Page 24 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #41 FREE Edition

CONNECTED COMPUTING THE DAWN OF ONLINE PC SERVICES
Before the World Wide Web revolutionized how we access and share information, the
experience of using computers at home was vastly different from today. As my fellow Old School Gamers likely know, in the late 70s and very early 80s, most home computers typically operated
in isolation, performing tasks locally without any connection
to a larger network. Users relied
on floppy disks for software and data transfer, and interaction with other computers was limited to calling local bulletin board systems (BBS) accessed through low-speed modems, assuming one had a modem at all!
While BBS systems were a lot
of fun, they serviced a small geographic area, thanks to the
very expensive long distance calling charges of the time. Users could dial into these systems to post messages, download files,
and participate in text-based games. However, these BBSs were typically operated by hobbyists and had limited capacity, often only allowing one user to connect at a time, with only a few exceptions.
By Jarrod Kailef
Moreover, BBS systems of the time were generally restricted to text or ANSI, making the experience quite primitive even by the standards of the day. Add to that the slowness
of early modems, which operated
at speeds ranging from 300 to 2400 bits per second until the mid 80s, and it’s clear that something else was needed. (2400 baud modems transmitted data at 0.0024 megabits per second. To put that in perspective, my home connection
is 1000 megabits, or 1 gigabit, per second. That’s 416,667 times faster than a 2400 baud modem!)
The advent of commercial online services in the late 70s and 1980s changed everything. These services offered a centralized platform for accessing a variety of information and communication tools, often through proprietary software that provided a more polished and user-friendly experience than the rudimentary interfaces of BBSs, some even with graphics and a mouse interface. These platforms were accessible to a much larger and broader audience without geographical limitations, providing much of the world with news, email,
chat rooms, forums, and even games, all from the comfort of one's home. They laid the groundwork for the interconnected, multimedia-rich internet we know today.
Online services like Compuserve, The Source, Delphi, Quantum Link, GEnie, Prodigy, Sierra Network (ImagiNation Network), and America Online not only connected people in new ways but also introduced them to the concept
of a broad digital community.
Users paid for access, often on an hourly basis, which could be quite expensive, but the novelty and value of the services kept people coming back. These services were the early pioneers of the digital age, each contributing unique features and innovations that shaped the online experiences of millions.
I could honestly write an entire series of books on this subject, as there is so much depth to each
of these online services and the communities that they spawned! However, for the purposes of this article, we’ll settle for an overview of what each service offered while they were online.
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OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #41