Hey Carol!

 CS> Oh it was a trip.  Dial the number, listen, catch moem tone, drop
 CS>  it in the handset.

Ah!  I've seen those in movies or TV shows.  Never ran across one in real
life unless you count telex machines, which were simular ... I think.

 CS> Not sure since your history wsas VAX and mine was Sperry, but they had
 CS> simuluarities and i've used VAX/VMS as well as a host of other 
 CS> mainframe things.

You defenitely have the advantage there.  I didn't do any admin things until
the Sparcs, and even there I tried to avoid user stuff other then how it
influenced my particular account.  The only reason I had root access was for
hardware issues, mostly tape and disk drives.  That was my contribution to
the network.

Thus when I later picked up Linux on PC's (486) it was a very smooth 
transition for me.

 CS> I didnt run into BBS stuff til 1986 or so, years later.

My first experience was quite a bit later then that.  Perhaps 89-ish or
very early 90's at the latest.  My first BBS was on the 386 with the 2400
baud modem but I was the only user.  I used it to move data around due to
the lack of any networking programs at the time.  I started writing some for
DOS but then Linux came along and saved me the trouble.  :-) 

 CS> Actually, I think I was taught 'script' for the term.  I later
 CS> translate it to batch file as the same thing.

Ah!  Okay.  That explains why I still call them scripts.  I didn't do much
batch stuff on DOS.  Mostly C and Fortran in a lame attempt to stay in sync.

I don't miss that at all, although I still have source on floppies for
whatever stupid reason.  I suppose I figured I better keep it all just in
case.  I think I even have some USGS source for potential field methods.  I
was going to rewrite that for Unix but then heard rumours of others stealing
that work as their own for Windows.  That left a bad taste in my mouth.

- Maurice



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