Why did the ADAM have a modem?

[jeremysart]

I was too young when the ADAM was going through the end of its life cycle, and did not get to own one until well after its demise.

Of all the things you can do with the ADAM, I cannot find any information on any website as to what you could do with the ADAM Baud Modem. Was is just BBS forum like communication? Or something similar to Telnet? What was the selling point?

[ColecoDan]

Did you see the movie WarGames?

 

I had a friend in college who had the Adam computer with modem. Back then you could get into any computer system through the phone and nobody thought about security back in those old days.

 

He used to change his grades and used to cause problems for companies.

 

So I don't know about colecovision created sites that it was meant for but it definately let you get out and connect to any computer that had a telephone connection to the network.

[Ransom]

At the time, most people either called the few BBSes that were around (BBSes didn't really take off for another five years or so) or used the online services like CompuServe and Delphi. Those services cost usually $6 per hour of connect time and offered forums, games, and download areas much like BBSes, but unlike BBSes of the time, they were national or even international in their userbases. They would have dial-up facilities (banks of modems) located near major population centers so that it was a local call for most people.

 

(I spent a LOT of time on Compuserve, and even met my wife on there in the chat system, which was called the Compuserve CB Simulator (which just shows its 70s heritage:))).

 

Other people used their modems to dial in to universities or large corporations they may have worked at that had time sharing systems for use of their students and/or employees.

[coleconut]

I was too young when the ADAM was going through the end of its life cycle, and did not get to own one until well after its demise.

Of all the things you can do with the ADAM, I cannot find any information on any website as to what you could do with the ADAM Baud Modem. Was is just BBS forum like communication? Or something similar to Telnet? What was the selling point?

As everyone found when they purchased the ADAMLink modem, the first version of the software did not support binary file transfer, only text. So someone hacked the Modem7 program (and called it...what else....Madam7) and running under CP/M, you could use Xmodem protocol to transfer binary files.

I was on the BBS's all the time. Best one in Canada was CRS - Canada Remote Systems, where they had a great Coleco forum and lots of files to download as well as msg forums as well. It was a subscription service but very reasonable at the time. Fidonet had ADAM forums as well as a download section. Mostly the BBS's were used for online games on the ADAM - very simplistic ones - and chatting. Another good one on Fido was FCAUG-IBM_Net (or something like that). I was run by a crusty old guy here in Toronto and he had no interest in associating with our ADAM users group (MTAG) but supported the ADAM for years.

I bought one of Syd Carter's 1200 baud modems (dont forget ADAMLink was 300 baud - o n e c h a r a c t e r (pause) a t a (more pause) t i m e o n t h e s c r e e n (long pause)

I was so happy until I tried it and because the ADAMNEt couldnt handle such a fast stream of bits, it would drop a lot of characters. Sigh.... Syd did a mod and then I was OK. Or some BBS's you could enable NULL's which would slow the data down at the server end.

Awesome times way before Internet.

[coleconut]

Oh yeah and I also used the modem to gather submissions from other folks for the MTAG Newsletter when I was the Editor for about a year or two, late 80's timeframe. I'd setup times with others to download files from various sources, then again use the modem to transfer those files to my Mac+ using 2 modems then pretty it up and print out on an Imagewriter printer for distribution. We had 100+ subscribers in our heyday.

And although I didnt do any major hacking, it was a hoot to connect to various businesses, sometimes you could guess at their modem phone number (eg voice line was 416-555-1111) so you'd try on the modem 555-1112, 1113, etc and invariably hit it. The wargames dialler as talked about earlier automated this find-and-seek process. Then you could poke around at will or if a login name and password was required, it was fun to try and get in.

[jeremysart]

Man, wish I had been around for that. It must have been exciting when connecting started becoming a real possibility. I remember watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off back in the day, the scene where he logs in and changes his attendance.. or the movie Evolver (if anyone remembers that one) where the kid logs into his school to cheat on a test.

 

I was cheated because our first family computer was the Intellivision Entertainment "Computer" System which had absolutely no modem support. It didn't even have a tape drive.

We eventually got an IBM 5150 that had a modem, although we never connected any sort of server on any computer until the mid 90's when the internet was already well on its way.

Funny thing is, I have never had to pay for the net. A friend of mine had bought a laptop from BestBuy which came with a 2 year subscription to Prodigy dial-up, so I was able to install Prodigy on my PC and connect for free using his screen name and password. And now with the advent of wifi and neighbors without WEP

[S1500]

You kids with your high speed Internet don't know how good you have it. If atariage was a BBS, we would have to browse through the forums ONE USER AT A TIME.

