[LINK] Happy birthday .au

[Tom Koltai]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au 
> [mailto:link-bounces at mailman.anu.edu.au] On Behalf Of steve jenkin
> Sent: Sunday, 5 June 2011 3:10 PM
> To: link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> Subject: Re: [LINK] Happy birthday .au
> 
> 
> Tom Koltai wrote on 5/06/11 8:37 AM:
> > Harumph!!!
> > If we say that there were 36 universities and 18 of them were 
> > connected via UUCP in 1982 and ANSTO and CSIRO were also connected 
> > then there were more far internet accounts outside of universities 
> > than inside... About 200 Corporations who had their own connections 
> > (See AUUGN org newsletter below for a partial list).
> 
> Maltby (UNSW) and Lauder (USYD) created the first Unix 
> dial-up link in Australia was just after the first Johns 
> Lions Unix kernel course. 

And which protocol did they use ?

>Well before UUCP v1 and the 
> HoneyDanBer rewrite that became ubiquitous.
> 
<SNIP>
> 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACSnet>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHSnet>
<http://www.rogerclarke.com/II/OzIHist.html>


Thanks Steve,

Most informative.
Unfortunately, I must have lived in a paralell universe.
One in which people were using Unix in Australia that didn't attend
Usyd,
And in fact had operational unix computers that originated in countries
other than oz and 
had nothing to do with pdp or in fact any type of vax.
Myself for example broke my teeth on a variant of BSD used in Hungary in
the late seventies.
I then became an integrator of Unix systems manufactured by a company
called CCI. 
You might remember BSD Tahoe, which of course was named after the CCI
6/32.
Me, I started with an AT&T 3B2 but graduated rapidly to Cromenco's and
from there to the lowly 
CCI 5/20 (running PERPOS) which only carried 12 users on it's 68000
processor. (Sold in Australia by Singer - later STC). However, in 1983
the 
5/20 using UNET (a precursor of Rick Adams later developed slip) was
connecting every weekend to the USA to pick-up and drop off mail. 
I sold the CCI boxes mainly to legal firms around Australia, HK and west
coast of the USA. All of whom had operational 
email quite a long time before many universities were even connected.

As far as ACSnet was concerned, I was informed (I can't remember who by)
that I didnt qualify for a connection... But it's OK, because I decided
to do something about it.

The free ACSnet that you refer to, was limited in its scope to a few
members in the southern capital cities and I might be remembering it
wrong but I was sure was about 1986.

I also remember a small 16 line BBS in Darwin, 1986 which used a store
and forward email protocol referred to as Netmail and operated on Fido.
3:850/111 and which rlogoned into a BSD box for knowledgeable users.

Incidentally, that Unix box was available to anyone that wanted to
dial-in. No "special qualification or affiliation" was needed for people
to explore and play with unix in Darwin NT.

There was a whole world of connectivity out there very divergent from
the "official" history. 
Basically you had to be alive in the 70's and 80's and not be in a
University to be aware of it.

e.g.: BSD distributed widely September 1978 and Microsoft Xenix on 8
inch floppy discs circa March 1981...

Even the University system VII Unix Man pages had to come from
somewhere. I promise, it wasn't from AT&T. In those days, Sys III(v7)
Unix Man pages were so bereft of useable information that one would
almost think that Unix internals were a secret. And so they were until
it was commercialised by CCI and adopted by Berkeley (BSD V1 which Man
Pages were quite good... [HINT])
I hope that has helped in filling in some of the missing pieces that are
obviously missing from the "official history books".


TomK.