Dumbed down consumer electronics: Adding DTV channels

[Joerg]

JosephKK wrote: [...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now
that would be a few seconds and included (and would dissapear) in my
monthly. Today, a sloppy webpage will eat up a MB or more, and an
overnight DL would be about 5 GB; over 5 thousand times the data
volume. Just about 20 years difference.
In those cases I'd rather send them a SASE envelope, a blank diskette
and $20 for the effoert to copy and the walk by the mail room. Then use
the remaining $80 for a nice dinner with the wife.
Probably would have if it was available that way at that time.

What wasn't available? Stamps? Envelopes? Dinner? Wife? Ok then, maybe a
girlfriend?

Ok, diskettes could be hard to come by but we sometimes used audio
cassettes for data storage. Those were cheap. I believe Commodore called
them datasettes.

Quite simple really, they would not deal with physical media. DL it
or go without.

Well, at $100 which was a lot of money back then I am sure you could
have found someone who'd download it for you via a local call, then send
you the tape. You pay him $50 and keep the other $50. Win-win

 

[JosephKK]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now
that would be a few seconds and included (and would dissapear) in my
monthly. Today, a sloppy webpage will eat up a MB or more, and an
overnight DL would be about 5 GB; over 5 thousand times the data
volume. Just about 20 years difference.
In those cases I'd rather send them a SASE envelope, a blank diskette
and $20 for the effoert to copy and the walk by the mail room. Then use
the remaining $80 for a nice dinner with the wife.
Probably would have if it was available that way at that time.

What wasn't available? Stamps? Envelopes? Dinner? Wife? Ok then, maybe a
girlfriend?

Ok, diskettes could be hard to come by but we sometimes used audio
cassettes for data storage. Those were cheap. I believe Commodore called
them datasettes.

Quite simple really, they would not deal with physical media. DL it
or go without.

Well, at $100 which was a lot of money back then I am sure you could
have found someone who'd download it for you via a local call, then send
you the tape. You pay him $50 and keep the other $50. Win-win

This was not even in the early WWW days. There barely was Usenet. I
almost could fly there and back cheaper. But i had _NO_ means to
_find_a_local_ for the described advantage. The infrastructure just
was NOT there.

 

[Martin Brown]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now

At what baud rate? This doesn't make any sense. CIS was offering file
sharing between users from the early 80's at about $10/hour. And almost
every hardware vendor worth their salt had a forum on Compuserve with
all their various support files available online for download.

2400baud = 15kB/min = 67mins
9600baud = 1kb/sec = 8 mins

14k4 modems with a relatively cheap chipset were available in 1991
before WWW. By 1994 I had a Boca 28k8 V34 - the last of my modems to
come in a nice solid extruded aluminium case with a price to match.

Strange companies you dealt with. Mailing floppies was commonplace in
that era to supply software. I still have stuff on 8", 5.25" and 3.5".

This was not even in the early WWW days. There barely was Usenet. I
almost could fly there and back cheaper. But i had _NO_ means to
_find_a_local_ for the described advantage. The infrastructure just
was NOT there.

Compuserve probably would have done it with a local call for $10/hour
and FIDOnet almost for free.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Paul Keinanen]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now

At what baud rate?

The baud rate was specified as 2400 baud on the line above.

This doesn't make any sense. CIS was offering file
sharing between users from the early 80's at about $10/hour. And almost
every hardware vendor worth their salt had a forum on Compuserve with
all their various support files available online for download.

2400baud = 15kB/min = 67mins
9600baud = 1kb/sec = 8 mins

Those may be raw through put numbers, but with simple half duplex
protocols such as Xmodem, each packet is acknowledged, before the next
packet is sent. Due to line turn around delays, this will
significantly reduce the effective throughput.

In those days the lower level telephone network was analog and
connections suffered from crosstalks from other lines, e.g. pulses for
the billing system and dialing pulses etc.

With a bad noisy line, the data frames were frequently corrupted,
requiring a retransmission, usually after a timeout, so the effective
throughput was way below what you would get from a raw connection at
that line speed.

Strange companies you dealt with. Mailing floppies was commonplace in
that era to supply software. I still have stuff on 8", 5.25" and 3.5".

One BBS network on Iceland used a sneakernet. An Icelandic person flew
each week to work in England, carrying with him all messages going
abroad on floppies and when returning back on Friday, he carried all
messages directed to Iceland on floppies.

