[Coco] Stories of Internet Connections - was:Color LOGO

[J.P. Samson]

On Apr. 3, 2010, at 10:15 PM, Todd Wallace wrote:

> My first experience with broadband internet was my first year of  
> college (1996).  All the dorms were wired up and I had my very own  
> Compudyne PC running windows 3.11.  My favorite part was not so much  
> the speed, as it was the always on 24/7 connection to the internet.

I only wish my university was that high tech!

When doing comp. sci. graduate work in 1997-1999, we had to share an  
office with a single dumb graphics terminal.  You'd be lucky to get  
five minutes with it before the terminal would crash and you'd have to  
reset it.

For a time, I had a dedicated computer in one of the research labs--a  
proper computer hooked up to the university's broadband connection.   
But that machine was a loaner and I had to return it, this with about  
8 months of work left to complete my degree.

I asked the IT guys if they could hook up my personal NeXT workstation  
to the LAN, but policy was only computers owned by the comp. sci.  
department were allowed on the network.  (The chairman of the  
department made the same request regarding a portable computer, and  
was abruptly told to f*** off by the IT staff.  After a few such  
encountered, I quickly came to the realization that it was the  
unionized secretaries and IT support that held the reigns of power in  
the department.)

For me to get my files into the comp. sci. servers from my NeXT, I had  
to use PPP over dial-up to connect to the general university modem  
pool.  The problem was that the telephone was on a shared line with a  
number of other offices, so if anyone picked up the phone, you were  
likely to lose your connection.

The undergraduate programming labs were just as bad.  One dual Pentium  
machine running Windows NT Server driving 30 dumb graphics terminals.   
It was a rare day of teaching that the server wouldn't crash.  And of  
course the server was physically locked in a cabinet, so I'd have to  
call IT support and wait for them to walk across the campus (or even  
come in from home if it was an evening lab).  They'd then turn the  
server off and then on again--that's all.  Now cross your fingers that  
that you didn't crash the server trying to restart those 30 dumb  
graphics terminal sessions all at once!

Ugh, bad memories.  It's no wonder Canada's work productivity ranking  
is so low.  We probably would have been more productive running CoCo  
3's!  There--I'm back on topic.

-- JP