Stefan ScherfkeMar 9
Janeishly

I'm really loving how Mastodon has become a refuge for all the grizzled seafarers on the ocean of the internet. They pop up in my feed and their bios all say something like

"I've been online for longer than the internet. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. 56k modems on fire in the light of Usenet. I watched IRC forks glitter in the dark near the Gateway 3000. All those moments will be lost in slop, like tears in rain. Time to deshittify."

From my original profile:

https://mastodonapp.uk/@Janeishly/114235187781140336

Janeishly (@[email protected])

I'm really loving how Mastodon has become a refuge for all the grizzled seafarers on the ocean of the internet. They pop up in my feed and their bios all say something like "I've been online for longer than the internet. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. 56k modems on fire in the light of Usenet. I watched IRC forks glitter in the dark near the Gateway 3000. All those moments will be lost in slop, like tears in rain. Time to deshittify."

Mastodon App UK
Jun 11, 2025 at 4:31pmWeb
Show threadAsakiyumeJun 11, 2025
@janeishly Read this to my grizzled husband who said, in a fake Yorkshire accent, "56K modem? Luxury! In my day we used 28K, and we didn't complain!"
Show threadRoger GammansJun 12, 2025
@asakiyume @janeishly aye, we had it tough my first modem did 1200/75., etc
Show threadAsakiyumeJun 12, 2025

@rgammans @janeishly

I remember the first modem I ever saw, before I knew the word "modem." It was when I was a kid in the 1970s, in the house of friends we only saw when we were visiting our grandmother in the summer. Their dad worked at MIT. It was a literal curly-cord phone receiver that you stuck into a cradle. Our friends showed us how, through that connection, they could chat about math questions with MIT students.

... one of those friends later went on to win a Nobel prize.

Show threadJaneishlyJun 12, 2025
@asakiyume @rgammans That's a lovely story. That kind of technology was so immediate and real, not like the shiny slippery slop we have today.
Show threadAsakiyumeJun 12, 2025
@janeishly @rgammans yeah, a kind of analogue digitality!
Show threadJohn Abbe (aka Slow)Jul 29, 2025

@asakiyume @janeishly @rgammans I made a deal to skip the 1200 baud modem and went straight to 2400 - zoom!

And I recall the cups for old-style phone microphone/earphone, on the modem attached to the teletype machine on which I played terminal games (Nim, Star Trek, etc.), and started learning BASIC.

After Mastodon took off, despite its warts I thought we were all good but then people got excited about Threads? And now Bluesky? I don't get it, this here is an actually free/open network, folks!

Show threadMatt McIrvinDec 5

@asakiyume @rgammans @janeishly My first interactions with a computer were over one of those. 300 baud acoustic dial-up, on a briefcase-sized portable terminal that my father would take home from work in the mid to late 1970s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_700

Silent 700 - Wikipedia

Show threadDavid PeningtonMar 28
@mattmcirvin @asakiyume @rgammans @janeishly
I think I used one of those, briefly, at school. 1975 I think. At that period my high school had, for a year, a 16k-word PDP-11/10 running BASIC on two teletypes & a VT52 CRT terminal. I've watched the blinking console panel lights & flicked the bootstrap loader (in octal) into the front panel switches, before it read the loader program & then BASIC interpreter from paper tape on the teletype - 45 minutes at10 characters per second! That's a slow program load time!
I used the first 32 bit version of Unix in March 1980.
I carried programs on boxes of punch cards across to the computer centre in 1980-81 summer holidays.
I worked professionally on the old usenet/interconnected networks from 1984, while working at Melbourne University.
When I was 10, I had a week with a PDP-8 at a nearby school. 4k of 12 bit words, FOCAL language.
I worked with someone who was in the first Computer Science university intake in the world, the year I started kindergarten & was friends with a lecturer who worked with Australia's first computer, with mercury acoustic delay lines as main memory - a bit like "bubble memory" of the 1970s, but volatile & chemically toxic.
I'm 64.
Show threadAsakiyumeMar 28
@DavidPenington @mattmcirvin @rgammans @janeishly I'm 62, so yes! Same era, same memories!
Show threadMatt McIrvinMar 28

@DavidPenington @asakiyume @rgammans @janeishly I was just barely too young to really have contact with the punch cards/batch processing model of computing, but it was definitely still hanging around at the time I started.

