9:39 "Would you say that people are more venturesome in this environment" The beginning of Trolls

Kids today will never get to experience the fun of getting anything with computers to work right from back in the day. Just like IRQ conflicts and DMA addresses, we forget how you had to have the same kind of modems otherwise it didn't work. "Hayes compatible" was what you eventually looked for and I remember starting out at 300 baud, then we had 14.4k and 28.8k and the speed demon- the 56k modem! Now you were cooking! I think USR and eventually 3Com were the most popular brands. Ahh, the good old days...

I ran a multi-line BBS for years. Even with all the advances in technology have happened in the last 30 years, I still think of the pre-WWW days as the golden era for PC geeks.

@Yaotzin51

7 ай бұрын

It was because not everyone was able to get online but it required knowledge and dedication to the hobby. I absolutely agree that internet peaked (as a social networking tool) before the World Wide Web. The final decline started when Facebook was created. Looking at the cesspool that modern social media is it's pretty fitting that the first widely spread social media was created to meet a very similar need - to judge other people by their looks.

I was 14 and we got a second phone line to deal with the modem. Wrote BBS software on my C64. It was in basic and slow but still worked great. Learned so much. Incredible times. I am VP of Technology at a company now. I owe it all to these early pioneers.

More than 30 years later, and we still have problems with online etiquette.

@ObiWanBillKenobi

3 жыл бұрын

Well, people have been struggling with in-person etiquette for all of recorded history.

@e8root

Жыл бұрын

Yup, some people do not even know it exists and is called "netiquette"

@kyleAGB

6 ай бұрын

Shut up nerd.

Surprising how prescient this was, and how relevant it still is today.

@Dr.Quarex

5 ай бұрын

Except the "why would we ever have more computers than typewriters" guy, hahaha seriously, what the hell bro, I was a young kid then and I could have told you typewriters were already passé

I love the one guy's question "how could we possibly expect more computers in homes than typewriters?" That question sure didn't age well. LOL!

@karlimo4034

10 ай бұрын

But it was valid then, computers were way too expensive.

@Phoenix6652

10 ай бұрын

@@karlimo4034 I know, but his comment still didn't age well. Now there's computers in everything. Phones, TV's, some home appliances, cars. Heck were strapping them onto our wrists these days. That's why I said his comment didn't age well, because these days you won't get through an entire day without touching at least 1 computer. 🙂

@Nunavuter1

7 ай бұрын

Very few homes had a typewriter, and few owned a CB or shortwave radio. It was a valid objection at the time.

@dijoxx

6 ай бұрын

The computers back then were way less powerful, less capable and less connected. It was still an open question whether all those technologies would keep improving at the same accelerating rates for decades to come. We are taking way too much for granted.

@Dr.Quarex

5 ай бұрын

As someone who already had a computer by the time this episode came out, and was like 5, it would have sounded absurd to me certainly. I could do more on my Atari 800XL than grandma could on her typewriter, I knew that much

One of the reasons I enjoy watching this show besides computers is the quality of these old transmissions. The background audio hiss, the video quality and the fact that everyone is speaking politely and clearly. It's quiet relaxing to watch and hear.

@jessihawkins9116

2 жыл бұрын

I prefer watching the view or cnn

@beekarinsaan

2 жыл бұрын

@@jessihawkins9116 old BBC was pretty interesting to watch as well, CNN was good too.

@karlimo4034

10 ай бұрын

The view and cnn... Holly shi...

@beekarinsaan

10 ай бұрын

@@karlimo4034 😂🤣

I am watching this almost 40 years later in 2023 and it is bizarrely relevant. Online etiquette, telecommuting, and free speech/moderation in the digital world

The issues discussed on here are as relevant today as they were in 1985, even more so with the explosion of the Internet and Web.

@CommodoreFan64

6 жыл бұрын

Very true, just on a grander scale with issues like net neutrality, and should network infrastructure for the internet be regulated as utilities just like telephones, water pipes, and electrical wires.

