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Open plea to all CGC Forumites - OT Threads
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Started by Calamerica,

378 posts in this topic

the blob

the blob

Posted
Posted

I started playing around with bulletin boards back in 1983 or so and even ran one in like 1985 for a little while. 300 baud and then 1200 baud on my trusty Commodore 64. Started with compuserve I think, but that was lame, so I mostly used the mom 'n pop ones. mostly about exchanging pirated video games and such, but many of those even had mandatory chat room participation before you'd be allowed to download and it wasn't as easy as just posting a smiley face. by the end of 1985 I lost interest in my computer and gained interest in booze/dope/sports and girls.

 

honestly, i wish i had stayed a little interested in computers other than for word processing and other mundane tasks. would have been nice to get into things when the .com craze was starting, but I had nothing to offer.

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chromium

chromium

Posted
Posted
I started playing around with bulletin boards back in 1983 or so and even ran one in like 1985 for a little while. 300 baud and then 1200 baud on my trusty Commodore 64. Started with compuserve I think, but that was lame, so I mostly used the mom 'n pop ones. mostly about exchanging pirated video games and such, but many of those even had mandatory chat room participation before you'd be allowed to download and it wasn't as easy as just posting a smiley face. by the end of 1985 I lost interest in my computer and gained interest in booze/dope/sports and girls.

 

honestly, i wish i had stayed a little interested in computers other than for word processing and other mundane tasks. would have been nice to get into things when the .com craze was starting, but I had nothing to offer.

 

Mirrors my first experience :)

 

Commodore 64 with a 300 baud plug-modem...took ages and nobody minded and I was paying per minute on the phone. Had to take a student job just to pay the $300 monthly phone bills and I was 16 at the time.

 

You probably downloaded some games my group cracked or some demos I wrote back in 1983-1987 :cloud9:

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Architecht

Architecht

Posted
  • Administrator
Posted
I started playing around with bulletin boards back in 1983 or so and even ran one in like 1985 for a little while. 300 baud and then 1200 baud on my trusty Commodore 64. Started with compuserve I think, but that was lame, so I mostly used the mom 'n pop ones. mostly about exchanging pirated video games and such, but many of those even had mandatory chat room participation before you'd be allowed to download and it wasn't as easy as just posting a smiley face. by the end of 1985 I lost interest in my computer and gained interest in booze/dope/sports and girls.

 

honestly, i wish i had stayed a little interested in computers other than for word processing and other mundane tasks. would have been nice to get into things when the .com craze was starting, but I had nothing to offer.

 

Mirrors my first experience :)

 

Commodore 64 with a 300 baud plug-modem...took ages and nobody minded and I was paying per minute on the phone. Had to take a student job just to pay the $300 monthly phone bills and I was 16 at the time.

 

You probably downloaded some games my group cracked or some demos I wrote back in 1983-1987 :cloud9:

 

Call packs. :cloud9:

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sborock

sborock

Posted
Posted
I started playing around with bulletin boards back in 1983 or so and even ran one in like 1985 for a little while. 300 baud and then 1200 baud on my trusty Commodore 64. Started with compuserve I think, but that was lame, so I mostly used the mom 'n pop ones. mostly about exchanging pirated video games and such, but many of those even had mandatory chat room participation before you'd be allowed to download and it wasn't as easy as just posting a smiley face. by the end of 1985 I lost interest in my computer and gained interest in booze/dope/sports and girls.

 

honestly, i wish i had stayed a little interested in computers other than for word processing and other mundane tasks. would have been nice to get into things when the .com craze was starting, but I had nothing to offer.

 

Mirrors my first experience :)

 

Commodore 64 with a 300 baud plug-modem...took ages and nobody minded and I was paying per minute on the phone. Had to take a student job just to pay the $300 monthly phone bills and I was 16 at the time.

 

You probably downloaded some games my group cracked or some demos I wrote back in 1983-1987 :cloud9:

 

Call packs. :cloud9:

 

Stay on topic!!! :baiting:lol:foryou:

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Anfield Fox

Anfield Fox

Posted
Posted
I started playing around with bulletin boards back in 1983 or so and even ran one in like 1985 for a little while. 300 baud and then 1200 baud on my trusty Commodore 64. Started with compuserve I think, but that was lame, so I mostly used the mom 'n pop ones. mostly about exchanging pirated video games and such, but many of those even had mandatory chat room participation before you'd be allowed to download and it wasn't as easy as just posting a smiley face. by the end of 1985 I lost interest in my computer and gained interest in booze/dope/sports and girls.

