If your marina has no wifi

[Frank Holden]

Ah- foreign parts- having to leg it up the road and find an 'internet cafe'. Circa 2004.
Then the marina had a couple of computers you could use... but remember to log off .
After that assorted dodgy stuff and then 'wingles'

And today? - just buy a local SIM and use your phone as a hotspot .

 

[capnsensible]

Ah, the fun of using Internet cafes in the French West indies with the 'odd' keyboard...

 

[westernman]

I think I've used remote connections through every speed from 300 baud (teletype) up to around 600 Mbps today! The big jump was when I got a cable connection - went from 19.2 kbaud to a few MBPS (I know, mixed units, but dial-up lines are measured one way and cable/ ISDN/ fibre another).

The slowest connection I ever used was EPSS to connect from Cambridge to a computer at Los Alamos (legally!). It would only work in character at a time mode (i.e. a packet only transmitted a single character) and the latency was such that I pressed a key and then waited about a second to get the echo of the character from the other end. It worked, but you needed patience!

I should mention that I first used a computer in about 1972 and it became my job in about 1977! And in about 1978 we were providing a dial-up service for clients - no internet, of course; this was leased GPO lines.

You had it good!

My first use of a dial up connection to a timeshare system with a teletype was 110 baud.

I sent my first email in 1982 from one of our offices one side of London to a colleague on the other side. It took three days to arrive!
Typically the machines only connected once per day at a fixed time and forwarded all the data to the next hop. The email required multiple hops to get to its destination and the way the queues were set up, you could only progress one hop per day.

 

[Stemar]

The slowest connection I ever used was EPSS to connect from Cambridge to a computer at Los Alamos (legally!). It would only work in character at a time mode (i.e. a packet only transmitted a single character) and the latency was such that I pressed a key and then waited about a second to get the echo of the character from the other end. It worked, but you needed patience!

That brings back memories of playing with the Eliott 901 (IIRC) computer at uni. Screen? What's that? It talked to you via teleprinter at one character/sec, and got confused if you tried to type faster.

Write you program to paper tape, feed the compiler on its tape and get a series of error messages. Correct your program. Rinse and repeat until, at last, no more errors, and you get a tape with your compiled program. Now feed the run-time tape in, followed by your program. You could then enter data and get answers back, one character at a time. Thinking about it, maybe windows ain't so bad after all...

 

[mjcoon]

I should mention that I first used a computer in about 1972 and it became my job in about 1977! And in about 1978 we were providing a dial-up service for clients - no internet, of course; this was leased GPO lines.

Go easy with the factorial bangs! I did my apprenticeship with a computer manufacturer, so first got to play with one ~1964 and became a full-time programmer in 1969. And the comms (for airline reservations and such) was, as you say, all leased lines...

 

[AntarcticPilot]

Go easy with the factorial bangs! I did my apprenticeship with a computer manufacturer, so first got to play with one ~1964 and became a full-time programmer in 1969. And the comms (for airline reservations and such) was, as you say, all leased lines...

Which computer manufacturer? Was it Lyons, with the LEO range? If so, a former boss of mine, one Hugh Beggs, was involved with them.

 

[mjcoon]

Which computer manufacturer? Was it Lyons, with the LEO range? If so, a former boss of mine, one Hugh Beggs, was involved with them.

No, nothing so early as LEO. My only connection with that is conversing at ICL with the (now late) John Pinkerton who was a LEO designer. It was ICT, with a Germanium transistor machine (no integrated circuits), but I moved to (American) Univac who was involved with reservations systems for BEA.

 

[LittleSister]

Ah, the fun of using Internet cafes in the French West indies with the 'odd' keyboard...

Reminds me that quite some years ago I was going on holiday to SW France, but also had decided to apply for a very senior job, the closing date for which was during that holiday, and application to be submitted by email. I can't remember all the whys and wherefores now (we didn't have wifi, and my computer wasn't enabled, but the holiday rental did?), but the upshot was that we arranged that I would use the wifi enabled laptop of my then partner's sister - a long-term French resident - who would be joining us on holiday.

On arrival I discovered that not only are French keyboards' letters laid out differently, but her keyboard's erase button erased in the opposite direction to mine, and several letter keys were either wonky, required very forceful jabbing, for were missing entirely. This made composing and editing the required and challenging prose statements, and filling in some typically badly designed forms, hugely frustrating and painfully slow.

Despite the distractions/chaos of holiday, extended family, and a gaggle of extremely noisy kids I finally finished this to my satisfaction the day before the closing date. The advertised wifi of the holiday rental didn't actually work, we'd found, so I was planning to go to the internet cafe in the nearby small town the next day to email the application.