Interesting how much of internet culture had already started out at this point. Even romances!

@MajorGeneralPanic

2 жыл бұрын

Romances were there from the start. Check our the book “The Victorian Internet” by Tom Standage, a lot of this was going on over telegraphs!

@harasen_haras5

2 жыл бұрын

@@MajorGeneralPanic Cool

@MartenElectric

Жыл бұрын

@@MajorGeneralPanic Thank you

Telecommuting cannot be more relevant right now in 2020.

RIP George Morrow (1934-2003)

@DigiFootageFX

5 жыл бұрын

I like how George Morrow was picking that guy's brain a little about how to set up a BBS. Then Stewart exposed that George had been trying to do it himself but ran into some complications. George was a computer genius, but sometimes IT is a different animal from just standard computer logic.

@Ojisan642

4 жыл бұрын

Good old George he loved his user groups.

@nickwallette6201

4 жыл бұрын

I have a feeling if George had gotten his own BBS running, there would be a lot of intro text telling you all about the hardware and software. “You’re dialing in to a G-Whiz 8600 with 1 meg of memory, running the latest copy of Board Stiff 2.0”. You would be expected to be as impressed as he is, because the only other thing to do would be to download files (a copy of the board software, a home-brew replacement for ‘dir’, and a FAQ for repairing Apple II disk drives), and a bunch of menu options that perpetually read “coming soon”. You would be given 15 minutes of time per call to keep the lines available - of which you would only need 8 to see all there is to see.

@jessihawkins9116

2 жыл бұрын

he was old

“How could there POSSIBLY be more computers in homes than typewriters?” 😂😂😂

Ahhh the good old days of bulletin boards systems. They were the part of my youth in college.

lol. George Morrow was actually one of the early pioneers of personal computers. He was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and a self-taught computer engineer. He formed one of the first companies dedicated to selling personal computer peripherals. So he definitely _was_ a computer person, especially for the time. I'm pretty sure in his role as co-host, he was trying to get the guests to answer the right questions, i.e. those that the potential modem buyer would be asking.

@sanyr80

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah, it's hilarious. Before the first commercial break he was all "well modem stands for modulator demodulator and it does this and this and this" and after the break he was like "gosh I have so much trouble with these things"

@AcornElectron

2 жыл бұрын

George got stuck in a loop.

"Working from home" became very relevant again in March 2020... and I have to say that not many companies where prepared for it.

I ran a BBS from 1988 to 1992 using the Wildcat! software. Since I was active as a scout leader at the time, we focused on things that might be of interest to both the youth and adult members of Scouting. The Eagle’s Nest BBS also offered general interest material. Knowing that some local boards were plagued by less than civil discourse at times, we sought to maintain a higher standard by requiring users to register with their real names, no aliases or “handles.” New members had limited access until I could verify their identity by a voice call to the number they provided. Not foolproof, but better than unfettered access. It was a lot of work for a hobby operation, but also a lot of fun and I made a lot of friends, some of whom I am still in contact with 30 years later. It all came to an end when Indiana Bell decided that even a free BBS was a business and could not be run from a residential line. That raised my operating cost by a factor of 5 and priced it right out of my budget.

This is older than most people using the 'net these days. Things have sure come a long way ... and some things haven't changed a bit (no pun intended!)

I love the first 30 seconds of this video. "If you don't have a modem you're missing half the fun of a using a computer!" Now if you don't have one, you're missing out on 99.9999% of the fun. Also Rory O'Conner looks like he smokes a cray cray amount of dope.

@tremorist

8 жыл бұрын

+DOG They both look like that :)

@dog942

8 жыл бұрын

tremorist For reals. like 40 percent of everyone on this show.

@Mark-OutWest

3 жыл бұрын

"fun" is debatable. You could just leave the house to have fun.

@jessihawkins9116

2 жыл бұрын

cray cray?😕

@oldtwinsna8347

Жыл бұрын

@@jessihawkins9116 Yes, Cray computers.

