...

Most computers in 1986 weren't up to it. Many of us were using Apple II computers with something like 278x192 resolution (in single hi res mode). Imagine such a beast doing networking. Ick.

I was using dumb terminals (initially HP; later AT&T VT100 clones). Much better resolution than PCs, and it wasn't till the late 80s that I could afford a machine for home use that was as good as a dumb terminal connected to a Vax 780. (Macs were arguably *better*, but that's a separate issue. They were friendlier, but Unix was much more powerful and usable.) I was a newcomer to Usenet - didn't get on until late 81 or maybe 82 :-) It was mostly universities (initially Duke and UNC) and gradually spreading into other places that had Unix machines, and eventually ported to support network environments other than uucp. It's arguable the extent to which that was public or private at first, because much of the critical mass of discussions was either at government-funded schools or The Phone Company. Ward Christiansen used to claim he had invented the BBS, but it wasn't till 1978 (I think it was XModem?), and I'd been using Plato Notesfiles several years before, while the Arpanet mailing lists had also been growing for a while. Eventually I got a PC at home. I mainly used Netcom's early ix.netcom.com IP service (with Trumpet Winsock on Win3.1), though I also tried out Twinsock on a shell account at work. At NCR our initial PC-based email was an appallingly ugly hacked-together Kermit thing - one reason I got the Netcom account was that the Kermit thing would choke and die if you got more than 200KB in one session, and the cypherpunks list was too much for it :-) Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639