[desiv]

Yeah, it was fun back then...

Writing your own wargames sequential dialer...

Scanning phone numbers at night looking for dial in's...

Then explaining to your parents why the phone company says you tripped something they have that looks for people dialing sequential numbers... Oooopppss...

 

Then promising never to do that again...

 

...

 

and modifying your program to dial pseudo-randomly..

 

and after all of that, never finding anything of use...

 

All at 300 baud...

 

Man.. I'm old... :-)

 

desiv

[coleconut]

My first job in IT was first level support at an airport. Plug and play was an unknown term at that time. I must have spent 50% of my time day in and day out installing/troubleshooting modems to connect to the mainframe for various applications. Big royal pain in the butt. The least painful were the new US Robotics Sportster 9600 modems but some users inherited these god-awful Gandalf modems that always seemed to drop the line or crap out on the file transfers if you could get them configured in the first place. Everyone had a modem, no LAN to be seen. You had to "talk" to the modem in some terminal program in "AT" language to set them up.

Then I went home and played with my ADAMLink.

I found I was able to whistle into the phone at the same pitch as a modem carrier. HAH!

Most of this went away when they installed a Token Ring network at the airport and then all my time was spent as LAN admin on Banyan Vines or Netware.

My favourite story is when a user found a mouse nest in their Olivetti XT clone. So the boss bought a kick-ass vaccuum and instructed us to go around and clean out everyone's PC. My student intern colleague on his first gig went to some high-ranking boss's PC and opened er up and proceeded to vaccuum up all the jumpers off the motherboard and the cards in the slots, rendering the guys PC to a doorstop. Ummm, were gonna have to buy you a new 386 computer...ummm...Sir.

Used 1 or 4 meg memory simms were like GOLD. If I advertised selling a few on the BBS's people would literally fight on the lawn to get them first.

 

Wow things have changed since then.

[Murph74]

Ah yes... The days of the Bulletin Board Systems. I spent countless hours on-line from 1985 to 1990! What a time to be a 'geek'. From learing what phreaking and cardz meant, to seeing how many hops you could get an "electronic message" to jump on fidonet, to going color with PETSCII graphics on the Commodore 64! Man, I can't tell you how much sleep I missed as a pre-teen/early-teen BBSing til 2-3am every night while the family slept.

 

There is a documentary I highly recommend to anyone who lived it or is curious about that time... http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/ You can probably find it online as a torrent, too, if you're so inclined.

 

Yes, I've been online for 25 years now. Not too many people can say that! lol

[desiv]

)There is a documentary I highly recommend to anyone who lived it or is curious about that time... http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/ You can probably find it online as a torrent, too, if you're so inclined.

 

Yes, I've been online for 25 years now. Not too many people can say that! lol

 

Yep, we're a ..er.. properly aged vintage.. :-)

Man I spent a lot of time on FIDONET.. At least I was 1200 BPS by then.

Thanx for the link, I'll check it out...

 

desiv

 

p.s. I did Compuserve for a bit. Too expensive.. I was in the chat/product introduction on there. And I "won" a video-card for my Amiga! A HAM-E card! $300 value! Sweet! Then I got my compuserve bill and I had spent more than $300 (or at least it was close, but I think it was more???) on Compuserve. D'oh!

[jeremysart]

You kids with your high speed Internet don't know how good you have it.

 

Lol, you say it as though you still have to use a 300 baud modem

We were just too poor back in the day to afford to go "online" sadly. So I entered in during the 56k dial up era. The internet was well along its way.. but man I do not miss waiting an hour for just one song to download.

Its cool that there are still some BBS's around, for both Atari computers, C64 and the like.

 

EDIT: I found this to be a very interesting read http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/161

 

I really want to connect to a BBS now.

Edited April 12, 2010 by jeremysart

[Murph74]

Jeremy... http://www.telnetbbsguide.com/

[jeremysart]

Jeremy... http://www.telnetbbsguide.com/

 

Sweet, thanks!

[Rik]

I'm STILL in the 56 k dial-up era.But,the best I get is 38-44000 bps.

[Murph74]

Heh Rik-- that's pretty much all anyone ever got. Matter of fact, I seem to recall the paperwork/box of any modems I've owned explaining part of that. Something about 56k was theoretical, and that the FCC capped speeds on analog line at 53k, in perfect conditions. I'm not sure I ever saw 44k!