27:37 "A computer will some day be the world's best chess player". Surprisingly enough it took until 1997 until Deep Blue could win against Garry Kasparov in a tournament. Nowadays, chess computers are indeed the best players and everyone (even Grand Masters) uses them to analyze positions and get better at the game.

@medes5597

Жыл бұрын

It was still 2003 before it could be done consistently

So fantastic! I do miss BBS's and door games.

During the late 1980s and the early 1990s the Atari 400/800/XL/XE (8-Bit) Computer group that I was a member of were discussing the possibility of starting up our own Bulletin Board system, but while we retained our Atari 8-Bit Computer Systems we also bought our selves Windows PCs that had built in modems.

The netbook is predicted. "Someday a company will provide a terminal for access at $200 or less."

It's interesting to hear Morrow talk like a novice. And his quip about the IRS shows he's all business. LOL! Ingraham uses a baritone voice to let you know he'll slap you around good if you _cross the line._

So amazing to hear them talking about all these issues in 1985 that we deal with day in day out today.

I had a C-64 back in the 80's and vaguely remember hearing about modems but had no idea what it was all about. I wish I would have looked into it further back then as I would have had a head start on the Internet gold rush

To put it in perspective, today (2023) the babies and small kids shown in that San Francisco preschool are now in their late 30s to early 40s, and many have never seen dial-up modems or bulletin boards. Children of broadband and smart phones.

@Clos93

9 ай бұрын

I'm 30, dial up internet was still very much a thing in rural areas like where I grew up. Not saying I'm old, but I can still remember webpages loading in sections on dial up lmao.

@DigitalM00nlight

4 ай бұрын

Smartphones weren't a thing until they were adults, they would have been around 20 when the first Blackberry phone came out in 2002, let alone when smartphones became popular for average home users by the early 2010s. As for broadband, while it was more common in the 90s, dialup was still dominant in the home, over 40% of Americans would still be on dial-up by the time the kids were adults in the early 00s.

They should have had ol' visionary Shugart on here. "I don't think this technology will have any significant impact in the future..."

Incredible history. I wish so much more legacy content were available on the very platforms (KZread) whose existences are based on these predecessor systems. Thank you for making this available!

This is really interesting. Still very relevant on the balance between freedom and legal issues that now encompass the entire internet. Love the guest co-host freaking out about the potential for "bad" the BBS opened up.

The true skill here is that multiple people, intelligent well beyond the average American, were able to not only describe all this in plain english, they did it at length and with the intent to educate. The best of the best and they had no idea.

@jessihawkins9116

2 жыл бұрын

people can still do that. have you watched the view?

@SevenStarBibleQuest

8 ай бұрын

@@jessihawkins9116 Your comment is satire, I presume.

@jessihawkins9116

8 ай бұрын

@@SevenStarBibleQuest what’s that

Nice to hear the extended cut of the "Computer Chronicles" theme.

This episode aired exactly one week before I was born!

@CMDRScotty

6 жыл бұрын

André Ferreira fellow 85er it really was a good year

@whattheheck1000

5 жыл бұрын

@@CMDRScotty I was born in 1992. If I was born in 1985, I would have been at a Honda dealership on Sept. 12, 2007 to test drive the all new 2008 Accord the day it came out. February 22, 2019 2:05 am

Ahhh yes! Back when computers and being online was FUN! I miss the good old days!

a lot of modems were sold after that man uttered the word "pornography"

Oh how I loved that intro music and title graphics.

They even had the concept of home office figured out then!

Wow around that time I got a 300 baud modem for my 64, and I had to read computer columns in the newspaper to get my first BBS numbers.

Must get one of these new modem thingies, I'm missing out.

my favorite bbs was either Sector One or Road not taken. I also liked Uplink, that guy had a few nodes. TW2002 & Usurper were the best door games. Z-Modem was my fav. download protocol.

I remember getting a word processor that worked on my pcjr from Ezra’s bbs holy crap that brings back memories.