 

[Joerg]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now

At what baud rate?

The baud rate was specified as 2400 baud on the line above.

This doesn't make any sense. CIS was offering file
sharing between users from the early 80's at about $10/hour. And almost
every hardware vendor worth their salt had a forum on Compuserve with
all their various support files available online for download.

2400baud = 15kB/min = 67mins
9600baud = 1kb/sec = 8 mins

Those may be raw through put numbers, but with simple half duplex
protocols such as Xmodem, each packet is acknowledged, before the next
packet is sent. Due to line turn around delays, this will
significantly reduce the effective throughput.

In those days the lower level telephone network was analog and
connections suffered from crosstalks from other lines, e.g. pulses for
the billing system and dialing pulses etc.

With a bad noisy line, the data frames were frequently corrupted,
requiring a retransmission, usually after a timeout, so the effective
throughput was way below what you would get from a raw connection at
that line speed.

Strange companies you dealt with. Mailing floppies was commonplace in
that era to supply software. I still have stuff on 8", 5.25" and 3.5".

One BBS network on Iceland used a sneakernet. An Icelandic person flew
each week to work in England, carrying with him all messages going
abroad on floppies and when returning back on Friday, he carried all
messages directed to Iceland on floppies.

That's not the sneaker-net. That used to be the kerosene-net

 

[Joerg]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now
that would be a few seconds and included (and would dissapear) in my
monthly. Today, a sloppy webpage will eat up a MB or more, and an
overnight DL would be about 5 GB; over 5 thousand times the data
volume. Just about 20 years difference.
In those cases I'd rather send them a SASE envelope, a blank diskette
and $20 for the effoert to copy and the walk by the mail room. Then use
the remaining $80 for a nice dinner with the wife.
Probably would have if it was available that way at that time.
What wasn't available? Stamps? Envelopes? Dinner? Wife? Ok then, maybe a
girlfriend?

Ok, diskettes could be hard to come by but we sometimes used audio
cassettes for data storage. Those were cheap. I believe Commodore called
them datasettes.
Quite simple really, they would not deal with physical media. DL it
or go without.

Well, at $100 which was a lot of money back then I am sure you could
have found someone who'd download it for you via a local call, then send
you the tape. You pay him $50 and keep the other $50. Win-win

This was not even in the early WWW days. There barely was Usenet. I
almost could fly there and back cheaper. But i had _NO_ means to
_find_a_local_ for the described advantage. The infrastructure just
was NOT there.

You could not find a hungry student at Clarkson who wouldn't sneeze at
making $50 in an hour or two? I find that a bit hard to believe.

I had a fairly high-tech side job at my university starting around 1980
and that paid $5. I'd have jumped at that oppotunity.

 

[[email protected]]

On 14/08/2010 06:58, JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now
At what baud rate?

The baud rate was specified as 2400 baud on the line above.

This doesn't make any sense. CIS was offering file
sharing between users from the early 80's at about $10/hour. And almost
every hardware vendor worth their salt had a forum on Compuserve with
all their various support files available online for download.

2400baud = 15kB/min = 67mins
9600baud = 1kb/sec = 8 mins

Those may be raw through put numbers, but with simple half duplex
protocols such as Xmodem, each packet is acknowledged, before the next
packet is sent. Due to line turn around delays, this will
significantly reduce the effective throughput.

In those days the lower level telephone network was analog and
connections suffered from crosstalks from other lines, e.g. pulses for
the billing system and dialing pulses etc.

With a bad noisy line, the data frames were frequently corrupted,
requiring a retransmission, usually after a timeout, so the effective
throughput was way below what you would get from a raw connection at
that line speed.

Quite simple really, they would not deal with physical media. DL it
or go without.
Strange companies you dealt with. Mailing floppies was commonplace in
that era to supply software. I still have stuff on 8", 5.25" and 3.5".

One BBS network on Iceland used a sneakernet. An Icelandic person flew
each week to work in England, carrying with him all messages going
abroad on floppies and when returning back on Friday, he carried all
messages directed to Iceland on floppies.

That's not the sneaker-net. That used to be the kerosene-net

A former manager used to say "it's hard to beat the bandwidth of a 747 filled
with 9-track tapes".

