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Stardate: 20220124.1846 | |
Location: My car in a church parking lot. | |
Input Device: Gemini PDA | |
Audio: Hooked on Classics (Pts. 1&2) | |
Visual: Instrument cluster, car interior | |
Emotional State: OK | |
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SDF user, szczezyja, wrote about the 90's Internet in their phlog[1] | |
and in Gemini prior. They were inquiring about other's experience | |
from back then. Since I have some memories, I figured that I would | |
try to remember and comment. | |
My first online usage was on BBS's in Cleveland, Ohio in the 80's on | |
my Commodore 64 with a second-hand 300 baud modem. This was later | |
upgraded to 1200 baud. During these times, there was a local BBS | |
called the Cleveland Freenet[2], which ran some custom flavour of | |
BSD and was more of a dialup BBS to me than what we know of the | |
Internet today. It was a public access unix system, much like SDF, | |
that was run by Case Western Reserve University. I still remember | |
the old phone number by heart: 216-368-3888 (which is most likely | |
disconnected or repurposed.) | |
Cleveland Freenet was text menu driven and had many different areas | |
to explore, like The Administration Building, The Post Office, | |
The Arts Building, The Medical Arts Building, etc. The menu was set | |
up like physical locations in a city and each menu had sub-menus. | |
They had Special Interest Groups (SIGS) that you could join and | |
participate in a forum, like bulletin boards, but most were local | |
to the system and Cleveland. They also had access to Internet | |
resources, like usenet, irc, ftp, emailing other systems, etc. for | |
stuff outside of Cleveland Freenet. Even connections to other | |
Freenets and libraries around the world. At that time, I was more | |
interested in the local stuff, so I stuck with their local irc, which | |
was only for local system users, much like COMmode on SDF. I | |
actually met up with some users in meatspace from the local Freenet | |
irc. | |
There was one section called The Teleport, which took you to other | |
systems. I poked in there a bit and one time, I ended up telnetted | |
over to some system in Germany. I couldn't understand the language | |
and it kinda freaked me out. I didn't know how to disconnect Germany | |
from Freenet or what the escape sequence was, so I ended up | |
terminating the call from my modem. Kinda funny, now that I think | |
about it. | |
Cleveland Freenet also hosted a book called, "Zen and the Art of | |
The Internet," by Brendan Kehoe. I think it was the first "e-book" I | |
read online, not including G-files from commie boards. Unfortunately, | |
it does not discuss gopher. You can find it in the Gutenberg | |
library.[3] | |
BBS's were the killer app for me on the Commodore 64. It used to be | |
the video games, which was the gateway drug, but for me, BBS's | |
were where it was at. Also, I could get juarez if I stayed | |
connected over night and had enough download credits (remember | |
download/upload ratios or system time limits?) BBS's were my thing | |
and the C=64 was good enough through the years to connect and | |
participate since most things were done in the terminal. | |
Gotta go. To be continued... | |
[1] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/szczezuja/phlog/2022-01-14.txt | |
[2] https://case.edu/ech/articles/c/cleveland-freenet | |
[3] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34 | |
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