400 baud modem, CompuServe and the latest issue of Computer Shopper for the BBS phone numbers and you was in business. I used to always make sure they disabled Ctrl-break to get around the passwords. It was the first email system using news groups to find information. I miss that sound of the modem initializing for each server you logged into. Great Stuff in the 80's/ Oh and I had the NFL Challenge game. We played it all the time till Command and Conquer arrived.

@Wizardofgosz

7 жыл бұрын

400 baud?

@WizzRacing

7 жыл бұрын

Richard Wielgosz It was a Hayes 300 smart modem but you could get more out them then designed. Unless you wanted an Atari 400. And in those days modems cost $500.00 plus new!

@SteveJones172pilot

Жыл бұрын

@@WizzRacing I thought that was a typo until you explained that.. and yes, I do remember getting slightly better rates out of the 300 baud modems.. 450 baud comes to mind, but I dont remember specifically.. Of course, that was in the simple FSK days... once we got to 1200 baud and more complex modulation, all that was over.

Odd to think those little toddlers are coming up to 40 now

Hah, the extreme visionary foresight of this show *cannot* be overstated. Great that it has been save for future generations. The highlight of this show for me was "is this a fad?" short answer: "no". At the time I was developing the the then biggest BBS in the Netherlands called NEABBS. And we for sure, we knew what we where doing; changing the world...

ahh, the announcement of token-ring LAN, what a golden age of computing where the standards was beeing tested and set for the future.

Walk down memory lane. I ran a BBS with Wildcat BBS from Mustang Software for a few years.

if I heard of this show back in the day, i would be mental over it. I was east coast kid. we got nothing.

@SteveJones172pilot

Жыл бұрын

Yep.. same here.. In Maryland we had nothing like this show.

Isn't it a little disturbing to see that even back in 1985, online child porn was still a problem way back then.

"80386, essentially a mainframe on a chip"

25:00 CD-ROM drives in 1985? What? 25:10 Wait-*laserdiscs* with database files on them?? 🤯

@nyccollin

Жыл бұрын

Darth Vader NEVER said ‘Luke, I am your father’. 🤯. Mandela Effect.

everyone had such great grammar on the internet back then

fantastc vid thanks ... used them an ran my own in early 90's

The best tv show about microcomputers ever!

Never had and never even used analog audio modems like these. Most people in Poland including myself became familiar with Internet only after broadband internet became available, very often sharing one line with other people/flats. First years after ISDN 128kbps (or twice that at twice the cost) was available around year 2000 we also had the so called Internet cafes which I also used until I had other better ways like internet at school and then sharing ADSL line.

my bbs handle was "Noe1" back in 92. miss those days...

If they only knew how crazy it would get in the future

Maybe some of these companies wanting people back to the office should see the segment in this video about telecommuting.

And now we have 4chan.

@Lumotaku

10 жыл бұрын

and the world is a much better place

@dijoxx

6 ай бұрын

Many 80s and 90s internet communities were wilder than 4chan could ever dream to be.

13:00 Hayes Smartmodem over his left shoulder

The complaints from my parents because I kept using the phone line for internet and no one could call us. lol

@CommodoreFan64

6 жыл бұрын

At least you never got in trouble for dialing up a long distance BBS while your parents where at work, and running up a crazy phone bill as a kid, and then had to mow lawns around your neighborhood all summer to pay back that bill lol!

@MistaMaddog247

4 жыл бұрын

Ha, my mom wanted me to tie up the phone lines with the Internet just so we wouldn't get telemarketers. I had to use a special code when dialing to disable call waiting cause the tone ruins the connection.

I've just got my bbs back up and running...telnet for now but I will be adding a 28.8k dial in node.

I wish I had one of those.

I miss running home and firing up my pc and playing Empire... More CORN!!!!

Basically when IBM came to dominate the market he and many other early PC people just sort of faded into the fringes.

"as many as 30 people on it at once" lol

@way2muchNFO

3 жыл бұрын

40 phone lines

The only bulletin board that I used was @ University of Hawaii Manoa in 1988.

Matthew McClure, here played by Paul Bettany.