 

[Martin Brown]

On Sat, 14 Aug 2010 09:14:56 +0100, Martin Brown

On 14/08/2010 06:58, JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now
At what baud rate?

The baud rate was specified as 2400 baud on the line above.

This doesn't make any sense. CIS was offering file
sharing between users from the early 80's at about $10/hour. And almost
every hardware vendor worth their salt had a forum on Compuserve with
all their various support files available online for download.

2400baud = 15kB/min = 67mins
9600baud = 1kb/sec = 8 mins

Those may be raw through put numbers, but with simple half duplex
protocols such as Xmodem, each packet is acknowledged, before the next
packet is sent. Due to line turn around delays, this will
significantly reduce the effective throughput.

In those days the lower level telephone network was analog and
connections suffered from crosstalks from other lines, e.g. pulses for
the billing system and dialing pulses etc.

With a bad noisy line, the data frames were frequently corrupted,
requiring a retransmission, usually after a timeout, so the effective
throughput was way below what you would get from a raw connection at
that line speed.

I don't recall having that much trouble with Compuserve even in the
early days. Maybe US phone lines are a lot noisier than here?

A former manager used to say "it's hard to beat the bandwidth of a 747 filled
with 9-track tapes".

Second generation VLBI did it with a truck load of standard VHS
cassettes using a custom modulation scheme to store blocks of 300GB per
session. S2 recorders could do 128Mbits/s for 5 hours the hardware was
expensive. The previous generation were open reel and harder to use.

There were only a handful of correlators in the world that could
actually read this format so the media had to be moved to use them. All
participating scopes had to have a recorder and H2 maser clock.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[JosephKK]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now

At what baud rate? This doesn't make any sense. CIS was offering file
sharing between users from the early 80's at about $10/hour. And almost
every hardware vendor worth their salt had a forum on Compuserve with
all their various support files available online for download.

This was about 22 years ago, 2400 baud modems were still newish and
9600 baud modems were expen$ive to buy and there was a big premium
9600 baud access.

2400baud = 15kB/min = 67mins
9600baud = 1kb/sec = 8 mins

14k4 modems with a relatively cheap chipset were available in 1991
before WWW. By 1994 I had a Boca 28k8 V34 - the last of my modems to
come in a nice solid extruded aluminium case with a price to match.


Strange companies you dealt with. Mailing floppies was commonplace in
that era to supply software. I still have stuff on 8", 5.25" and 3.5".

Compuserve probably would have done it with a local call for $10/hour
and FIDOnet almost for free.

The other end was never connected to Compuserve, for that matter
neither was I; too expensive.

 

[JosephKK]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now
that would be a few seconds and included (and would dissapear) in my
monthly. Today, a sloppy webpage will eat up a MB or more, and an
overnight DL would be about 5 GB; over 5 thousand times the data
volume. Just about 20 years difference.
In those cases I'd rather send them a SASE envelope, a blank diskette
and $20 for the effoert to copy and the walk by the mail room. Then use
the remaining $80 for a nice dinner with the wife.
Probably would have if it was available that way at that time.
What wasn't available? Stamps? Envelopes? Dinner? Wife? Ok then, maybe a
girlfriend?

Ok, diskettes could be hard to come by but we sometimes used audio
cassettes for data storage. Those were cheap. I believe Commodore called
them datasettes.
Quite simple really, they would not deal with physical media. DL it
or go without.

Well, at $100 which was a lot of money back then I am sure you could
have found someone who'd download it for you via a local call, then send
you the tape. You pay him $50 and keep the other $50. Win-win

This was not even in the early WWW days. There barely was Usenet. I
almost could fly there and back cheaper. But i had _NO_ means to
_find_a_local_ for the described advantage. The infrastructure just
was NOT there.

You could not find a hungry student at Clarkson who wouldn't sneeze at
making $50 in an hour or two? I find that a bit hard to believe.

All i had was a telephone number for the server, no student body list
(let alone with telephone numbers), no known contact points of any
kind for anybody there. All that server did was send and receive
files, no access to anything else, not even email.

It is not like being a local U, i was in Lost Angeles and Clarkson is
on the EAST coast, no chance to go to the campus and find a student.
No email address to work with either, nor did i even have a personal
email address back then.

 

[Martin Brown]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now

At what baud rate? This doesn't make any sense. CIS was offering file
sharing between users from the early 80's at about $10/hour. And almost
every hardware vendor worth their salt had a forum on Compuserve with
all their various support files available online for download.

