[Coco] Finally got broadband (ot)

[L. Curtis Boyle]

After experimenting with a friends 300 baud modem in late 1982, I finally  
got a 300 baud JCat direct connect Auto Answer ($167 Canadian at the time)  
in early 1983. I didn't have a proper terminal program and ended up using  
a really bad term program from Rainbow that only showed '*' for every 32  
bytes received, and you had to switch to a view buffer mode in order to  
see what you had received (and if you received anything more at this time,  
it was lost). Can't remember what the name of it was, but at least it got  
me started. Within half a year, upgrade to Color Compac (yay! realtime  
text display!), and, using the REMOTE program from Rainboard (tried the  
Rainboard BBS software, but didn't like it and wrote my own) starting  
running the Mustang BBS.
     Went to 1200 (older Avatex with only partial Hayes compatibility),  
then Zoom 2400 after 1986 Rainbowfest Chicago, then some generic 9600,  
then Hayes 14.4K. In 1988 actually got onto the Internet; our University  
Libray computer had FTP and Gopher, and actually did get some Coco stuff  
 from there (like Kermit), before I new anything about the World Wide Web.  
Ran at 14.4K with Nitros9 on the Coco itself, and on the net using the  
local Freenet which used Lynx, so the Coco itself was doing the surfing.  
Remember using my 6309 version of VIEW to figure out what [IMAGE] and  
[LINK] meant if the HTML code didn't have ALT tags, just so I could figure  
out where I was going. It was also my inspiration to support animated  
GIF's in the 6309/NitrOS9 version of VIEW.
     Finally switched to a PC (for net access, anyways), and got 1500/128  
ASDL (ISDN here was always disproportionaly expensive compared to 56K  
dialup vs. ASDL, so skipped it entirely), which is roughly where I am at  
now (they are doing some upgrades ,so speed may be changing soon). At work  
we have 5000/384, which is nice...


On Mon, 28 Aug 2006 06:44:06 -0600, Rod Barnhart <rod.barnhart at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Could you imagine having to go back to 300 baud? That's where I started  
> at.
> A 300 baud direct-connect modem on a CoCo 2. Though I didn't get into  
> BBSing
> until 2400bps in the PC world, I also bought a 1200 bps modem from Radio
> Shack for my Tandy 1000SX. At the time, I just couldn't justify the price
> difference between it and the 2400, when all I did was connect to private
> systems to transfer text.
>
> Rod
>
>
> On 8/28/06, Bob Devries <devries.bob at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I really don't know how I did without ADSL before, and yet I did;  
>> starting
>> with a 300 baud modem, migrating through 28.8 and 33.6 finally to 56K
>> modem
>> dial-up.
>>
>> I also finally opted for 256/64k ADSL when I moved house to this little
>> town. In the end, it was no more expensive, and a whole lot more  
>> reliable.
>>
>> I don't think I'd be able to go back, though.
>>
>



-- 
L. Curtis Boyle