It's of a piece with the way I was too young to be taught to use a slide rule in school, but only just barely: affordable scientific calculators appeared while I was learning arithmetic.

Show threadDavid PeningtonMar 28
@mattmcirvin @asakiyume @rgammans @janeishly
The teacher who had the computer wrote one of the last slide rule text books ever published! I did learn to use one. I remember dad bringing home the expensive calculator he had brought for his medical practice - $50 in about 1970 with a 6 digit display & a button to push to show the 6 highest digits. Basic arithmetic only, suitable for calculating medical bills.
Show threadPhil Thane ✅Jun 11, 2025
@janeishly
Oh yes. When the height of tech sophistication was having two phone lines so you could use the phone and internet AT THE SAME TIME!
Show threadNic DafisJun 26, 2025
@pthane We did that in 2003 when the phpbb boardd I ran became unexpectedly popular, and I had to monitor and moderate things a lot more frequently
Show threadTim HergertJun 12, 2025
@janeishly
Show threadTim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPEJun 23, 2025

@janeishly 56k was seriously posh. Some us started with 300 baud acoustic couplers built into the back of just-about-portable terminals that printed onto thermal paper at 30 cps.

Which in turn were seriously posh compared to the 10 cps ASR33s we'd been used to up until then.

Show threadmkbJul 29, 2025
@TimWardCam @janeishly Just so! One of the least prescient things I ever said was that I don’t need a faster modem because I only read at about 300 baud.
Show threadColin B.🇨🇦Jun 25, 2025
@janeishly guilty as charged.
Show threadtomate 🍅Jun 26, 2025
@janeishly
Show threadDavid Cantrell 🏏Jul 29, 2025
@janeishly I do not miss doing ssh key exchange over an acoustic coupler
Show threadMardigroanJul 29, 2025

@janeishly

Nice homage to the android's speech in Blade Runner!

Show thread@pineywoozle ‘s #3WordNoteOct 22
@janeishly LoL I love that scene. 🥰 Nicely played.
Show threadSimon ZerafaDec 5

@janeishly

Oh, very nice. I might have to come up with my own variation on your Tears in the Rain motif 🙂🖖

Show threadHatysaDec 5

@janeishly That sounds like oldish Millennial at the oldest. I’m about 10 years older than “oldest Millennial”, and the first modem I used whose speed I know for certain was 1200 bps, but the one attached to the thermal-printer terminal my dad brought home once, when I was 9 or 10, was much slower, probably 300 bps tops.

I’m still at least 10 years away from a “typical” white-collar-worker retirement. I’m pretty sure you can find people 20 or even 30 years older, whose memories of early computers were “I plugged in patch cables and wired up literal magnetic core memory in my day.”

Show threadJames DerrickDec 5
@janeishly Mine was a Gateway 2000 tower (DX2-66), originally in a black and white box cow box but close enough!
Show threadBrian GrinterDec 5

@janeishly @timrichards @Janeishly

https://mastodon.sdf.org/@bgrinter/109528564134610705

Brian Grinter (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 image “All those tweets will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” #riptwitter #twitterexodus #twitter

Mastodon @ SDF
Show threadFrank Bennett 🇯🇵Jan 19
@janeishly As it happens, I did have a computer catch on fire once.
Show threadLeo Schuldiner🤘🏼Feb 27
@janeishly Apparently we all just wanna go back where things were simpler and innocent. By the way, I remember using a 14,4k modem in the second half of the 90s 🤓
Show threadCaptain ButtonMar 28

@janeishly

"We were iron men in silicon chips in those days, never affeared to brave the most tumultous flamewar, or to take Great Kibo's .sig in vain. Always willing to ride a wild packet throughout the switching network, even if it meant having to sacrifice your best matey to Shub-Internet."