Breathing life into this forum

[theunify]

Since we're reminiscing the early days of ToeQuest, do any of you old timers remember the Hot Line forums? They were offered as a way to allow certain entities to access ToeQuest to express their point of view on the TOE. I offered a hot line forum to Time Travelers, Space Aliens, Demons, and God. You can get an idea how it looked in the Internet Archive. It's dated Oct 7th, 2003. I decided to take it away since it mostly attracted spammers and I was running low on memory on my hosting service. I wonder if I should bring it back

BTW, we have a 4 year anniversary coming up!

Thanks Robert,happy birthday dear toequest!


regards michael.

Spammers always are a part of PC's. I remember Pentium 95. Every Cd was seen as a miracle, even if it only worked in principle. The first time my friend used email, it took us years to stop telling the story before we tried it ourselves.

[dleviwing]

Theunify;
That sounds like email drudgery. I remember my first email, it was called teletype. Of course before that it was called Morris code. Do you know what “Ask Sam” was?

[baudrunner]

This is great! Does anyone remember the PET? That was the first real personal computer, it didn't exactly fly. The TRS 80, ALEX (?). I got into it during a time that I think back on now with fond memories, when monitors were monochrome, the PC XT was the biggest thing going, and the ten meg hard drive was the deal that the PC AT was built around, and that computer cost a cool five grand! What we are doing here now is an outgrowth of the BBS, and I was a member of a couple of them from '87 on. I remember that I couldn't even figure out for awhile what email was all about!

We could probably start a whole new thread on the early days of the computer. I recommend the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy. Dave, it would probably bring tears to your eyes.

[dleviwing]

I remember those days very well Baud. We called Radio Shack’s TRS80 (Z80 architecture) the TRASH 80. You left out the Comador64 and the LISA. How about the LSI bus structures from DEC? My origins with computers started with the IBM 360/370 Big Blue systems with JCL terminals and Watt5 compilers in 1968. Remember COBAL, PL1, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and BASIC before C++??? I designed my first SBC from TTL using ALU’s and shift registers.

Do you think anyone knows what we’re talking about???

[baudrunner]

Do you think anyone knows what we’re talking about???

I doubt it! Yes, I remember all those early boxes. My very first computer was a Timex Sinclair TS1000 with the membrane keypad, built-in Basic, and volatile memory. It cost me $25 Ca out of a bin in front of an electronics surplus store on Yonge st. in Toronto. I never bought the 64K expansion card so I had to key in the lottery numbers picking program I wrote on it manually everytime I turned it on. I had a little Zenith 5" B&W set that I used for the monitor. I tried for weeks to use my program to generate the most likely winning numbers and of course, nada one. So I just gave up one Saturday morning. I went to the library to read my favorite magazines, computers and sailing, then opened the Yachting magazing to the foldout ad in the opening cover...the Freedom 17, the 21, the 24, the 34, the 39, the 44. I used them to buy my tickets and won $197.00! I used the money to buy a Sharp PC1251 handheld computer, also with built-in Basic and 2.4K of non-volatile memory. I used it to write a math determinants program and aced a math test with it at college (I was a mature student even then). I also wrote an X's and O's program on it that the computer always won or drew. Tough with only one line of LCD display. Ah yeah, those were the days. All those memories are of days filled with sunshine - Toronto is, or was then anyway, the big city with the most sunny days on the continent. It always makes me feel good to think back on them.

[magic]

agree. it's a great forum. ro0bert you have done a remarkable thing. however (there's always a however, isn't there) i would also dearly love to help breathe even more life into this forum ....if only someone would let me. I want to set up a blog, avatar, the works, but the system won't let me. I am a registered member, though only about a week or so. Are their tiered memberships with hierarchies of access permissions?

[Robert]

agree. it's a great forum. ro0bert you have done a remarkable thing. however (there's always a however, isn't there) i would also dearly love to help breathe even more life into this forum ....if only someone would let me. I want to set up a blog, avatar, the works, but the system won't let me. I am a registered member, though only about a week or so. Are their tiered memberships with hierarchies of access permissions?

Hello Magic,

I had place some restrictions on new users, so spammers could be caught before doing too much damage. Once you have accumulated 5 posts you are automatically promoted to the next User Group, 'Initiated Member'. I have removed the blog restriction and I'll see how that goes. You should be able to use one of the pre-defined avatars. If you want to upload your custom avatar you need to join the Toe Club.

Please feel free to email or PM any ideas or suggestions you have. I always like to get feedback on the website so I can improve it.

--Robert