logoalt Hacker News

boltzmann-braintoday at 11:44 AM1 replyview on HN

my first internet was on a commodore, on a C128, with a modem hand cut from copper clad, plugged into the user port, and hooked up to pirate radio, that connected to another country. we got insane speeds! seconds per character!


Replies

reaperducertoday at 12:20 PM

a modem hand cut from copper clad, plugged into the user port, and hooked up to pirate radio, that connected to another country.

Whenever I see people on HN talking about the insane levels of abstraction and indirection the tech industry has built for itself, I remember the crazy things we used to do with little more than bare wires and curiosity.

People on HN complain that they can't get work done because their 48-inch monitor isn't OLED. We would hack mainframes on the other side of the planet with a 40x7 character unlit LCD, and no internet.

show 1 reply