Post #175002 by ikitnrev on Tue, Jul 26, 2005 10:17 PM

I remember joining a BBS in 1988, but I only posted a couple of messages there. Nothing really happened. Once someone started replying to me, while I was on-line, and we traded a few comments to each other, so I guess I can say I did first chat back then.

I was a computer science major when the local community was made up of a roomful of comp sci students, all staying up late, typing their programs line by line into the keypunch machines, and then waiting for the computer operator, who was behind a window in another room, to read your deck of punch cards into the vacuum card reader. Then you had to wait for the program to actually run, and for the operator to fold your computer output and call your name -- only then could you pick up your printout to see if your program was successful. The scene was full of geeks way back then too.

I thought it was heaven when we finally got terminals, and you could type in your program, compile, execute, and then view your output in one sitting, with no operator interaction.

Vern