A little nostalgia ( http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/05/31/back_in_the_day/index.html) for us “old farts” who were there. Back in the day, there were boards. Bulletin Board Systems. BBS's. No Net, no Web, no cyberspace, nothing. Just boards, and their ugly stepchildren, D-Dials. All strung together with phone lines, hand-rolled software, and 8-bit computers. No backbone, no hubs, no routers, no DNS tables. Just one computer picking up the phone, calling another, and having a little chat.
Peace.

Well, first off, they did have backbones back then. Second, that system truly sucks, and there are good reasons why we don't do it any more. Nostalgia for the crappy things of the past is really weird.

When I was a kid 14.4 was the bomb.

Originally posted by Adam
Nostalgia for the crappy things of the past is really weird.Yup. Bad word choice by The Fish. Let's go with:
A little reminiscing ( http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/05/31/back_in_the_day/index.html) for us “old farts” who were there.

Anyone got a Telex number? Or one of those Pager walkie talkies that an operator use to send a voice message too to tell you that your shift was up? Or an old fashion Cellnet phone that seems to have a car battery attached to it? Or Space hoppers?

Originally posted by Stryderunknown
Anyone got a Telex number?

Please don't laugh but one of my servers sends Telexes to remote TTY's. It does it as follows, the client makes an SQL query to the Oracle database. An inbuilt procedure then outputs the result to a system file. A batch job watches the output directory for new files then sends them via MQ Series, or a dedicated IP to IBM TPF gateway, to the messaging subsystem on a MVS mainframe. This in turn sends the message as a telex to the outside world. Complicated, not as bad as it used to be. Think DEC VAX on ethernet and PC runnning PC/NFS with a SDLC card to fixed address on the mainframe.

I cut my teeth fixing Telex machines.

Or one of those Pager walkie talkies that an operator use to send a voice message too to tell you that your shift was up?

Never been there.

Or an old fashion Cellnet phone that seems to have a car battery attached to it?

My Dad had one in the earl 80's. But then he worked for BT at the time.

Or Space hoppers?

My kids have two of these about the house somewhere. They made a resurgence a few years ago, for the under 5's

You poor ancient bastards. Did you qualify for disability pension using such crappy old equipment? :p

Well, at least computer games was something new and interesting in those days... That's why people bothered to improvise.
What happened now? How many playable depth games does one still have? I talking Ultima Underworld 1/2, Darklands etc.