{"id":564,"date":"2002-06-04T04:24:32","date_gmt":"2002-06-04T12:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/06\/04\/back-in-the-day\/"},"modified":"2019-11-27T08:50:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T16:50:14","slug":"back-in-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2002\/06\/04\/back-in-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Back in the day"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:16127,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.salon.com\\\/tech\\\/feature\\\/2002\\\/05\\\/31\\\/back_in_the_day\\\/index.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20060217190717\\\/http:\\\/\\\/www.salon.com:80\\\/tech\\\/feature\\\/2002\\\/05\\\/31\\\/back_in_the_day\\\/index.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-14 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18:45:27&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-10 18:45:27&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:503},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:14503,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.microsoft.com\\\/windows&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20230529222803\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.microsoft.com\\\/windows&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 23:45:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 23:45:59&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:14507,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.tuxedo.org\\\/~esr\\\/jargon\\\/html\\\/entry\\\/UNX.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.tuxedo.org\\\/~esr\\\/jargon\\\/html\\\/entry\\\/UNX\\\/&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:7118,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.apple.com\\\/macosx&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.apple.com\\\/macosx&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:14508,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.jerrygarcia.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260222143711\\\/https:\\\/\\\/jerrygarcia.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 23:46:30&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-23 17:10:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-23 17:10:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:206},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m about to head to bed, but I just found this article, and as far as I&#8217;m concerned, it should be required reading for anyone who&#8217;s been online for more than just the past few years: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/tech\/feature\/2002\/05\/31\/back_in_the_day\/index.html\" title=\"Salon: When 300 baud was the bomb\">When 300 baud was the bomb<\/a>, from Salon.<\/p>\n<p>(Lots follows in the rest of this post &#8212; what started as some simple thoughts turned into about an hour and a half worth of reminiscing. Aaaah, nostalgia&#8230;.)<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So much of this article was so familiar to me.<\/p>\n<p>The first computers I can remember playing with were the <a href=\"http:\/\/apple2history.org\/museum\/computers\/computers.html\" title=\"Apple II History: Apple II pics\">Apple II<\/a>&#8216;s that my elementary school had. Before long our friends the Burns had one of their own that I got to play with, while my babysitter picked up a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cae.wisc.edu\/~conover\/\/c64.html\" title=\"Commodore 64 homepage\">Commodore 64<\/a> that gave me my first look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fys.ruu.nl\/~bergmann\/basic.html\" title=\"The BASIC archives\">BASIC<\/a> programming language.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, my family got our first computer &#8212; an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.acornworld.net\/~jmayrand\/osborne.html\" title=\"Osborne 1\">Osborne 1<\/a>. This was a beast of a machine. 64k of RAM, a Z-80 CPU, two 5.25&#8243; floppy drives, and a 5&#8243; monochrome 80&#215;40 screen, all packed into a case the size of a suitcase that weighed about 30 pounds. The keyboard could be snapped up against the face of the computer, allowing it to be carried around &#8212; one of the first, if not the very first, &#8220;portable&#8221; computers! It ran <a href=\"http:\/\/www.seasip.demon.co.uk\/Cpm\/\" title=\"CP\/M Main Page\">CP\/M<\/a> (a precursor to <a href=\"http:\/\/wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk\/foldoc\/foldoc.cgi?MS-DOS\" title=\"The Jargon File: MS-DOS\">MS-DOS<\/a>) &#8212; aside from fiddling with the machines at school or at my friends&#8217; houses, my first real command-line experience! There was a 300 baud modem available for the Osborne 1 computer, however my family didn&#8217;t get one until years later (when those of our friends who had also had Osborne 1 computers were giving them to us as they upgraded, allowing me to cannibalize parts from two machines to keep one running).<\/p>\n<p>I first got online sometime in 1991, with the first computer I bought myself &#8212; an Apple <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mac512.com\/classic.htm\" title=\"Macintosh Classic\">Macintosh Classic<\/a> with no hard drive (the computer booted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mac512.com\/system67.htm\" title=\"System 6.0.7 notes\">System 6.0.7<\/a> off one 3.5&#8243; floppy, and I kept MS Word version 4 on a second floppy, along with all the papers I typed that year), 1 Mb of RAM &#8212; and a 2400 baud modem. Suddenly an entire new world opened up to me. After a brief but nearly disasterous flirtation with [America Online][10] at a time when the only way to dial in was to call long distance, I discovered the more affordable world of local BBS&#8217;s (Bulletin Board Systems).<\/p>\n<p>[10]: http:\/\/www.aol.com\/ AOhell&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I spent many hours over the next few years exploring the BBS&#8217;s around Anchorage, from Ak Mac (where most of my time was devoted) to Forest Through the Trees, and many others that I can&#8217;t remember the names of at the moment. I found some of my first online friends, many of whom I conversed with for months without ever meeting &#8212; and many that I never did meet. Most of the Mac-based boards used the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hermesii.org\/\" title=\"Hermes II\">Hermes<\/a> BBS software, which shared it&#8217;s look and feel with whatever the most popular PC-based software was, so virtually all the boards acted the same, allowing me to quickly move from one to the other. After springing the $300 for an external 100Mb hard drive (how would I <em>ever<\/em> fill up all that space?!?) I downloaded my first &#8216;warez&#8217; (bootlegged software), at least one of which had a trojan horse that wiped out about half my hard drive. I discovered the joys &#8212; and occasional horrors &#8212; of free pornography. I found amazing amounts of shareware and freeware, some useful, some useless. It was all amazing, fun, and so much more than I&#8217;d found before. In short &#8212; I was hooked.