4/12/2005: A piece of Philadelphia ISP history

[lumberjim]

that dude has a LARGE noggin. makes him look like a little kid that hasn;t grown into it yet. probably really friggin smart, and loaded by now, too.

ps, that wooden shelving is 'sten' from ikea. high tech.

[wolf]

It worries me that you know that.

We had the first Ikea in the country. Their stuff was geek chic.

[blase]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

that dude has a LARGE noggin. makes him look like a little kid that hasn;t grown into it yet. probably really friggin smart, and loaded by now, too.

ps, that wooden shelving is 'sten' from ikea. high tech.

no, I have the same thing from Target

[vsp]

I'm STILL a Netaxs -> Fast.net -> US LEC customer, though it's about to be migrated to a new server and I'm waiting to see how that'll work before I re-up again. I still find it handy to have a UNIX shell that I can use as a mail dump and hosting source for files and access from anywhere, and I have no idea what other ISPs (if any) would still offer such a beast.

Yes, I know about gmail et al. The unix shell lets me run scripts and perform procmail fu. (My netaxs account IS virtually overrun by spam despite that, but it has been out there for a decade.)

[skateboard]

So, how about a current photo, so we can laugh again in ten years?

[mrnoodle]

I used to go with my dad to his electronics lab at the university and play on the green-screen terminal that was attached to whatever kind of network they had. all of them had the kind of modems that you had to put the phone handset into so it could hear all the squeals and buzzing. Which is something else I don't understand, but anyway.

I didn't know what any of it was for, but I liked making all the directories and stuff scroll by. I also remember thinking that we had entered a brave new world of technology when you could also get monitors in amber, and not just green.

[Undertoad]

The current photo would be pretty boring... just a bunch of equipment in a rack, and hardly any blinky lights, even. The idea is that most of this kind of equipment should be boring: you set it up in the back room and if you're lucky it runs for 5 years without any hardware worries.

[lumberjim]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The current photo would be pretty boring... just a bunch of equipment in a rack, and hardly any blinky lights, even. The idea is that most of this kind of equipment should be boring: you set it up in the back room and if you're lucky it runs for 5 years without any hardware worries.

don't believe the hype. it's just that the 'cellar' has his underwear hanging off the corner of it, and a half bag of fritos propped against it right now.

[xoxoxoBruce]

He got his hand covered with those sticky orange Frito's crumbs...and took off his underwear? STOP...I don't want to hear anymore....fingers in ears.....La La La La La La.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

I also remember thinking that we had entered a brave new world of technology when you could also get monitors in amber, and not just green.

We used to fight over the black and white CRTs. There were two at West Chester State College.

The green monitor was the really fancy one. It was connected to a 1200 baud modem!! It was actually a vector graphic display device, and only those schooled in it's arcane ways knew where the sweet spot was that you had to punch when the text started getting wobbly on the display.

One day, one of the computer center staff got a new terminal. It was amazing. Not only did it have a green text display, it was hard-wired into the mainframe so there was no wait-time for a modem to connect. And, to top it all off, it had a (ooooh) floating keyboard. You could sit with the keyboard on your lap with your feet up on his desk and type in a semi-reclined position (If you broke into his office at night, that is).

Hah! We would so laugh at those who were forced to connect with the 300 baud modems on the dot matrix Decwriters!

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

The current photo would be pretty boring... just a bunch of equipment in a rack, and hardly any blinky lights, even. The idea is that most of this kind of equipment should be boring: you set it up in the back room and if you're lucky it runs for 5 years without any hardware worries.

Appreciate how much maintainence was necessary for all those computer control panels with lights. Those lights would burn out in as quick as every three months. Constantly replacing light bulbs. Remember that computer on the TV show "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"? What a maintenance nightmare - all those little bulbs that had to be constantly replaced - if it was a real computer.

All those bulbs first replaced with LEDs at about $10 per bulb. Then we moved all that information to a screen. It no longer looks impressive. But the screen that replaced those big impressive panels report so much more useful information.

Incidentally, one problem in Three Mile Island was how events were reported. The DEC spooler was something like three hours behind in reporting events on the printer. Computers back then were not expected to have to report so much so fast.