 

honestly, i wish i had stayed a little interested in computers other than for word processing and other mundane tasks. would have been nice to get into things when the .com craze was starting, but I had nothing to offer.

 

Mirrors my first experience :)

 

Commodore 64 with a 300 baud plug-modem...took ages and nobody minded and I was paying per minute on the phone. Had to take a student job just to pay the $300 monthly phone bills and I was 16 at the time.

 

You probably downloaded some games my group cracked or some demos I wrote back in 1983-1987 :cloud9:

 

Call packs. :cloud9:

 

Cal is going to have a seizure when he sees the administrator taking part in off topic posts in comics general in his post about not having anymore off topic posts :shy:

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Architecht

Architecht

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I have no idea what those are. Explain please? (shrug)

 

In the early days of BBSing and chats (like ddial) the phone companies had some pretty high per minute charges on anything considered "long distance", but no line charges on things that were considered "local". Call packs were a pricing scheme that the phone company used to charge a higher monthly fee to expand your "local" coverage and thus eliminate per minute charges. BBS and chat users frequently signed up for these as it was then possible to leave yourself connected for hours without worry about mounting phone bills.

 

Some of the bigger chat boards actually got giant call packs for themselves and set up systems so that you would dial in on your modem, connect, then disconnect and the BBS would call you back and make the connection - thus riding for free on their call pack rather than on your per minute charges.

 

Of course, this rampant use of the phone system for very long connections (way in excess of voice call averages) both to post and to download files soon brought the phone company's attention around. This quickly lead to the elimination of call packs.

 

But it was cool for awhile.

 

 

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mica

mica

Posted
Posted
I started playing around with bulletin boards back in 1983 or so and even ran one in like 1985 for a little while. 300 baud and then 1200 baud on my trusty Commodore 64. Started with compuserve I think, but that was lame, so I mostly used the mom 'n pop ones. mostly about exchanging pirated video games and such, but many of those even had mandatory chat room participation before you'd be allowed to download and it wasn't as easy as just posting a smiley face. by the end of 1985 I lost interest in my computer and gained interest in booze/dope/sports and girls.

 

honestly, i wish i had stayed a little interested in computers other than for word processing and other mundane tasks. would have been nice to get into things when the .com craze was starting, but I had nothing to offer.

 

Mirrors my first experience :)

 

Commodore 64 with a 300 baud plug-modem...took ages and nobody minded and I was paying per minute on the phone. Had to take a student job just to pay the $300 monthly phone bills and I was 16 at the time.

 

You probably downloaded some games my group cracked or some demos I wrote back in 1983-1987 :cloud9:

 

Call packs. :cloud9:

 

Cal is going to have a seizure when he sees the administrator taking part in off topic posts in comics general in his post about not having anymore off topic posts :shy:

:popcorn: It's actually now interesting
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Red Hook

Red Hook

Posted
Posted
I have no idea what those are. Explain please? (shrug)

 

In the early days of BBSing and chats (like ddial) the phone companies had some pretty high per minute charges on anything considered "long distance", but no line charges on things that were considered "local". Call packs were a pricing scheme that the phone company used to charge a higher monthly fee to expand your "local" coverage and thus eliminate per minute charges. BBS and chat users frequently signed up for these as it was then possible to leave yourself connected for hours without worry about mounting phone bills.

 

Some of the bigger chat boards actually got giant call packs for themselves and set up systems so that you would dial in on your modem, connect, then disconnect and the BBS would call you back and make the connection - thus riding for free on their call pack rather than on your per minute charges.

 

Of course, this rampant use of the phone system for very long connections (way in excess of voice call averages) both to post and to download files soon brought the phone company's attention around. This quickly lead to the elimination of call packs.

 

But it was cool for awhile.

 

 

Thanks. I never got into it that deep. Interesting workaround though.

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gozer

gozer

Posted
Posted

>> I don't see the harm [of OT posts]

 

Not harm exactly, but they do waste your time weeding through them.

 

I find OT posts annoying (and baffling). I think of them as spam. They

clutter up the boards with things I don't care about.

 

I come here to read/write about comics. That's the whole SPOONing purpose

of these boards. Comics. All sorts of things about COMICS.

 

If you want to talk about movies/sports/whatever, there are a gazillion

forums all over the web devoted to any specific topic you can think of.

 

But the PURPOSE for this board's existence is comics. Why can't people stick

to that? Why come to a comic board and bring up baseball or cars?

 

 

>> I would love to see a CWC (Comics Water Cooler)

 

That seems like a great idea. Surely there's a way to set this up without

requiring extra work for the mods.

 

My $0.02.

 

gozer

-----------------------

Oh, you look lovely this evening. Have you decreased in mass?

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