The thumbnail looks like some random dudes dressed as Stuart and Gary for halloween!

16:00 ummm you need lubrication to get online? kinda like now :0)

Now how many people dated on those bulletin boards back then and are still together today?

@Dr.Quarex

5 ай бұрын

Haha, good question. I know lots of people who met and dated on BBSs in the 1990s and those relationships all lasted about as long as normal offline ones, like 6-12 months at best

@CaptchaNeon

5 ай бұрын

@@Dr.Quarex 😂 6-12 months had me in stitches. I think people wear a pair of tennis shoes longer than they stay in relationships

So if I understand correctly, in 1985 it was all but impossible to conventionally trace a message posted to a bulletin board. Am I in error on this? Details, anyone?

@frankbenjamin4116

5 жыл бұрын

Anybody at all?

@studioeffects

5 жыл бұрын

@ Frank Benjamin Asking a question like that on KZread? You are in error in too many ways.

@oldtwinsna8347

5 жыл бұрын

More or less that is correct. The cops would have to do a traditional wire tap to the phone line with an active connection to locate the caller, no different than a threatening phone call made. Phone companies didn't keep records of local calls so there was no "log" to go by. This of course meant they had to already know a crime was happening vs today where they can retroactively seek out IP logs and do backtracing to locate the original source of the message. Some of this went on with the most highest of profile online criminal cases, but they were few and far between for the most part. The BBS' world was mostly the wild wild west back then where anything and everything were acceptable practices.

Ah yes, "parity and protocol"... 2400 bps 8 N 1. Control-g to make the bell/beep sound.

12:35 On home office!

Ha ha, it makes me laugh that the American thinks of a bulletin board as a physical thing. In the UK, the only bulletin board we know is electronic, and the object is a notice board!

My perdition from 1985..By the year 1999 modem speeds will be well north of 4800 baud!

@DataWaveTaGo

4 жыл бұрын

perdition: (in Christian theology) a state of eternal punishment and damnation into which a sinful and unpenitent person passes after death.

Listen to the things the suits are saying. They were never going to allow a private society.

Problem of 1985 still not solved 30 years later. You can watch a youtube vid of puppies and kittens, scroll down and find nothing but keyboard loudmouths going at it saying things theyd never say to anybodys face, mostly americans

@duaneantor9157

3 жыл бұрын

Damn those americans. What are you?

Is that music awesome or is it amazing???

@ryanyoder7573

11 ай бұрын

Awesome

I'm curious how a cheap BBS system looked. Did it need a hard drive?

@Ltulrich

4 жыл бұрын

Yes if it was a file hosting server. However some would use floppy arrays or even tapes.

@oldtwinsna8347

3 жыл бұрын

Message-only or chat-based boards didn't have to have a hard drive, they could run on floppies and were bolstered if there were a RAM drive on the computer. But if a BBS wanted a decent software download library then it pretty much had to have a hard drive attached. BBS' that didn't have a software library were considered lame in general, so had low/poor membership. Multi phone line boards were also just much easier to do on a PC based computer vs other types since it had the speed and expansion ability, especially once 9600+ baud speeds started becoming available. There were also network-linked BBS systems such as FidoNet that allowed for rudimentary email/forum message exchange so you could communicate with folks across the world that were on the same private system and this required some PC horsepower to do. Some systems adopted CD-ROM drives that had pre-loaded shareware packages but by then the commercial Internet started becoming available so their attraction didn't last long.

@BlaBla-pf8mf

3 жыл бұрын

@@oldtwinsna8347 Thanks

@Bendaak

3 жыл бұрын

@@BlaBla-pf8mf I “dialled” into an authentic Apple II BBS recently and it worked off of 2 x 5 1/2” floppy disk drives.

@BlaBla-pf8mf

3 жыл бұрын

@@Bendaak ty

11:04 wtf did that man just say moment by the host

George at 9:10 shows why he's American, not British or Finnish...

Internet!

12:00 well, George’s fucked it.

