Hey! They've Got One and They are Nowhere Near as Cool!

Phillyblog's Wikipedia Entry.

Or is it cooler not to have one? I am not up on the current trends.

I'm not sure why Phillyblog deserves its own entry in Wikipedia, but I did notice that the entry is open for further editing and expansion on the topic...

I like the following new word that I'd never seen before:

the negadelphian, or someone who enjoys posting negative comments about Philadelphia, especially about its professional sports teams.

It should be done as a matter of course, but I have not bothered to learn the Wikipedia format and it seems like a requirement.

Probably just cutting and pasting the history page, with mention of Dinty's book, should do for a start.

I believe to do it properly in the wikipedia "style" there would need to be two or three different factions with axes to grind making competing edits over a period of several weeks, resulting in press coverage.

Actually, although I joined the Cellar back in the dialup days, I wasn't a member from it's inception and I can't recall the actual year the Cellar started. I know I missed a great deal from what I was told at the first GTG I went to at the Reading Market where I learned about the Kaos saga.

Also, there was that telnet period where I only connected briefly.

Has the Cellar been in continuous operation since it's inception? If so, it can probably claim to be the Philadelphia regions oldest on-line community.

That is the case Rich, the year was 1990. (Which is why the logo says "Est. 1990" in nearly unreadable type.)

It was the first place in Philly where the general public could reach Internet email.

It's surely one of the 25 oldest virtual communities in the world and I would think it's probably in the top 10.

Undertoad wrote:

That is the case Rich, the year was 1990. (Which is why the logo says "Est. 1990" in nearly unreadable type.)

It was the first place in Philly where the general public could reach Internet email.

It's surely one of the 25 oldest virtual communities in the world and I would think it's probably in the top 10.

That is terrific history UT.

Would you consider ARPAnet to be just one big community? It relates to your top 25/10 lists. Perhaps in 1980-5 it was one community spread across the USA.

My last X-gf is from Philly; we lived together in NY and were part of DARPA contracts that gave us ARPAnet access. After her PhD, she got a job back in the Philly area, met her husband thru an ARPAnet news group in '85. He was also local to Phillie.

So, we had special access as CS reserchers with DARPA contracts. The Cellar was public access. Ra!

richlevy wrote:

Actually, although I joined the Cellar back in the dialup days, ...snip...

BACK in the dialup days? What does he mean by this "back"? :3_eyes:

Pre-web, son. There was such a time. Giants strode the earth in those days. editor and cerberus and siano and adamzion. Yes, those were the days.

Undertoad wrote:

It was the first place in Philly where the general public could reach Internet email.

It's surely one of the 25 oldest virtual communities in the world and I would think it's probably in the top 10.

that should be touted. or at least bandied about.

your advertising dept is asleep at the wheel.

wolf wrote:

Pre-web, son. There was such a time. Giants strode the earth in those days. editor and cerberus and siano and adamzion. Yes, those were the days.

How many people remember when Archie and Veronica didn't have anything to do with comics?

When bps and baud meant the same thing?
When you had to put command strings in front of a phone number to keep the modem from timing out trying to handshake?
Downloads were done in Xmodem and Kermit.
Usenet was the only way to network, and there were less than 2,000 newsgroups.

I remember getting a used 300 baud Hayes Smartmodem at an employee auction and sitting on a porch one vacation weekend in Atlantic City with a soldering iron and two user manuals making a serial cable for my Atari 800.

Man I feel old.

My first modem was a 1200 baud Migent Pocket Modem; it could run off a 9 volt battery (though I usually used the AC adapter). Though I did use a 300 baud at my campus job. (There was no computer network between buildings at that time, so to connect up to the VAX from the departmental computer lab I worked at we would just dial through the campus PBX with a 300 baud modem.)

a soldering iron and two user manuals making a serial cable

That sounds like MY job !!!

zippyt wrote:

a soldering iron and two user manuals making a serial cable

That sounds like MY job !!!

You can have it.

the fun thing is when a Mfg desides to REArange their serial pinout , I guess so you will have to buy a new cable from them .
That doesn't fool me ,there is TOO much info on the Interweb , I still roll my own !!!

I got a later start than most of the "old timers". My first modem was a 2400 baud, but I did meet my wife on a BBS, so that has to count for something. Also, my first computer was a Atari 1040 STf.

I was waiting for you guys to get it perfected. :D

Remember when the Internet was all TEXT? Those were the days! And rememebr when you could use plain old DOS for your operating system and you told your computer what to do instead of Bill Gates telling YOU what to do? Remember when floppy disks really were floppy? Remember when you had to write your programming code onto punch cards? (sigh) The good old days! You kids now a days have it too easy! :D

Punch cards?! Punch cards??! Why, when I was a lad, we would have killed for a punch card. We used to have to go down to the Ganges to scoop up mud to make tablets, then we had to scrawl our data in cuneiform under the blazing sun all day long. 10,000 of my kinsmen were killed in a raid on China trying to steal the secrets of the abacus! We couldn't even count to ten most of the time because the Pharoh would cut off our fingers if we made a programming error!

I remember our first modem was the kind where you put the handset onto the unit itself, and it got data by listening to the screeches and tones through the earpiece. I remember when dad finally got a 1200 baud modem that you could dial FROM THE SCREEN! And it was blazing fast. The little green words just flew by.

When I got an Atari 800, my favorite game was called Red Baron or something. It was on cassette tape, and loading all 256kb of it took like 30 minutes. It had graphics though. I loved it.

Elspode wrote:

Punch cards?! Punch cards??! Why, when I was a lad, we would have killed for a punch card. We used to have to go down to the Ganges to scoop up mud to make tablets, then we had to scrawl our data in cuneiform under the blazing sun all day long. 10,000 of my kinsmen were killed in a raid on China trying to steal the secrets of the abacus! We couldn't even count to ten most of the time because the Pharoh would cut off our fingers if we made a programming error!

:lol2: