1984
Early Online Experience
Accoustic
Coupler
In ’84 the Internet had spread to NASA facilities and to a few Universities but was not available to the public but there were bulletin board systems or BBS. Early BBSes were accessible using home computers like my IMSAI 8080 system and became widely popular with the introduction of the IBM PC. BBSes were accessed by a modem that connected to the phone, at first with an acoustic coupler then later directly to the phone line. Once connected to the BBS, you could do such things as upload and download software and data, read news and bulletins and exchange messages with other users through public message boards. BBSes were typical dedicated to specific subjects or areas of interest.
BBSes were not “real time”, as the name implies, they were like a bulletin board at work or school which one could write a note with a statement or question then pin it to the bulletin board for other people to read and you could browse the bulletin board and see what others had posted. Some posts may have dozens of replies from many different people listed in chronological order. I would check every few days to see if anyone had posted anything new anyone had written a reply to the one you had written.
I bought my first modem from the girl I bought my Lotus from. She said she had a couple modems and would sell me one a half the price of a new one, so I bought it and connected it to my IMSAI 8080. It only did 300 baud with “baud” being the measure of speed at the time. 300 baud was about as fast as a person typing, slowly. With a modem, you could connect to a BBS, but you needed to know the phone number of the BBS. BBS phone numbers were passed around by word of mouth and once you got on one, they usually had lists of other BBSes. There were some BBSes who’s sole purpose was to list other BBSes, once you got started you could quickly find others. I mainly wanted local phone numbers as long I paid by the minute for distance phone service and it was expensive, especially anything out of state. Keeping to local BBSes was preferred but also limited how many there were, but I found a few and being accessing them regularly.
I had a simple communication program on my computer which had commands to send the phone number to the modem and dial it, which half the time would get a busy signal. Modem’s communication worked between two modems, each with its own phone number. If a BBS wanted to have ten people connected at the same time, they would need ten phone numbers each with its own phone line. Smaller BBSes might have a single or a few phone lines, medium sized BBSes might have a dozen or more, each with a different phone number. Only the largest of BBSes would have a single number with a switchboard that could route to many modems. Most often I was calling local BBSes so if the first number was busy you would try the next, typically they would be sequential phone numbers.
Connecting with a modem was an interesting experience, you typed in the phone number, hit enter, and the phone would make a screeching noise, interspersed with beeps and different tones, sounding the robot R2D2 in Star Wars. Once connected you could type text commands to list directories, content and message boards. Live chat did not exist in the early days but there were message boards that you could post messages and read what others had posted. Message boards were quite popular and could be found on about any subject.
I later would upgrade my modem from 300 baud to 1200 baud which of course was four times faster which was amazing at the time, to see text displayed on the screen faster than anyone could possibly type but still slow enough to read as it was being displayed.
BBSes grew in popularity and InfoWorld magazine estimated that there were 60,000 BBSes serving 17 million users in the United States alone by 1994.
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On March 22nd, just four days before his birthday, my brother’s daughter, Laurel Elaine Mixson, was born in Michigan where he and his wife were living.
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Mother’s Day 1984
Grandma Mixson, Mom, Grandma Junior
Updated: 08-06-2023