On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 07:45:59PM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > I remember upgrading my C-64's 300 baud modem to a 1200baud one. That > was so cool. No more typing faster than the modem... I used to "chat" > with my friends using terminal programs we'd written ourselves > complete with xmodem protocol all written in c-64 basic. (I even had a > rudimentary scripting language built-in to mine to allow scripting the > handshake/login procedures at various bulletin boards. ) I don't know > why we didn't just call each other. It would have been so much > easier... geeks.
I made a spark-gap transmitter to send morse code to my friend's AM radio three blocks away. Of course, I was sending to everyone within 6 blocks, and the antenna reached half-way there anyway through the tops of the oak trees. Honest dad, I don't know how that wire ended up there... I still remember the magic a few years ago (I know it wasn't magic, but hey) when I was in a motel in Owen Sound Ontario for the winter and couldn't get a decent weather report. I hooked my portable SW receiver to the laptop, installed hamfax (off the set of Woody CDs), and pulled off the weather map from the Sackville Nova Scotia Coast Guard Radio. Not bad considering I had just the built-in antenna and the Coast Guard was transmitting to the Atlantic Ocean, not the Great Lakes. That was the same P-II laptop that I was reading in a tent when the tent got hit (or just missed) by lightening. Thank heavens for metal poles. The display is fried and now the battery and hard drive are dead so I am laptopless. Doug. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