By chance, I discovered only the afternoon before that the closing date was a national holiday in France, and that internet cafe would be closed. Worse still, I was told that most such establishments, except those in big cities, would also be closed on such a national holiday. Being late in the evening, in an out of the way place, and without wifi there appeared no way of finding out if there were any exceptions to this, so it looked like I would have to drive 2 1/2 hours to Bilbao, Spain, to be sure of finding somewhere to email the application from!

I can't remember how now (phone call to the sister's friends in Paris, who searched the internet for us?), but we somehow found an internet cafe open for limited hours in a town (Dax?) about 45 minutes away, and it was with great relief I was finally able to submit the application, and on time.

 

[Seashoreman]

Reminds me that quite some years ago I was going on holiday to SW France, but also had decided to apply for a very senior job, the closing date for which was during that holiday, and application to be submitted by email. I can't remember all the whys and wherefores now (we didn't have wifi, and my computer wasn't enabled, but the holiday rental did?), but the upshot was that we arranged that I would use the wifi enabled laptop of my then partner's sister - a long-term French resident - who would be doing us on holiday.

On arrival I discovered that not only are French keyboards' letters laid out differently, but her keyboard's erase button erased in the opposite direction to mine, and several letter keys were either wonky, required very forceful jabbing, for were missing entirely. This made composing and editing the required and challenging prose statements, and filling in some typically badly designed forms, hugely frustrating and painfully slow.

Despite the distractions/chaos of holiday, extended family, and a gaggle of extremely noisy kids I finally finished this to my satisfaction the day before the closing date. The advertised wifi of the holiday rental didn't actually work, we'd found, so I was planning to go to the internet cafe in the nearby small town the next day to email the application.

By chance, I discovered only the afternoon before that the closing date was a national holiday in France, and that internet cafe would be closed. Worse still, I was told that most such establishments, except those in big cities, would also be closed on such a national holiday. Being late in the evening, in an out of the way place, and without wifi there appeared no way of finding out if there were any exceptions to this, so it looked like I would have to drive 2 1/2 hours to Bilbao, Spain, to be sure of finding somewhere to email the application from!

I can't remember how now (phone call to the sister's friends in Paris, who searched the internet for us?), but we somehow found an internet cafe open for limited hours in a town (Dax?) about 45 minutes away, and it was with great relief I was finally able to submit the application, and on time.

Hope you got the job !

 

[Lightwave395]

That brings back memories of playing with the Eliott 901 (IIRC) computer at uni. Screen? What's that? It talked to you via teleprinter at one character/sec, and got confused if you tried to type faster.

Write you program to paper tape, feed the compiler on its tape and get a series of error messages. Correct your program. Rinse and repeat until, at last, no more errors, and you get a tape with your compiled program. Now feed the run-time tape in, followed by your program. You could then enter data and get answers back, one character at a time. Thinking about it, maybe windows ain't so bad after all...

I was an IBM CE ('Customer Engineer') back in the mid 60's, in the Large mainframe group fixing and maintaining 360/50 and 65's, the 360 console was a modified IBM golf ball typewriter, worked at 134.5 bps. I was in the team installing the first UK 360/195 at the IBM data centre in Croydon

 

[LittleSister]

Hope you got the job !

Thanks.

Therein lies a tale! I ended up taking a different role in the same organisation. It was great for some time, and then for mysterious and unsavoury reasons was made absolutely hellish for several years. I wish I'd never gone near the place, and had spent that 'holiday' in SW France relaxing and, er, holidaying!

 

[PhillM]

In the 80's I was selling 1200/75 modems to people who wanted Reuters

Then did a stint selling x25 packet switching for WANS.. I got involved in building JANET, which I believe became the original backbone of the internet in the UK. Although, I could be wrong and am happy to be corrected.

 

[Thistle]

Write you program to paper tape, feed the compiler on its tape and get a series of error messages.

Hence the one-time definition of a computer as a "machine to turn your input into error messages."

 

[mjcoon]

Hence the one-time definition of a computer as a "machine to turn your input into error messages."

Better called a confuter:
"confute=
prove (a person or an assertion or accusation) to be wrong."

 

[laika]

Retro for millennials: "Our wifi is secured with WEP: Borrow it like it's 2005"

 

[Stemar]

I was an IBM CE ('Customer Engineer') back in the mid 60's, in the Large mainframe group fixing and maintaining 360/50 and 65's, the 360 console was a modified IBM golf ball typewriter, worked at 134.5 bps. I was in the team installing the first UK 360/195 at the IBM data centre in Croydon

I never met a 360, but when I started working in the spare parts department of the French importers of Toyota cars, they had a 36, and they proudly showed me their brand new 1MB hard disks.