Those of you who know me, know that I've been a hoarder of old stuff. You know, like fun stuff!
I can walk out in to my garage and (on a good day) plug in my old C64 along with the model 1670 and load up NovaTerm 10 and call one of the very few remaining dial-up BBS's or maybe the old PhoneMan v9 just to play with some of the old phone boxes line the Silver, Blue, Red or even Green.
Of course none of those will work like they did in the 1980's but its fun to reminisce.
Today after a nice spring walk along a newly opened creek trail with my bride, she got back into her homework and I got to play in the garage a bit.
So, I broke out my old home-brew 486 DX2-66 and hooked up one of my Sportsters. Can you believe I actually miss that sound? I loaded up Telix 3.21 and after a short search on the telnetbbsguide, I found that there are still 27 dial-up BBS's around the world that were still active!
Ok, so everything is hooked up, Telix is at the ready and the phone line is connected to the Sportster... Here we go... I punch in the numbers, the modem dials, I have the M1 command in the INIT string so I can hear that lovely sound of yesteryear as the handshake between the devices work out the connection.
NICE!! Success! But wait. I'm connected but only at 7200 Baud? Nah.. I'm sure that's just a little noise on the line so I disconnect and swap the phone line and dial again. Wait? What? Now it's BUSY? I try again but then I get NO CARRIER and then an ERROR? Not good at all.
So I power off the modem, clean up all the connections, after all, I have had this thing sitting around in the garage for more than a decade, it’s bound to be a little dirty. Ok, so now all the pins are shiny, the cables are secure and I try again, I hear the modem dial, I hear that sound, that wonderful sound.
WOW! I'm connected! This time, it’s up to 16800 Baud! Well, that’s good but I know I can do better so I disconnect, adjust my INIT strings a little (it’s been Soooo long!) and dial again. It dials, I hear that wonderful handshake, CONNECTED AT 24000 Baud!
Well, that’s certainly not the 33600 or 48800 I’m hoping for but that will do for now.
I log in to the BBS, look through some of the SUBS, the WWIVnet, some Fido boards, play a quick session of Pimp Wars, BRE and L.O.R.D. before I run out of time on the BBS and it drops my connection. Ok, well, that was a BLAST! So. I pick another BBS from the list, enter the phone number and click on connect….
NO DIAL TONE.
Well, I guess that’s that. Time to retire the USR 56K.
Dial this up to validate your puzzle solution with certitude.