system are incalculable. It's one of my biggest struggles today - how do I provide the same level of opportunity to my three children that my parents provided to me?

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

>BBS was the best system ever except for the horrible busy signal because someone was signed on. By the mid-80s multi-line BBS's were supported, the question is whether the operator could afford them. When I was a kid I was dialing into a multi-line chat BBS in the Chicago suburbs. I also dialed into a few traditional BBS's that had 2-4 lines. The BBS revolution was ultimately self-limited. Phone lines were very expensive and that limited who could call you and how many users you could support. It was tough to monetize BBS's as everyone just kept redialing the free ones as opposed to busy-free access to the paid ones (sound familiar?) BBS's were a stop gap measure until we could get real digital connections to the home. Its incredible how the phone monopoly never really understood this outside of super-expensive and super-slow ISDN. Why we didn't have a DSL-like product in the mid to late 80s is beyond me. The demand certainly was there as geeks and businesses were butting their heads on POTS limitations by then. I guess that's just how phone monopolies work. In my neck of the woods the first available broadband wasn't DSL. It was Comcast cable. For all the shit cable providers get, in the early days, they helped keep the phone monopolies honest. The same way google fiber is keeping them honest today and how 2gbps Comcast service is keeping AT&T gigapower honest, etc.