I used one at uni ( Reading 1977-80) - We had a "network" of sorts An ICL mainframe over at one side of the campus in the Computer Science Block , and a Modular One (or some similar name) over the other side in the Cybernetics Dept - with a nature reserve and a lake between them. So, the connection was via phone line and 300 baud accoustic coupler - The telephone handset was placed into a foam padded box which contained speaker and microphone and was connected to the computer - it worked very well, and was not at all sensitive to noise. This made us cyberneticists feel very superior. While the computer science people had to submit their jobs on punched cards, we could use the teletypes and even tectronix green graphics terminals in our dept and use the M1 as a "front-end" computer to work interactively on the ICL mainframe.
Back then home computing was a bit pricy. A Commodore Pet with a black and white display capable of 40X20 graphics, and 4K Ram cost several thousand pounds. The along came Uncle Clive, and the rest is history (more or less back on track). Jeremy Taffel ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dilwyn Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 6:21 PM Subject: [ql-users] Re: [ql-users] Re: Re: Re: [ql-users] � 0.00 to spend! (1s t attempt) > > > Mind you the 300bps acoustic coupler modem is a bit limiting (8-)# > > It was Z88 like, but with a great keyboard, but poor screen. > Acoustic coupler? Is that a modem that plays the sound through the > telephone handset rather than plug into the phone line? I remember > reading about that kind of thing many, many years ago, but never used > one and didn't really believe they would work anyway...surely a TV on > in the > background or something would make it not work? > > (Back to my "flat earth" books...) > > -- > Dilwyn Jones >
