Break Into Chat
Josh Renaud’s blog about BBS history, retro computing and technology reminiscences.
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The future of news, as predicted in 1993
GeekWire has an interesting look back at a debate on CompuServe in 1993 about the future of journalism. This piqued my interest as a journalist, and as someone who loves looking back at computer history. The members of CompuServe’s JForum made predictions about the form factors of future news delivery devices that were accurately fulfilled…
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Austin Seraphin, creator of “Barneysplat!”
Austin Seraphin has been blind since birth and has loved computers since he got an Apple IIe at age 6. In 1993 he released Barneysplat!, one of the zaniest BBS door games ever conceived, in which players try to kill or intoxicate Barney the purple dinosaur and his cast of kids.
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Barneysplat! memories
As a teen, I encountered the show enough to develop a hatred of it: saccharine songs that would lodge in your head; giggly, dopey-voiced dinosaur characters; a “one-dimensional world where everyone must be happy and everything must be resolved right away.” It’s no surprise that Barney spawned a backlash. Barney bashing, “anti-Barney humor and parodies…
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From newsletter to magazine
Today I had an article published in an Atari-related periodical for the first time since 1994.
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The FBI’s Atari files
Did you know Atari was investigated by the FBI over a scheme in which they imported Japanese DRAM chips to the U.S. from their plant in Taiwan and resold the chips at greatly inflated prices? Neither did I, until tonight, when I stumbled across an awesome website called AtariLeaks.
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Telnet to a BBS using a PC terminal program within the DOSBox emulator
A few months ago I wrote about my experiences trying to telnet in to Atari BBSes using an emulated Atari on my Mac. Basically the solution boiled down to this: Use tcpser4j to change a telnet connection to a serial connection, use socat to pipe that serial connection to a file, and set the Hatari…
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