Subj : Re: computers
To   : poindexter FORTRAN
From : Spectre
Date : Fri Jul 26 2024 12:56:00

 pF> That's odd. In the San Francisco Bay Area there were hundreds of BBSes in
 pF> the area and a whole echomail distribution system. I was part of that
 pF> until the late 90s, probably 1998. I got an ISDN line and connection to
 pF> the internet and started using FTP to get fidonet mail.

Australia generally were early internet adopters, probably why my time scale
is so different.  Its probably mid 93 its well on its way to gone.  We had
amongst the highest density of BBS in the world here in Melbourne, and
Sydney... a lot were smallish single line systems.. I believe a lot of those
that were sysops for the sake of being a sysop just shut down and went
straight to dial-up internet.  While anyone that had more than 2 lines
morphed into a service provider.  We had hundreds of ISPs for a while.

But it all disappeared so fast there was no one to keep in touch with about
what nets still functioned even.  Even the BBS registry pretty much
disappears around then.  By 95 we were on cable internet.  The other long
standing problem I had was nothing that we were using leant itself to
TCP/IP... No serial redirection available, no networking available.. with a
vairety of truly antique drivers and shims I was able to get NWLITE to see
other stations but it could never talk to another station.  So it all went by
the wayside.  The few I can recall that hung on tended to be Major BBS which
had the module for telnet service. They were pretty much just ISPing it
though, the chat groups were all dead.

Spec


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