Hello from SE Virginia

[pitlog]

After hanging around here for a while and posting a bit, I realized I hadn't introduced myself.

Like many of you, I'm an older guy who lived through the whole computer revolution. I started out with a TRS-80 Model I 4K, and never stopped. Professionally, I'm a computer scientist, though mostly in management for a long while.

I'm more a user of old technology than a prolific collector, though I do have some stuff:

• An AT&T 3B2/400, complete and with lots of extras. Not running, but almost. I intend to bring it back to original someday.

• A Kaypro 4-84, completely restored, with lots of software. I'm quite interested in CP/M and am currently programming this thing in C, Pascal, and Assembly.

• An couple of old Intel boxen running UNIX System V Release 4 on a private network. I'm recreating an old style public access UNIX system from the ground up. I've been careful to use only hardware and software that were available in the late '80s and early '90s, although there are a couple of newer components in there. It's almost done, and soon I'll be asking others about the possibility of starting an old style UUCP network, probably over TCP as not many of us are running modems any more. If anyone is interested, holler!

So that's it. I do a fair amount of programming on these machines for fun, to keep my head in geeky stuff. I've been in management too long.

Oh, and I'm looking for a Xerox 820. If you know where one can be had, I'd sure be interested.

And if you're in the Hampton Roads area or are passing through, let me know and we can get together for the beverage of your choice and compare notes.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[barythrin]

Welcome Tom,

Welcome (guess you were waiting for your 1 year anniversary to post an intro?) ;-) Very nice and understandable to see a manager getting his hands dirty again. From my experiences folks like you make great people to work for when you actually have a vested interest in the equipment and command line.

Sounds like a fun project though. I don't have much of my gear up right now but it's an interesting attempt to get some retro network up with UUCP. This may be a complete dead end and I haven't tried it yet, ...combined with my lack of energy and free time it may be a while before it's tried BUT I did get my hands on a used magicjack (VOIP). While I know and expect the voice quality is shoddy, it's a phone for $20/yr with I think free long distance. I'm quite tempted (and really the reason I got the jack) to see if I could get some vintage gear on it and use it as a modem. Could be a quick "nope" but I would hope that potentially slow enough connections may be able to broadcast clearly enough. So there if anyone else has tried that is a potential UUCP or BBS network to be played with.

 

[Erik]

Welcome to the forums!

Enjoy!

 

[pitlog]

MagicJack

MagicJack

I actually thought about trying to use a magicjack for low bit rate uucp. Maybe 1200 or 2400bps? I posted about it in another forum a few months back and most people seemed to think it wouldn't work. Still, I wouldn't mind trying it if you wanted to give it a shot.

If that doesn't work, I'd fall back to uucp over tcp, which was supported pretty early on (certainly on the SVR4 I'm using) and is still well supported under Linux today.

So I guess the next question is "Is there any interest in starting up a dark USENET network of retro enthusiasts?"

-Tom

Welcome Tom,
Sounds like a fun project though. I don't have much of my gear up right now but it's an interesting attempt to get some retro network up with UUCP. This may be a complete dead end and I haven't tried it yet, ...combined with my lack of energy and free time it may be a while before it's tried BUT I did get my hands on a used magicjack (VOIP). While I know and expect the voice quality is shoddy, it's a phone for $20/yr with I think free long distance. I'm quite tempted (and really the reason I got the jack) to see if I could get some vintage gear on it and use it as a modem. Could be a quick "nope" but I would hope that potentially slow enough connections may be able to broadcast clearly enough. So there if anyone else has tried that is a potential UUCP or BBS network to be played with.

 

[pitlog]

Magicjack

Magicjack

Ok, I decided to find out for sure whether the Magicjack will support modem connections. I bought one with 1 year of phone service for just about $50 and I should get it in about a week.

I've got a USRobotics V.everything modem that I'll hook it up to and I figure I'll hook it up to a SVR4 box and try to dial out with cu first. Need to find a terminal based machine I can dial into. Anybody have ideas about how to test?

If that works, I'll configure inbound uucp and see if I can get email and/or usenet working with somebody out there.

I'll report back when I have more data, and if anyone else wants to play, just yell. Magicjack not necessary... I need modem users of any kind to dial.

Oh, and I'm not sure where this thread belongs now, but I'm guessing its not here. What about the Unix section?

Cheers,
Tom