Uncreative Labs

Joined: 05 Aug 2008 Posts: 23

This site is fantastic. I love the green text, brings back a ton of memories.

I bought a used XT in 1989. It was already an obsolete machine at the time, but it had 640kB of memory and an ST225 20MB hard disk. Cost me only $200 including the monitor, which just happened to be a green monochrome monitor.

I went out and bought a Hayes Smart Modem 2400 external. This was "the poop" at the time, and it cost almost four hundred bucks! I started dialing up local bulletin board systems and spent many late nights downloading FidoNet mail and the latest shareware programs. There was a certain innocence of that time that can't be recaptured on the internet. Everybody was eager to experiment with their hardware and write new programs. I got into C++ and wrote a clone of Telix for dialing up bulletin boards. Borland C++ cost me more than registering Telix, but I wanted to prove to myself that I could do this and write a freeware program that other people could benefit from. Uploaded it to several boards and got a very good response.

I eventually upgraded the XT with one of those Inboard cards that Intel sold in the early 90's. This turned your XT into a 386/16 with 1MB of expanded memory. I added an 80MB hard disk. This was mid year 1990.

Eventually started my own bulletin board. Bought a 286 for my personal use and ran a two node WWIV bulletin board on the XT-386 under DesqView. I was one of the first boards in my area to carry usenet conferences, in addition to FidoNet and WWIVNet.

I ran that board until 1996. Ended up being a six node system with a ton of files (Night Owl, Hobbes, and Simtel CD-ROMs) and fpt/usenet/email access.

I don't tinker with my machine anymore. They have become so much more useful, but also more like appliances than hobby machines. It's good to find sites like this and relive the old days.

Joined: 05 Oct 2007 Posts: 24 Location: Catalunya

Hey, big memories here... I still got some Night Owl CD's fooling around home, i like to see them from time to time and read the BBS groups captures, i known about the existance of "the Jargon File" or "Random Access Humor" ages before i got land line or Modem.

Funny memories... T.F.S. (Thanks For Sharing)