ATDT038850000 No Carrier. Or BBS:The Documentary

No Carrier.

The bane of our lives for many a year in the 70's, 80's and early 90's.

ATM0 was probably one of the most commonly typed set of characters during this time in the small hours of the night, as modem speakers around the world were disabled to allow quiet connectivity without disturbing parents, significant others or siblings.   Staring for hours into monochrome monitors waiting for character after character to appear was the unspoken past-time of millions of hobbyists and future-technologists.

Whilst most students in high schools were studying French, German or other 'useful' language, a select few were memorizing the Hays Command Set - a set of commands still in use today used to control the modems that connected us to the world, albeit rather slowly.

I remember eagerly, and somewhat impatiently, waiting each day after school for 6pm to tick over - the time when long-distance calling became cheaper than during the day - allowing me to dial into a number of bulletin board systems to check out the latest news, games and connect to FidoNET for what was the early form of email.

I spent perhaps close to a year of tinkering during the latter years of high school building a UUCP transport system to rapidly (as rapidly as 300 baud is) download my 'mail'.  The software I used? UCSD Pascal on my trusty Apple ][e - which still works to this day!  I wonder if there are any FidoNet nodes still active... I digress!

BBS: The Documentary

BBS: The Documentary is a 8-part documentary containing over 200 interviews with BBS owners, hobbyists and cultural icons throughout this exciting era.

From the DVD's blurb:  "Long before the Internet escaped from the lab, connected the planet and redefined what it meant to use a computer...
....there was a brave and pioneering band of computer users who spent their time, money and sanity setting up their home computers and phone lines to welcome anyone who called. By using a modem, anyone else who knew the phone number of these computers could connect to them, leave messages, send and recieve files.... and millions did."

The interviews in the DVD are fascinating, and portray a world that was arguably the foundation for today's social networking boom on the Intranet.

The guys still have stock left - so get in quick to grab a copy before they run out!