@e8root

Жыл бұрын

It was unimaginable to them that everyone will have computer... and probably also unimaginable that any computer will be orders of magnitude faster than then super computers (for reference supercomputers Cray-2 at the time had 1.9 GFLOPs...)

pff.. Bulletin boards, it'll never catch on.

07:46 Everyone's using their own standards. If everyone is using their own standards, then how is it a standard?

The internet has come so far since the first one was set up by the defence department in 1968. When I got internet it was late 1990. My dad built a custom computer with a close friend in 1989 who was a computer expert. So I was five and got to enjoy early 56k internet.

@nyccollin

2 жыл бұрын

I didn’t realize that 56k modems existed in 1990. Which ISP supported those speeds, and what were you doing as a 5 Yr old kid on the Internet in 1990? I was on by 94 and it was so primitive even then.

@oldtwinsna8347

2 жыл бұрын

@@nyccollin 56k didn't come around until the late 90s, 97/98 to be exact. However, 14.4k was around in 1990 and started getting priced fairly affordable, which was a massive huge leap from 80s era 2400 baud modems that most had around if they had been computing for a while.

War Games

:) QC

Who knew . . . Ai . . .

Bet NSA was snooping on the WELL

@KandiKlover

9 жыл бұрын

Yes but just like in southpark you were all deemed fat and unimportant because no one cares about you.

Privacy. Google, Microsoft and Apple know more about us today then we do. Disgusting.

wendy woods was a babe

Online communication, again one of those silly buzzwords that will never take off... I prefer facing my book!

It's sort of sad there aren't user groups etc anymore... just Google.

@suttydcfc1

9 жыл бұрын

I think they were talking about offline ones where people used to physically meet up. I don't think an online forum etc can fully capture everything about that.

@tremorist

8 жыл бұрын

+Surly Bollox No, they meant meeting other people in real life. Quite common at that time. :)

@oldtwins

8 жыл бұрын

user groups back then were all local based. they usually held meetings at a library room or somewhere. people brought their computers and a lot floppy disks to do what these groups really were: massive pirating operations.

@PauloConstantino167

6 жыл бұрын

I hold an old style old school bulletin board. You can come visit. It's about vintage computers an games.

11:25 …. No.

Telecommuting could have been a more workable reality, had the general work ethic of the average American stayed anywhere close to where it was in 1985. The general paranoia of trade secret loss, obessive micromanaging of productivity, and ignorant resistance by baby boomer and older-aged management to employees using computers in the home or even using computers in general in a workplace environment, didn't help matters any.

@oldtwinsna8347

4 жыл бұрын

Well for some of us it is reality, we never have to commute to a traditional office environment aside from occasional meetings and training.

@duaneantor9157

3 жыл бұрын

Covid helped telecommuting

@laysdong

3 жыл бұрын

@Duke Hugh Johnson I find it hilarious when boomers try to call other people selfish. Your parents hated you and have you the generation ME moniker and your kids completely agree with that assessment

18:05 *Section 230 vibes*

The alternate for Gary, George Morrow, is just "not good." His first words about zero's and one's, modulation and demodulation would make most people head-desk (think facepalm but worse). I love how later on in the episode every time he attempts to give another opinion Stewart thankfully interrupts and shuts him down!

@hobolooter

9 жыл бұрын

It's hard to beat Gary, but George is a solid member. He leads them into conversation and appeals to the less technically inclined. He's not there to impress you. Also please don't encourage Stewart to interrupt, he does that plenty enough to his guests! :-p

@TuckerMcCannon

9 жыл бұрын

He uses very technical terms, I don't watch these videos to be impressed, and Stewart knows just when to cut-em-off...I love it when he does that.

@therocktimist

Жыл бұрын

The explanation of modulation and demodulation was my favorite part of this whole episode lol. I never knew that was what modem standed for. I wish he was on more often.

Stewart was kinda hot circa 1985 wasn't he

@faerieringwildlifeandmore

4 жыл бұрын

computer daddy lookin kinda fresh. i think its the smile.