Google BBS Terminal – What Google would have looked like in the 80s

http://www.masswerk.at/googleBBS/

by xearl • 14 years ago

281 77 14 years ago

sleighboy2• 14 years ago

That scroll speed needs to slow waaayyyy down. BBSing with a 14.4k modem was rarely that fast. If it was in the 80's, that'd probably make the common speed in the area of 2400 or 9600.

tallanvor• 14 years ago

And how many people would have had a color monitor back then?

KC8ZKF• 14 years ago

Many people had color monitors in the 1980s. For values of "monitors" that include television sets. The Commodore 64 and Vic 20 were color, as was the Tandy CoCo. Lots of others as well.

jonny_eh• 14 years ago

The Apple II was colour, and that thing came out in the late 70s.

peteri• 14 years ago

For home machines most of them would have been colour by 1982-3. My first paid for job was Turbo Pascal on a CGA PC in 1984 so it was pretty wide spread.

sixothree• 14 years ago

For PC connecting to monitor, CGA was introduced in 1981. I'd say by 1985, it was a very popular choice. Before that, many home computers that connected to television were already color.

jaysonelliot2• 14 years ago

I had (still have, actually) an Amdek Color-I Plus on my Apple //e. It was relatively common at the time.

Natsu• 14 years ago

I had an Apple ][ GS back then. Actually, I still have an 8088 with a color monitor and such, but I haven't got it set up, so I'm not even sure if it still works.

bcl• 14 years ago

The training sequence sounds like 56k to me ;)

Sami_Lehtinen• 14 years ago

Yes, it did. Did you forget that there were two different 56k standards and those did sound different when negotiating. 56k Flex versus v.90. Negotiation sounded really different depending from standard.

orbitingpluto• 14 years ago

Anyone else type Ctrl-A H in an attempt to leave the page?

spydum• 14 years ago

I was really hoping to see a response to +++ATH0 No dice.

rollypolly• 14 years ago

The screeching sound gave me goosebumps! :)

shabble• 14 years ago

My first thought was "It doesn't sound quite right", but then I remembered I was expecting the v90/56K handshake[1] with the BU-BONG BONG BONG near the end.

[1] http://808hi.com/audio/conexantwm.mp3

StCroix• 14 years ago

Ah that brings back memories

wickedchicken• 14 years ago

As an aside, both Twitter and Google+ are browsable from lynx. Facebook? not so much:

http://www.facebook.com/DunkinDonuts

https://plus.google.com/117936580045594333068/posts

https://twitter.com/dunkindonuts

cydonian_monk2• 14 years ago

About a year ago the opposite was true - Facebook was almost fully functional over lynx (or links2 in my case), while Twitter was... less so. (And obviously G+ wasn't.)

dhimes• 14 years ago

Interesting. A few years back it wouldn't work in Lynx at all- but they returned an error explaining that and included the message "Keep it real."

Tipzntrix• 14 years ago

This is a fine piece of work. I like all the ASCII art too!

ggchappell• 14 years ago

FYI: The ASCII art was produced by figlet, using the font Georgia11, which was designed by Richard Sabey.

jrsmith12792• 14 years ago

The ASCII art caught my eye too. I can't help but think about all of the fun I had with ANSI art using TheDraw. Ahh, the good 'ol days!

DanBC2• 14 years ago

Putting ANSI escape sequences for BLINK in the label of a floppy was fun, and annoying.

rikthevik• 14 years ago

I am flashing back so hard to trying to draw TIE fighters with ACiDDraw in Grade 6. Ah, the good ol' days.

troels• 14 years ago

It wouldn't make new connection sounds while searching though.

cs702• 14 years ago

This is not just a work of art, but also a labor of love. It deserves to become a museum installation.

thekungfuman• 14 years ago

API quota exceeded!

drhodes• 14 years ago

yep, they thought of everything.

mtkd• 14 years ago

I could see RMS using that all the time.

chimeracoder• 14 years ago

Actually, he apparently uses an email interface to wget: http://www.stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

... I'm not sure if that supports or contradicts your point....

gpmcadam• 14 years ago

That's not what he says.

    I have several free web browsers on my laptop,  
    but I generally do not look at web sites from  
    my own machine, aside from a few sites operated  
    for or by the GNU Project, FSF or me. I fetch  
    web pages from other sites by sending mail to a  
    program that fetches them, much like wget, and  
    then mails them back to me.

He's saying, much like wget (in as much as it is used to fetch a page and return the result as text) he sends an email asking for a web page which then responds with the page contents.

Now, as to why he does this, I have no idea. Thoughts anyone?

jrsmith12792• 14 years ago

What an awesome time in computing history. I sometimes find myself judging other IT guys by whether or not they have ever used a BBS.

bdunbar3• 14 years ago

I used a BBS.

My wife built and sysoped one.