This was about 22 years ago, 2400 baud modems were still newish and
9600 baud modems were expen$ive to buy and there was a big premium
9600 baud access.

Early PC dialup 9600 modems were not cheap or particularly reliable.
ISTR The launch of low cost effective Rockwell chipsets was about 1991
with V32 MNP and fax built in. Prices plunged a couple of years later.

Not a company, a university based server.

University servers were on EPSS, Arpanet or in the UK SRCnet/JANET from
around the mid to late 70's. Dedicated networks for astronomers were
already fully operational by end 1980. It was possible to move fairly
big research datasets overnight across the backbone although you would
get warnings for doing it too often.

http://www.chilton-computing.org.uk/ccd/literature/serc_bulletins/sb_spring81.htm

The other end was never connected to Compuserve, for that matter
neither was I; too expensive.

Cheapskate.

In that era everybody who was anybody was on CIS even in the UK -
including CEOs who needed help to logon every time they used it.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Joerg]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now
that would be a few seconds and included (and would dissapear) in my
monthly. Today, a sloppy webpage will eat up a MB or more, and an
overnight DL would be about 5 GB; over 5 thousand times the data
volume. Just about 20 years difference.
In those cases I'd rather send them a SASE envelope, a blank diskette
and $20 for the effoert to copy and the walk by the mail room. Then use
the remaining $80 for a nice dinner with the wife.
Probably would have if it was available that way at that time.
What wasn't available? Stamps? Envelopes? Dinner? Wife? Ok then, maybe a
girlfriend?

Ok, diskettes could be hard to come by but we sometimes used audio
cassettes for data storage. Those were cheap. I believe Commodore called
them datasettes.
Quite simple really, they would not deal with physical media. DL it
or go without.
Well, at $100 which was a lot of money back then I am sure you could
have found someone who'd download it for you via a local call, then send
you the tape. You pay him $50 and keep the other $50. Win-win
This was not even in the early WWW days. There barely was Usenet. I
almost could fly there and back cheaper. But i had _NO_ means to
_find_a_local_ for the described advantage. The infrastructure just
was NOT there.

You could not find a hungry student at Clarkson who wouldn't sneeze at
making $50 in an hour or two? I find that a bit hard to believe.

All i had was a telephone number for the server, no student body list
(let alone with telephone numbers), no known contact points of any
kind for anybody there. All that server did was send and receive
files, no access to anything else, not even email.

It is not like being a local U, i was in Lost Angeles and Clarkson is
on the EAST coast, no chance to go to the campus and find a student.
No email address to work with either, nor did i even have a personal
email address back then.

All it would have taken is to contact a fraternity there

Or an institute. At German universities we had a "Fachschaft" for each
discipline and that was essentially a self-help type body consisting of
older semester students that would help younger ones learn the ropes,
form study circles and so on. If you'd toss a $50 bounty in there the
whole room would have been abuzz in milliseconds. Ok, not all students
had telephones back then (I didn't) but many did.

 

[Joerg]

JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
JosephKK wrote:
[...]

cost me about $100 long distance for a little less than a MB. Now

At what baud rate? This doesn't make any sense. CIS was offering file
sharing between users from the early 80's at about $10/hour. And almost
every hardware vendor worth their salt had a forum on Compuserve with
all their various support files available online for download.

This was about 22 years ago, 2400 baud modems were still newish and
9600 baud modems were expen$ive to buy and there was a big premium
9600 baud access.

2400baud = 15kB/min = 67mins
9600baud = 1kb/sec = 8 mins

14k4 modems with a relatively cheap chipset were available in 1991
before WWW. By 1994 I had a Boca 28k8 V34 - the last of my modems to
come in a nice solid extruded aluminium case with a price to match.

Strange companies you dealt with. Mailing floppies was commonplace in
that era to supply software. I still have stuff on 8", 5.25" and 3.5".

Not a company, a university based server.

Compuserve probably would have done it with a local call for $10/hour
and FIDOnet almost for free.

The other end was never connected to Compuserve, for that matter
neither was I; too expensive.

Huh? 1989 I had CompuServe. Being frugal (had just started
self-employed) I opted for the budget plan. IIRC that was 10h/month for
maybe $20, plus local phone charges which in Germany wasn't free. You
had to find the dial-in node that incurred the least in telephone
charges. If you exceeded the allotted CompuServe hours of your
particular plan they'd charge you per minute overages but those were
very reasonable, AFAIR less than 5c/min.

