For almost two decades, Jason Scott squirreled away thousands of pages of old advertisements, mailers, and brochures left over from the genesis of personal computing. Whether people see it as geek history or just junk, he now wants to share his stash with the world. Maybe Mac fans can’t recall what that Apple II they considered so cutting-edge back in the mid-1980s looked like. Perhaps video-game aficionados forgot that Atari once pinned dreams of dominating the PC market on the now long-forgotten 1450 XLD computer. Scott’s site can jog their memory.
Jason Scott is the closest thing to a Hacker Historian I know. He is doing a great service with textfiles.com, the BBS Documentary, and now this.
His BBS documentary is a must-see for anyone who used to think a 9600 baud modem was too fast, or anyone who is curious what smart people did before the internet.
http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/
(my reaction to someone telling me they bought a 9600 baud modem back in the day: “what a waste of money, you can’t READ that fast!”)
His BBS documentary is a must-see for anyone who used to think a 9600 baud modem was too fast, or anyone who is curious what smart people did before the internet.
Nostalgic, yes, but IIRC correctly from my younger days of dial-up BBS’ing, a lot of those message boards were flaming and irrational diatribes about the IBM PC vs Apple II that often drowned out any ability for intelligent discussion. I’m not entirely sure we’ve progressed.
But I do remember that 9600 baud modems (which at one point were considered the theoretical maximum speed for an analog phone line until the introduction of compression protocols) led to the advent of “graphical” BBSing (often in CGA with 320x200x3), predating Windows 3.x or the web. Not to mention early cyber pr0n, in the form of ASCII printouts or horrific monochrome low-res scans from bored IT students using lab equipment.
Ahhhh…. Memories….
This is a great adventure for all of us to understand this world, from the sources.
Looking at the state of the PC industry today, it’s hard to believe that there were so many competing computer systems back in the day. I remember discovering basic computing with the TRS-80 Model III, playing Wizardry on the Apple ][ (yes, using brackets for the “2” numeral!) and cursing the 16KB extension to the ZX81 (Timex Sinclair 1000 for you Americans) because it would so easily unplug after you’d spent an hour entering your program onthe completely non-ergonomic membrane keyboard.
I first became interested in PCs back in 1978, and I can’t believe how much things have progressed in less than 30 years. Here’s to the next 30!!
Ah, all of those 5 3/4 “floppy” diskettes… we really DID use those things by the ton, didn’t we?
Now look… CDs and DVDs… who’d have thought, back then?