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0 pointspimlottc4y ago0 comments

There may have been some version of Zmodem available in 1986, but as Wikipedia itself says, it didn't become widely supported until at least the early 1990s. For example, it wasn't built into ProComm Plus, one of the leading terminal programs, until 1991 [0]. If you didn't have native support, you could add it to your terminal software as an external binary, but that was a bit trickier. [1] And, of course, the BBS you were calling had to support it too.

But when it was available, it sure left Xmodem in the dust!

0: https://books.google.com/books?id=aAtUrtU87kQC&pg=PT180&lpg=...

1: https://github.com/fredrikhederstierna/fymodem/blob/98af4588...

P.S. Old schoolers will recognize the infamous Rusty n Edie's BBS in the directory screenshot in the linked PC Magazine article...

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jdforsythe4204y ago· 1 in thread

Thanks for the link! Rusty n Edie was run out of Boardman, OH (suburb of Youngstown) in a plaza at the corner of California Ave and York Ave. In fact, the sign for the plaza is still there: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.0212018,-80.6563805,3a,27.1y...

We had lots of BBSs around here in the 90s, including Viper's Den run by Bob McCoy and K's Korner run by Dennis Klaustermeyer.

To answer the OP question, compared to now it would seem terrible, dialing up to a text interface on 2400 baud modems. But at the time it was AWESOME. For most of us this was the first time we'd ever used a network of any kind.

pimlottcOP4y ago

Wow, that's crazy there's still a sign! It's also crazy how far out the 216 area code used to extend...

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