Kevin Warnock

Here is a fun video that shows a guy getting on the Internet via his modern laptop from home via a 1964 wooden boxed 300 baud acoustic coupled modem.

Students at my high school were using acoustic coupled modems in 1977. The modems were connected to terminals that I believe were connected to a large computer at University of Chicago.

When I say dumb terminal, I mean pretty dumb, because they didn’t have video displays. They were essentially electric typewriters hooked to a large computer that could support multiple users at once.

You would type a command, which would be printed on the fan-folded computer paper in front of you. The command would be sent ‘quickly’ over a 300 baud modem, and the textual response would be printed on the same green bar computer paper for you to read and act on.

Sadly, I never got to use these terminals, as they were for older students. I was in 9th grade at the time.

Here’s a video of one of these old DEC computer terminals in use with an old DEC minicomputer.

I wonder what advanced technology students at my high school are using today. I have little doubt they have access to supercomputers and exceptionally fast Internet connections. I’ve only used an exceptionally fast Internet connection for a few days, and it was like being on a local network. I downloaded a 500 megabyte file from 6,000 miles away in less than a minute. This connection was at a Dutch military college in The Hague, Netherlands, where I was staying during the ConTeXt conference in 2009. We had to plug our laptops in to jacks as there was no Wi-Fi available due to security precautions.

I understand residents in Hong Kong have similarly fast Internet connections for a low price. We should have these connections in the United States — why don’t we?

Below is a picture of a DECwriter III terminal like I remember from high school.

My mother Martha Warnock used to use at work a DEC PDP/11 minicomputer, but with a video terminal. I used to program on a DEC VT320 video monitor hooked to a DEC VAX minicomputer cluster. My brother Andrew Warnock used to help my mother program her DEC, and I remember to play video games on the DEC he needed a way to press the Enter key rapidly to make the game easier to play and more fun. He took apart the keyboard and soldered wires to the Enter key connections. Then, he made a motorized switch with rotating contacts that would make and break connection with each revolution of the motor. He attached this switch to the wires from the keyboard he had installed and now he could press Enter as fast as required by his game. This might sound rediculous to my readers, but this was in about 1979 or 1980, when the Commodore VIC 20 was considered a hot computer. My brother had one of those, but getting to use a DEC PDP/11 that cost tens of thousands of dollars I suspect was more exciting than using the VIC 20.

LA120 DecWriter III (from http://decpicted.posterous.com/)

Delft, The Netherlands, date unknown. Photo by Flickr user Matthew Kenwrick, published here via a Creative Commons License that permits commercial use.

[This entry is from my 1976 handwritten diary. On October 26, 2012 I posted this to my blog and I added this bracketed language and also the photograph, which is recent, not from the 1970s. Thank you to Flickr user Matthew Kenwrick for permission via a Creative Commons license to use the picture. I was in 7th grade when I wrote this journal entry. I typed this post as I wrote it, including the mistakes, so you can see how I wrote back then. Keep in mind this is my private diary, and I’m sure I could have written with fewer errors had I known I would be showing it to the world years later. On March 30, 1976 my family moved from Chicago, Illinois, USA to Amsterdam, Netherlands for about four months. I wrote in my diary frequently during that time, and I plan to post all the entries to this blog. To my knowledge, we did not have an English dictionary with us in Amsterdam.]

We spent most of the day in delft, Aprox 8 hours. It was fun. We saw 2 churches, I took pictures of both. We saw a thing that was sort of a fort. It had gun holes, a moat and draw bridge, the works. We looked at lots of Delft potery Andy and I both bought a small Delft plack that had a windmel on each.

We took a trian there, It cost 48 guilders for round trip. Each way it took about half an hour. It seems sort of expensive to me.

Mom hates me for talking about money all the time, so she would like me to stop. She will give me 100 guilders if I do I’ll think $37.00 I’ll try it.

Luxembourg, Pétrusse "valley", Adolphe bridge (photo by Flickr user jepoirrier - commercial use OK)

[This entry is from my 1976 diary. On August 20, 2011 I posted this to my blog after I added the bracketed language, the photograph and the hyperlinks. I was in 7th grade when I wrote this journal entry. I typed this post as I wrote it, including the mistakes, so you can see how I wrote back then. On March 30, 1976 my immediate family moved from Chicago, Illinois, USA to Amsterdam, Netherlands for about four months. I wrote in my diary frequently during that time, and I plan to post all the entries to this blog.]

We ended the airplane trip today. But before we got to Luxembourg we got off at Iceland, (we stayed about 45 minutes) I bought a small coin collection. It cost me $1.20 and it included six coins, all wraped in a vinal raper. We took a train to Brussels, so I am righting this in a Hotel. It has a strange elevator in it, it dosn’t have sliding doors, like all the others I have scean, but it has a door that opens just like my house door. We went out for dinner, I had half of a roasted chicken, (it was good) Andy had the same.

I liked the airplane ride, and just think, we have to wait about 4 more months before we go back home on one.

I wrote to Michael Ruddat on the airplane I will send it to him tomorrow.

Diamonds Are Forever movie poster, from http://www.jamesbondwiki.com/photos/album/35591/Diamonds%20are%20Forever/photo/1168705

[This entry is from my 1976 diary. On August 19, 2012 I posted this to my blog after I added the bracketed language, the photograph and the hyperlinks. I was in 7th grade when I wrote this journal entry. I typed this post as I wrote it, including the mistakes, so you can see how I wrote back then. The first name of the Mr. Bond I mention in this post is James. At the time, he was about 55 years old. I used to play with his daughter Sarah. My father Robert Warnock used to go to Jazz music concerts with Bond. Once when Mr. Bond was hospitalized, my father called the hospital to check up on his friend. When the hospital heard my father ask to speak with James Bond, the hospital staff hung up on my father, thinking he was making a crank phone call. I think my father’s friend later went by Jim to avoid situations like this one. The James Bond movies were wildly popular. I saw my first James Bond movie in London in 1972 — Diamonds Are Forever. I still remember how in the movie the secret launch codes were stored on a Compact Cassette. Until I wrote this post, I had thought these cassettes were officially named ‘audio cassettes,’ but, according to WikiPediA, the official name is Compact Cassette. I now suspect that’s why Compact Discs were so named.]

I got up at 11:00 today and woke Andy up by telling him it was almost lunch time.

Last night I listend to the top 89 rock hits on WLS music radio. (AM) It started at 6:00 pm. till Midnight.

At about quarter to 12:00 Last night Mom called me up from Mr. [James] Bonds house and asked Andy and I if we wanted to come over and celebrate the new year. So we went over and had some cake and Mr. Bond gave Andy and I a glass of Champagne and we didn’t like it.

Dad put a headphone jack on Andy radio and added a new speaker.

Dad also cut out some pices of wood to make a box for my stereo amp.