I'm reading the Bruce Sterling book -- cutting-edge when published barely 20 years ago, it now reads as quaintly as penny-farthing bicycles, tailfins on cars, snap-brim hats and teenagers saying "keen!"
...Is there anything quite as dead as dial-up BBSes? I can still use a 1920s dial telephone; but a 300 baud modem (heck, even a superfast 2400-baud) isn't even a good doorstop. No, I'm being unfair: the landline telegraph guys use them (plus a custom interface) to telegraph one another, via a nifty hub and The TelCo, in a very clever mash-up of time-spanning technologies. (But time doth march on: Internet Morse is the coming thing!)
The Hacker Crackdown is a fascinating period piece, with the Internet looming in the background like a luxury liner headed into port but not quite yet docked and a whole slew of smaller precursors busily festering away, up close and personal. ...I remember hitting local boards with a battered Kaypro II* and a direct-connect modem (and thank you, Irv Hoff, for MDM730!), but I was (by then) a serious sort and avoided the warez d00dz and their ilk. Sterling provides a guided tour, to the extent such a thing is possible, and it's strangely like going though the Winchester mansion or the tombs of the Pharaohs.
So recent. So far away.
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* Still one of the best machine/software packages for writing, ever; the bundled word processor was a composing engine superior to anything that came after. Q10 is as close as I can get and it's pretty good -- but the formatting options in PerfectWriter were better.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
18 comments:
I still have fond memories of FidoNet...
I used to run a BBS that was a FidoNet node. Good times.
As for Hacker Crackdown, the technology changes but the song remains the same. Great book.
Methinks I need to build a 300 baud modem out of vacuum tubes.
Darn. I used to have a book of RTTY aarticles that had been published in 73 Magazine over the years and I'm pretty sure it had a tube TU design. But that book is long gone.
AbeBooks and Amazon both find "RTTY Handbook" by Wayne Green, FWIW.
Tube modem: liable to be biggish, even for 300 Baud. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing.
That's the book. I miss Wayne. He was... entertaining.
Big gear is fine with me. I can't even see most of the parts we use at work any more. They're like individually wrapped flakes of ground black pepper.
"I miss Wayne. He was... entertaining."
Not that I want to make you feel bad, Dave - I would have sworn I read his obituary a couple of years ago - but Wayne Green is still around.
And, apparently, blogging.
If conventional modems still work for you and are part of your work flows, better get on a workaround, stat. The backbones are going digital as we speak, and you can't cram many modulated bits through an 8K transcoder optimized to drop that which the human ear cannot hear. If, in fact, the transcoder even exists at the central office; more and more devices are doing the digitizing themselves and just pumping bits directly. This includes fax machines, btw. And all kinds of telemetry and SCADA systems have as a bred-in-bone assumption that they can only be accessed by point-to-point circuit-switched communications paths...
That's an awesome book. You might also check out Cliff Stoll's book, "The Cuckoo's Egg" as well. Same retro network security feel, only with real KGB spies.
Second the Cuckoo's Egg recommendation, try and find the second edition with the afterword about the Worm with the programming error, I'd you can.
Dwight: I know Wayne is still around. I just miss his 73 Magazine editorials. His other outlets weren't really my cup of tea.
BP: I saw a video of a talk Stoll did to a bunch of NASA people. He's a fascinating speaker, but if he had to hold still he'd probably burst into flames. Cuckoo's Egg was excellent.
Internet telegraphy -- how kewl! Learning Morse is on my list of things to do, though not high priority right now. Heck, I don't even have a key. I know I can get a SW radio and listen to the W1AW transmissions, or similar. Was sort of pondering using an Arduino to interface a key to USB, and then ... something. I know there are commercial products out there for that too, it's just that I'm cheap, and a DIY type as well. Well, there's a hamfest coming up on the 23rd. I wonder if my wrist would tolerate a straight key.
If you are going to do internet telegraphy, genuine Bunnell sounders are usually available. Alas, without the Prince Albert can to amplify the sound. The are Bunnell keys seem harder to find, although the J-38 is a respectable copy.
But don't confuse land line Morse with radio's International Morse, commonly referred to as "CW." They are definitely not interchangeable.
There's plenty of practice material for CW, radio type Morse, from FISTS and from other really narrow band enthusiasts.
One source on CD has a variety of books in CW. For example, J. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz at about 18 WPM. Which is not only optimum copy speed for CW, but will put a tired mind to sleep.
Stranger
Start with a straight key -- even the cheap ones are highly adjustable.
Well, the range of prices on straight keys is quite wide, I see from a quick e-bay search. And, as seems usual these days, the Chinese model is at the low end. I will ponder this with a bit higher priority, I think, since it looks like about $25 will get me something decent.
Stranger, I have read a bit on Ham, Morse, and CW, so I do know about the American and International dialects. I have not, as yet, come across any mention about anything being confined to land-line or radio. In fact, what I recall reading was that if one plans on DXing with people elsewhere than the US, one should learn the International dialect. But nothing about using it exclusively. IOW, there's nothing "wrong" with my using American Morse via CW, though it might not be common worldwide.
Not sure what utility the sounder would be for facilitating internet telegraphy. Well, my preconception about that is that a key would be used to generate a signal purely electronically. So, given your mention of having an amplifier of some sort, I infer that you would be using a mic to pick up the clicks of the sounder. Whereas I envision connecting through appropriate circuitry to my sound card, or to USB.
More internet Morse strangeness: http://myspace.voo.be/pcoupard/cwirc/
For 73 magazine fans, Wayne has allowed the entire set of issues to be placed online. Quoted from the ARRL Contest Letter of January 4, 2012:
> In the last issue, the availability of the 73 Magazine issues online in the Internet Archive drew a lot of interest. Marty K1OYB pointed out that this was a voluntary contribution to the public domain by 73 magazine publisher, Wayne Green W2NSD who deserves a tip of the collective cap in this regard.
I still recall my old Commodore C64 and the 100/300 baud modem. Seldom got 300 baud to work but it was such magic back in those days. I even used the FOG (or CFOG) BBS for awhile, as well as a few friend's BBSs. Good times.
Jim
Jed: radio work is about 99.44% International (or Continental) Morse; landline (American) Morse was/is 99.98% wireline and only heard on the radio whenthe Morse Telegraph boys get to going.
There is a reason for this; though Amercian is a more-compact code, it gets that by having something like seven different levels of timing; there are characters with oddball spacing and three possible lengths of the "dah" (or dash) element. This works fine on a wire but is not good on radio circuits, with all the normal fading and static. Continental code constructs all characters from only three elements: standard dit, dah and space.
Learn International Morse first. Much larger user base, even now.
Heh. Morse over IRC. And here I was thinking maybe Skype. Well, of course people were thinking of sending Morse over the network long before Skype.
Thanks for the clarification.
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