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       Stardate: 20220124.1846
       Location: My car in a church parking lot. 
       Input Device: Gemini PDA
       Audio: Hooked on Classics (Pts. 1&2)
       Visual: Instrument cluster, car interior
       Emotional State: OK
       
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       SDF user, szczezyja, wrote about the 90's Internet in their phlog[1]
       and in Gemini prior.  They were inquiring about other's experience
       from back then.  Since I have some memories, I figured that I would
       try to remember and comment.
       
       My first online usage was on BBS's in Cleveland, Ohio in the 80's on
       my Commodore 64 with a second-hand 300 baud modem.  This was later 
       upgraded to 1200 baud.  During these times, there was a local BBS 
       called the Cleveland Freenet[2], which ran some custom flavour of 
       BSD and was more of a dialup BBS to me than what we know of the 
       Internet today.  It was a public access unix system, much like SDF, 
       that was run by Case Western Reserve University.  I still remember 
       the old phone number by heart: 216-368-3888 (which is most likely 
       disconnected or repurposed.)
       
       Cleveland Freenet was text menu driven and had many different areas 
       to explore, like The Administration Building, The Post Office, 
       The Arts Building, The Medical Arts Building, etc.  The menu was set 
       up like physical locations in a city and each menu had sub-menus.  
       They had Special Interest Groups (SIGS) that you could join and 
       participate in a forum, like bulletin boards, but most were local
       to the system and Cleveland.  They also had access to Internet
       resources, like usenet, irc, ftp, emailing other systems, etc. for 
       stuff outside of Cleveland Freenet.  Even connections to other 
       Freenets and libraries around the world.  At that time, I was more 
       interested in the local stuff, so I stuck with their local irc, which 
       was only for local system users, much like COMmode on SDF.  I 
       actually met up with some users in meatspace from the local Freenet
       irc.
       
       There was one section called The Teleport, which took you to other
       systems.  I poked in there a bit and one time, I ended up telnetted
       over to some system in Germany.  I couldn't understand the language
       and it kinda freaked me out.  I didn't know how to disconnect Germany
       from Freenet or what the escape sequence was, so I ended up
       terminating the call from my modem.  Kinda funny, now that I think
       about it.
       
       Cleveland Freenet also hosted a book called, "Zen and the Art of
       The Internet," by Brendan Kehoe.  I think it was the first "e-book" I 
       read online, not including G-files from commie boards.  Unfortunately,
       it does not discuss gopher.  You can find it in the Gutenberg 
       library.[3]
       
       BBS's were the killer app for me on the Commodore 64.  It used to be
       the video games, which was the gateway drug, but for me, BBS's 
       were where it was at.  Also, I could get juarez if I stayed 
       connected over night and had enough download credits (remember 
       download/upload ratios or system time limits?)  BBS's were my thing 
       and the C=64 was good enough through the years to connect and 
       participate since most things were done in the terminal.
       
       Gotta go.  To be continued...
       
       [1] gopher://sdf.org/0/users/szczezuja/phlog/2022-01-14.txt
       [2] https://case.edu/ech/articles/c/cleveland-freenet
       [3] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34
       
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