When 300 baud was the bomb
20 years ago was there anything like
e-mails, online forums or sort of aol-disks
to go online without any hassle? Well
not exactly. First you needed a acous-
tic modem kit including a few spe-
cial gadgets from the local
plumber shop

Right, these "Klomuffen" (sort of pipe
"connectors") were just made for going online
and stuff. They fit the telephone receiver like a glove
inside you had the micro and speaker, everything glued to a
board (hey this was hitech in these days). A little bit hard-
ware from the local hardware geek a la CCC (infamous
German "Chaos Computer Club") to plug in the C64
userport . The terminal programm is running
now we're ready to go...

C64 veterans from Germany know
what's coming next - in the old days
we had these old fashioned diallers only.
Autodial? Are you kidding. Sometimes after
dialling over and over again to get finally a carrier
after one or two hours your fingertips hurt. Even today
while writing about I can feel the pain :-) So we're on-
line (max users 1) now after plugging the receiver into
the "Klomuffen" (fast) the right way around (!) until
the time limit is reached in 15 minutes. Multiuser-
systems were very rare in the early 80's. So
what did you see on your 40 columns
screen, anything similar to today's
forums or newsgroups?

C64 Enter (Update History)
Home I. The Commodore 64 II. First steps III. Computer listings IV. I'm getting mad V. The best games
VI. C64 music VII. Das "Datenklo" VIII. Online!
IX. C64 online scene X. Links