August 22, 2005

Engadget: 1985 A page from the venerable Engadget BBS service from 20 years ago today.
posted by es el Queso 19 years ago
  • i, uh, really don't know if it's even possible to get much geekier than this...have you been LARPing?
  • Woah woah woah . . . Apple has discontinued the Lisa?!? Have they lost their friggin' minds??
  • petebest: water, out the nose, onto the keyboard. Thank you.
  • I installed GammaFax on a computer in 1990, and never used it at all. Ever.
  • Ha! Oh, BBSes... good times, man. /close up on Flagpole's nervous laughter after reading that page /fast zoom-in to dusty closet, showing at least three of those products stashed in there /creepy organ music
  • Does the fact that we recognize old tech imply that we are old? "When I was your age, we had to connect at 300bps, and it was $10 per hour. And it snowed, and it was uphill both ways!"
  • I was 15.
  • Camilo: You paid $10 an hour?! Shame on you! Back in the day you could hack "your own" access and not worry about getting caught as there was virtually no law or official understanding of computer crime. Also, the phone systems weren't all digital and fancy, just a bunch of relays to hand examine, so traces were virtually impossible.
  • For the first 5 years of the internet era, I didn't pay a cent, other than phone bills. First thanks to a good friend that worked on the field sys-admning and provided me with free accounts; then via some clients.
  • The shoulder phone looks like what my dad had in his car in the '80s but never took out of it. The NES pictured brings back memories of the last time I played Super Mario Brothers, or Nintendo at all actually.