<\/p>\n<p>After I graduated from high school in 1991, I had a short-lived stint attending <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uaa.alaska.edu\/\" title=\"University of Alaska Anchorage\">UAA<\/a> (the University of Alaska, Anchorage). One of the perks of being a student was an e-mail account on the university&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tuxedo.org\/~esr\/jargon\/html\/entry\/VAX.html\" title=\"Jargon File: VAX\">VAX<\/a> computer system. In order to access your e-mail, you could either use one of the computers in the university&#8217;s computer lab, or you could dial into their system via modem. Logging in via modem gave you access to your shell account, at which point you could use the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washington.edu\/pine\/\" title=\"Pine Information Center\">pine<\/a> e-mail program. However, I soon learned that the university&#8217;s computer was linked to other computers via the still-growing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tuxedo.org\/~esr\/jargon\/html\/entry\/Internet.html\" title=\"Jargon File: Internet\">Internet<\/a>!<\/p>\n<p>I thought BBS&#8217;s were a new world &#8212; this Internet thing was even better! Suddenly I was diving into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tuxedo.org\/~esr\/jargon\/html\/entry\/FTP.html\" title=\"Jargon File: FTP\">ftp<\/a> prompts and pulling files to my computer from computers across the globe. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tuxedo.org\/~esr\/jargon\/html\/entry\/Usenet.html\" title=\"Jargon File: Usenet\">Usenet<\/a> readers introduced me to BBS-style discussions with people chiming in from all over the world, instead of just all over town. I could jump into <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tuxedo.org\/~esr\/jargon\/html\/entry\/IRC.html\" title=\"Jargon File: IRC\">IRC<\/a> (Internet Relay Chat) and have real-time conversations with people in other countries. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tuxedo.org\/~esr\/jargon\/html\/entry\/gopher.html\" title=\"Jargon File: Gopher\">gopher<\/a> protocol was essentially a precursor to the World Wide Web, textual information pages linked to each other by subject. I was fascinated &#8212; more information than I had dreamed of was at my fingertips.<\/p>\n<p>By the time I left UAA and lost my student account, the &#8216;net had started to show up on the radar of public conciousness, but still at a very low level &#8212; it was still fairly limited to the &#8216;geek set.&#8217; That was enough, however, to have convinced some of the local BBS systems to set up primitive (but state of the art at the time) internet links &#8212; once a day, generally at some early hour, they would dial into a special node on the &#8216;net and download a certain set of information, which the BBS users could then access locally. It was slow, time-delayed, and somewhat kludgy, but it worked, and it allowed us to have working e-mail addresses. It wasn&#8217;t what I&#8217;d had while at the university, but it was certainly better than nothing.<\/p>\n<p>Within a few years, though, the &#8216;net suddenly exploded across public conciousness with the advent and popularization of the World Wide Web. Suddenly, you didn&#8217;t have to do everything on the &#8216;net through a command line &#8212; first using <a href=\"http:\/\/archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu\/SDG\/Software\/Mosaic\/NCSAMosaicHome.html\" title=\"NCSA Mosaic Home Page\">NCSA Mosaic<\/a>, and later that upstart <a href=\"http:\/\/www.netscape.com\/\" title=\"Netscape\">Netscape Navigator<\/a> you could point and click your way through all that information &#8212; and some of the pages even had graphics on them! It was simplistic by todays standards, but at the time it was revolutionary, and I joined in that revolution sometime in 1995 with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelhanscom.com\/19960227\/woody.html\" title=\"Woody's World of Wonders\">my first homepage<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Since then, there&#8217;s been no turning back. My computers have been upgraded from that little Mac Classic to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowendmac.com\/ii\/iivx.shtml\" title=\"Low End Mac: IIvx\">Performa 600\/IIvx<\/a>, from that to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowendmac.com\/ppc\/6100.shtml\" title=\"Low End Mac: 6100\">PowerMac 6100<\/a>, then on to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowendmac.com\/ppc\/6500.shtml\" title=\"Low End Mac: 6500\">6500<\/a>, and finally to my current stable of an original <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowendmac.com\/imacs\/imac.shtml\" title=\"Low End Mac: Rev. A iMac\">Revision A iMac<\/a>, a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowendmac.com\/ppc\/g3c.shtml\" title=\"Low End Mac: B&amp;W G3\">Blue and White G3<\/a>, and a custom-built PC (the first <a href=\"http:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/windows\/\" title=\"Microsoft Windows\">Windows<\/a>-based PC I&#8217;ve ever owned). My website has grown as well over the years, passing through several intermediate designs to its current incarnation, hosted off that original iMac through the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tuxedo.org\/~esr\/jargon\/html\/entry\/UNX.html\" title=\"Jargon File: UN*X\">UN*X<\/a>-flavored goodness of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/macosx\/\" title=\"Apple - Mac OS X\">Mac OS X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To quote <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jerrygarcia.com\/\" title=\"Jerry Garcia\">Jerry Garcia<\/a> &#8212; &#8220;What a long, strange trip it&#8217;s been.&#8221; I&#8217;m only looking forward to seeing where it takes me from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m about to head to bed, but I just found this article, and as far as I&#8217;m concerned, it should be required reading for anyone who&#8217;s been online for more than just the past few years: When 300 baud was the bomb, from Salon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2043,2038],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-tech","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}