Ole Juul
Veteran Member
The other day, I came across an envelope addressed to me which was post marked December 28, 1994. The sender was Deep Cove BBS Ltd, and inside was a nice little glossy brochure titled "Are You Connected?" After 17 years it was quite illuminating to see this.
I don't have a scanner right now, so I will describe some of the features of this brochure. The rest of the front goes on to proclaim "Twice Voted the number one Electronic Bulletin Board Service in Canada by readers of Boardwatch Magazine." Boardwatch Magazine, June 1993. Boardwatch Magazine, September 1994. More interesting at this point in time, it says "NEW! PPP & SL/IP Internet". Inside are some highlights.
- Local Private and Public Mail
- Fidonet Echomail on more than 250 specialized topics
- Ability to use Offline Mail Readers
Then it goes on to describe their "Full Internet Services"
- PPP & SL/IP
- Unlimited Free E-Mail
- Usenet News Groups
- Access to FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Telnet and Gopher services
- InterRelay Chat (IRC) and Multi-user Dungeons games (MUDs)
- Access to the World Wide Web (WWW) via the popular Lynx Hypertext and Mosaic Interfaces.
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere, but the rest of the brochure only details the usual BBS services. These are however quite deluxe because they are charging good money where many other BBS competition is free.
The envelope also included an Online Services Price List which is effective October 1994. BBS membership is $15/month or $90/year. However "full service internet" costs $20/month for 50 hours ($50/mo for 200hr) but if you want PPP & SL/IP, 50 hours is $55 and 200 hours costs $160 per month. There is also a $25 registration fee for PPP and SL/IP.
That's not cheap! There were a lot of people enjoying on-line life with BBSs who were not prepared to pay that kind of money - even for an advertised "Ultra High Speed V.34, 28.8 kb modem" connection. Their slower lines were referred to as "high speed" and "low speed" which equated to 9600-16.8kb HST and 300-2400 MNP-5.
The thing that I liked, which you won't see these days, was the back of the rate card had a list of commands. Wow, commands! I wonder how many people know what that means now. Anyway, it's a nice cheat sheet of telnet, FTP, and gopher commands. Nice.
After looking at that, I went looking for other information on the (2012) internet and found the following bits interesting, so I thought I'd share.
In 1995 the internet wasn't seen for what it is today. This article in Newsweek by Clifford Stoll is interesting.
The Internet? Bah!
One blogger commented on the article: "The Internet was a mess. No Google. No method to the madness. It’s understandable how many may have believed there wasn’t something in this Internet thing."
The following video shows how much of it was just a sales pitch.
Internet Power - What the Internet Looked Like in 1995
There are a few interesting bits, like an old view of Vint Cerf. It is amusing how they are promoting all the "information" you can find on the internet, yet talk about the development of the Mosaic browser in 1933! I found the video lots of fun but admit I lost interest after 10 minutes, not the least because of the presenter coming up with alternate realities like "very unique".
It was indeed a turning point, but it is important to remember that a functional browser was just coming online. There were still lots of BBSs and in 1996 2400 baud was still common. I keep my old BBS lists and that's how I know. I note that on one from 1999 most were 33.3 but there were still a number of 14.4 based boards. This certainly makes for a limited internet experience as we see it today, and apart from perhaps e-mail, did not entice a lot of users to the extent that we might assume now.
Anyway, things are moving faster now. Why I remember back in the day when people were still using Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7. It's a bit foggy, but that was probably way back in 2010 or so when people were still using torrents (remember?) and computers with separate screens. Time flies.
I don't have a scanner right now, so I will describe some of the features of this brochure. The rest of the front goes on to proclaim "Twice Voted the number one Electronic Bulletin Board Service in Canada by readers of Boardwatch Magazine." Boardwatch Magazine, June 1993. Boardwatch Magazine, September 1994. More interesting at this point in time, it says "NEW! PPP & SL/IP Internet". Inside are some highlights.
- Local Private and Public Mail
- Fidonet Echomail on more than 250 specialized topics
- Ability to use Offline Mail Readers
Then it goes on to describe their "Full Internet Services"
- PPP & SL/IP
- Unlimited Free E-Mail
- Usenet News Groups
- Access to FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Telnet and Gopher services
- InterRelay Chat (IRC) and Multi-user Dungeons games (MUDs)
- Access to the World Wide Web (WWW) via the popular Lynx Hypertext and Mosaic Interfaces.
Aha! Now we're getting somewhere, but the rest of the brochure only details the usual BBS services. These are however quite deluxe because they are charging good money where many other BBS competition is free.
The envelope also included an Online Services Price List which is effective October 1994. BBS membership is $15/month or $90/year. However "full service internet" costs $20/month for 50 hours ($50/mo for 200hr) but if you want PPP & SL/IP, 50 hours is $55 and 200 hours costs $160 per month. There is also a $25 registration fee for PPP and SL/IP.
That's not cheap! There were a lot of people enjoying on-line life with BBSs who were not prepared to pay that kind of money - even for an advertised "Ultra High Speed V.34, 28.8 kb modem" connection. Their slower lines were referred to as "high speed" and "low speed" which equated to 9600-16.8kb HST and 300-2400 MNP-5.
The thing that I liked, which you won't see these days, was the back of the rate card had a list of commands. Wow, commands! I wonder how many people know what that means now. Anyway, it's a nice cheat sheet of telnet, FTP, and gopher commands. Nice.
After looking at that, I went looking for other information on the (2012) internet and found the following bits interesting, so I thought I'd share.
In 1995 the internet wasn't seen for what it is today. This article in Newsweek by Clifford Stoll is interesting.
The Internet? Bah!
One blogger commented on the article: "The Internet was a mess. No Google. No method to the madness. It’s understandable how many may have believed there wasn’t something in this Internet thing."
The following video shows how much of it was just a sales pitch.
Internet Power - What the Internet Looked Like in 1995
There are a few interesting bits, like an old view of Vint Cerf. It is amusing how they are promoting all the "information" you can find on the internet, yet talk about the development of the Mosaic browser in 1933! I found the video lots of fun but admit I lost interest after 10 minutes, not the least because of the presenter coming up with alternate realities like "very unique".
It was indeed a turning point, but it is important to remember that a functional browser was just coming online. There were still lots of BBSs and in 1996 2400 baud was still common. I keep my old BBS lists and that's how I know. I note that on one from 1999 most were 33.3 but there were still a number of 14.4 based boards. This certainly makes for a limited internet experience as we see it today, and apart from perhaps e-mail, did not entice a lot of users to the extent that we might assume now.
Anyway, things are moving faster now. Why I remember back in the day when people were still using Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7. It's a bit foggy, but that was probably way back in 2010 or so when people were still using torrents (remember?) and computers with separate screens. Time flies.