1964 Modem Reaches Out And Touches The Internet | Hacker News Reader

1964 Modem Reaches Out And Touches The Internet

retrothing.com

111 pointsskorks33 comments

I wish the idea of acoustic couplers still existed and was nicely integrated with things. Imagine the ease of technical support:

Customer: Hello? I can't open this Excel file

Me: OK, wave your phone near your computer for me

{remote control established}

No IE slowness, no reading URLs and passwords back and forth, no "did you notice the information bar" or plugin prompts or download prompts or email invitations stuck in spam filters... even if the two just communicated long enough to exchange a URL and key and then connected over the internet.

Although it would be better if it could be good enough to see the BIOS, etc.

Ooh, I had this dialog recently:

Customer: Hello? My bingo cards are wonky.

Me: Do I have your permission to log into your account?

Customer: Sure.

Me: Wow, they're certainly wonky. taps commands into console Fixed. Have a nice day.

Good golly I like having all the data on the server. I've even started using this with my desktop app. One of the first things I ask for is the users to try hitting one feature that will give me an exact copy of their word list, to try reproducing the issue. If I had been thinking ahead I would have built a Get Tech Support button which would tell me everything about the running program and the relevant portions of their environment.

At 300 baud, you might be better off driving over.

With a station wagon full of tapes?

We actually got to put that in practice when we moved our servers to a new data center, although we used a uhaul. ~60tb in 1.5 hrs.

The bandwidth is awesome. It's the latency that kills you.

My favorite Tanenbaum quote

why does it have to be 300 baud? it could just be a pairing code. the rest would occur over a faster connection.

you probably could do this with speaker and microphone...

Driving over is what people invented remote support to avoid doing...

Actually, I'm pretty sure remote support was invented to reduce the rate of justifiable homicide.

I've kinda done this.

A year ago I got a One 4 All universal remote that didn't understand my stereo. Their tech support emailed to me a WAV file, and told me to hold the device up to my computer speakers when I played it. Bingo, reprogrammed remote.

I remember back ~1986, living in a fraternity house in college. My direct-connect modem died, and I borrowed an acoustic one from a friend. The guy in the room next to me had his stereo cranked up, which seemed to interfere with the modem. I wrapped the acoustic coupler up in a couple of layers of towels, and everything was fine.

I would be wary about broadcasting the IP address, username and a filmed typing of the password to a tech community.

It would take very little work to determine the password from watching that video a few times.

I remember that someone did that when the video was posted last year, and it was an easter egg..

I have been searching and can't find any info about this? Got any more details/link?

The linux box was in his lab most likely in a private network, which he dialed into. He didn't dial into an isp.

Good point, but one could also take note of the number he dialed on the telephone in the video.

Indeed. It's pretty likely that voice number still has a 300 baud modem hooked up to it. Or... not.

Given that the guy's nick is phreakmonkey, I assume he took that into consideration and used a throw-away password that was gone before the video was posted.

The IP address he connects to is 10.6.105.71, I don't think he's overly concerned about other people logging into that machine over the internet (10.0.0.0/8 is a private network IP range and not routable over the public internet, just like 127.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.0/24). Also, it's pretty likely that he changed the passwords or deleted the example user accounts after he made this video, just to be sure (i.e. belt and suspenders).

This is the most awesome thing I have seen in a long time.

Agreed. I love the craftsmanship. Who makes hardware that can last more than 45 years?

My current model M is going to turn 23 in April...I suspect that it will live to see 45.

I love my Model M but I think this is the last go for it. It already has a DIN-PS2 adapter and now manufacturers are starting to drop the PS2 port (Dell). I feel like I get less enjoyment out of it each passing day. I have to switch to a quieter keyboard at night because of the tapping noise. And with more stuff showing up on my desk, more and larger displays, I'm running out of space.

These fine folks:

http://www.clickykeyboards.com/index.cfm/fa/categories.main/...

Sell what you need. The regular passive USB/PS2 adapters that you can get at best buy won't work.

I have a PS2 to USB adapter for keyboards my keyboard (& mouse).

The M is a nice keyboard. I'm typing on one right now. I think every programmer should own a model M. I expect to have this keyboard for the rest of my life, unless I decide to splurge on a Unicomp replacement some day.

Totally off-topic, but this reminded me Voyager-1… 32+ years on the road, still sending signals with its 23 watts radio from the distance more than 14 light-hours.

This is a duplicate post from a while ago, but fascinating all the same.

What's especially impressive is that the electrolytic capacitors in it haven't failed after all these years.

I wish he had opened it up and shown the insides. I bet it's some fantastic assemblage of point-to-point circuitry.

They may have avoided having to use electrolytic capacitors. Or they might have used especially high-quality ones given that it was a specialized (and probably very expensive) piece of equipment.

I would have expected such a device from 1964 to have at least a few tubs in it, but the fact that it didn't require any 'warm up' time after he switched it on suggests that that's not the case.

Transistor devices had been around for years at that point; we were already making transistor computers.

Also, electrolytic caps are pretty easy to replace--they're big, clearly labelled, and it's not like the functionality has changed (a 100 uF capacitor is still a 100 uF capacitor).

Indeed:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=629383

It makes me feel old that 300 baud modems were around 45 years ago.

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