Pretty much any university could be reached via CompuServe. Not
necessarily on CompuServe's native (meaning proprietary) net of course
but they had lots of Gateways. Used them many times.

BTW, the best about CompuServe were their forums. Just like Usenet but
moderated.

 

[Joerg]

There is, but it's slim pickings.

<http://www.gosatellite.com/FTA-Learning-Center/FTA-Master-Channel-List>

And, quote "Purchase one of the recommended satellite packages below
....". You typically need a large expensive dish. Neighbors have those
but they sure are not cheap. Also, you get a full day's worth of
exercise digging a foundation, mixing concrete for that, and all this
fun stuff.

 

[JosephKK]

A full day? I've put up entire C-band systems in a couple hours.
Most of that spent making sure the pipe is absolutely vertical, so the
polar mount will track.

As far as the hardware, I see used systems on Craig's list from time
to time.

I can see that happening, the hard part is getting the concrete right
so that the whole shebang is ready to operate with only one hour for
concrete strength. Or did you tell them it will be ready the next
day.

 

[Joerg]

A full day? I've put up entire C-band systems in a couple hours.
Most of that spent making sure the pipe is absolutely vertical, so the
polar mount will track.

Ok, come out here with your favorite shovel and try. Frustration is
guaranteed to set in within 15 minutes. Oh, and bring a drill, some
dynamite, a blasting permit (which you likely won't get), a frontloader,
and preferably also someone who can use all that rock you are going to
pull out

[...]

 

[Joerg]

If you drive out into the countryside a bit you can often find people
who'll *give* you a Big Ugly Dish (BUD), having changed over to Dish
Network or DirectTV (with their 18" dishes) years back but not wanting
the hassle of removing the BUD.

Granted, you might need a new LNB...

I could have gotten one from a neighbor for free. They mounted a puny
DirectTV dish to that massive pole. Looks like a lab puppy on really big
paws. But I'd have to dig and pour a foundation, plus there's not
WAF-compliant spot. Nah, TV ain't this important.

 

[Joerg]

You can't afford me. ...

How do you know ?

... If there is that much large rock, you clean it
off and set a form to pour concrete on top. Weld crossbars on the
bottom of the pipe that sit on the rock, and hold it in position while
you fill the form. Set some anchors in the corners of the pad and use
aircraft grade steel cable to keep the pipe in alignment.

You must not be married then. That would have an extremely low WAF.

I'm familiar with using explosives to set power poles. Almost every
power or telephone pole around Cincinnati was set that way, and were
tagged as R.I.P.

How would you like to put in a 130' tower that used six cement trucks
to pour the footings, and a crane to put up on the side of a hill and no
access road? To get permission from the FCC, FAA, and the EPA?

I'd develop a back pain just thinking about that ;-)

 

[Joerg]

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

[...]

You must not be married then. That would have an extremely low WAF.

That would depend on how much TV she watches. The woman I bought
this house from refused to let her husband put in a C-band system. He
died a couple years later. I think he was fed up with the nagging and
just gave up on everything.

Not all women object to things like that, anyway.

I'd rather be married to one that does

She is pretty much a country girl by now. But when I broached the idea
of installing a swamp cooler she looked a bit shocked and said "But not
like at so-and-so's house!". A bachelor, who just plopped the thing onto
the patio, snaked a garden hose clear across the deck, cut a crude
square out of the porch screen, and that was his "installation". The
dump valve, well, that just let it all splatter 15ft down and kick up
some soil.

[...]

 

[JosephKK]

You can't afford me. If there is that much large rock, you clean it
off and set a form to pour concrete on top. Weld crossbars on the
bottom of the pipe that sit on the rock, and hold it in position while
you fill the form. Set some anchors in the corners of the pad and use
aircraft grade steel cable to keep the pipe in alignment.

I'm familiar with using explosives to set power poles. Almost every
power or telephone pole around Cincinnati was set that way, and were
tagged as R.I.P.

How would you like to put in a 130' tower that used six cement trucks
to pour the footings, and a crane to put up on the side of a hill and no
access road? To get permission from the FCC, FAA, and the EPA?

Crickets! Did you have to put Nav warning lights on it as well?