And yes, that's how we met.

akira2501• 14 years ago

Not an uncommon story, I suspect.. but, Roger?

lurkinggrue• 14 years ago

How about if they RAN a BBS.

dgabriel2• 14 years ago

My mom would not shell out for a second phone line. :(

grannyg00se• 14 years ago

I ran a bbs. Even had a couple of paid members. I'm embarrassed to say that I can't even remember what it was called now.

gurkendoktor• 14 years ago

Only partly related, but I am too young to have used a BBS in Europe. When I came to Taiwan three years ago, I was delighted to see open Telnet sessions on many CS students' computers, browsing a BBS, in Big5 encoding nonetheless.

I love how local computer customs differ.

johngalt• 14 years ago

Wow, good enough to give me flashbacks to my old days as SysOp. Needs more door games. LORD and Tradewars anyone?

wazoox• 14 years ago

You certainly should try "Digital, a love story": http://scoutshonour.com/digital/

joeyh• 14 years ago

An excellent game. Along with telehack (http://telehack.com/), oldusenet (http://olduse.net/), and now this, semi-accurate emulation of the 80's online really seems to be catching on lately.

(disclaimer: I did olduse.net)

sleighboy2• 14 years ago

While LORD was popular, I always enjoyed a game run on an Amiga BBS called "Hack & Slash". Even has a modern Linux port. http://robert.hurst-ri.us/games/rpgd/

mapster• 14 years ago

~~* The Sysop Would Like to Chat ~~

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klinquist• 14 years ago

aah, back when I was a node on FidoNET.

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pkh80• 14 years ago

I liked how the business model of LORD was to get you to pay so you could do it with Violet.

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dgabriel2• 14 years ago

The very first thing I looked for was Trade Wars.

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GoodIntentions• 14 years ago

Barren Realms Elite :)

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codezero• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure Google would have had some hot ANSI art by ACiD, not the colorized ascii.

The API quota is exceeded for search but not for "L" I'm feeling lucky.

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stevetursi• 14 years ago

I Said the same thing to my friend. His response, "Yeah.. and Yahoo, trying to be all hip, would have an iCE logo..."

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pooriaazimi2• 14 years ago

I like how it runs 'C:/DOS/BBS/GOOGLE/google.com'

:) .COM was (on of?) DOS executable file extension(s) - before .EXE...

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pooriaazimi2• 14 years ago

well, actually it runs 'C:\DOS\BBS\GOOGLE\google.com'. I forgot how DOS uses backslash instead of forward slash in paths...

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jspiral• 14 years ago

Completely irrelevant of course, but iirc COM is a raw binary, smaller than 64k that can be loaded into memory and started by pointing execution at offset 100h.

EXE files were larger and had to be rebased by the OS on load.

Someone tell me if i got this wrong, it's been a while!

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derleth• 14 years ago

No, you got it right: COM files were raw binary dumps of code and data, a legacy from CP/M, whereas EXE files had the MZ magic number (for Mark Zbikowski) and enough data in the header to allow relocation.

Also, COM files in VMS are the equivalent of BAT files in MS-DOS and shell scripts in Unix-like OSes.

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webnzi• 14 years ago

Awesome! Brings back so many memories...

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gbvb• 14 years ago

That is Beautiful!Now, can we get that on emacs..:)

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tambourine_man• 14 years ago

Unless you had a Mac.

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feefie• 14 years ago

Red Ryder / Red Ryder Host FTW - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ryder_%28software%29

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jaysonelliot2• 14 years ago

This really makes me want to fire up the Contiki browser on my Apple ][ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMzgp7xTp1k

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mixmastamyk• 14 years ago

Yep, 5 minutes to download a very dithered .gif of Elle Macpherson in a wet t-shirt. Good memories. Also noticable that computers back then were usable at night with their black backgrounds.

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kleiba• 14 years ago

Mandatory link to Jason Scott's awesome documentary on BBS's: http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/

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_wp3r• 14 years ago

I would just like to give a nod to an great docu.

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iamgoat• 14 years ago

Thanks for the recommendation. I've been meaning to get the LAMP documentary, but will get both now. Things were so simple, yet complex back then.

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melipone• 14 years ago

I love it. Why does it bring such warm and fuzzy feelings? The result of my lucky feeling search brought up a wikipedia page. It was such a let down.

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joshu2• 14 years ago

the modem wouldn't re-make the carrier noises after connection.

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sopooneo• 14 years ago

Why did modems bother to output those noises to the user anyway?

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ranit8• 14 years ago

Think what would happen if the number is wrong and other side of the line has a phone, instead of a faxmodem. A human attends the call.

Or am I wrong and that is the noise you are sending to them? Now I'm curious.

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mkramlich• 14 years ago

What I like about this the most is that it reminds us just how much real work, real information, real stuff can get done with such a simple UI paradigm. Text characters can move mountains.

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Google BBS Terminal – What Google would have looked like in the 80s

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