Phil:
Thanks for sharing this great bit of history with us.
As you say, computer technology and ham radio have come such a long way over
a very short period of time, and, even though it all occasionally seems
overwhelming to wrap your head around, it is truly amazing.
My next venture probably will be to get up to the year 2014 and get myself a
smart phone, but I'll have to find both the money to do it, and the time to
learn it.
That will happen at some point, though, I'm sure.
Tom Behler: KB8TYJ
-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Phil Scovell
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2014 3:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The value of our Blind Hams list
Tom,
Several blind people were on a completely different listserv out of New York
when it decided it no longer would support mailing list. This ICOR server
was formed and we all moved over and re-established our mailing lists.
Blind Hams was on that other server, too. I think I started my list in 95
or 96. It was on my BBS before I joined the internet exactly 20 years ago
today. Mailing lists were really popular back then because audio chat rooms
and video chat rooms were not available back then. My first website, Red
White and Blue.org was established in 97 and I know this list, and mine,
were online at least a year, if not more, before then. When I started
blind-x, or blind exchange that Ann Parsons now runs, I had over 150 blind
subscribers in the first 24 hours and it soon averaged 350 to 375. So,
these lists grew like wild fire back then and we were all using the online
email editor called pine back then instead of window platforms. I'm so hung
up with DOS, I still, to this day, call Windows DOS half the time. I had a
BBS for about 5 years starting January 1 1990 with almost 500 subscribers
but when we all started going to the internet, I eventually got down to
about 50 members and shut my BBS down. You may know that Fido was the phone
line network we all used back then to connect with local hubs instead of
satellites. Thousands of bulletin board systems were phone line linked all
over the country and the world until the internet really took off. My first
modem was 1200 baud, ran on batteries, and I found a BBS software that would
run on about 400K of disk space so I took my laptop using a pair of 720K
diskettes and put the BBS software on disk A and the message and download
area on disk B. I soon, within a couple of months, bot a larger computer
with an 80 meg hard drive and got my BBS up and running on January first, as
I said, of 1990 and it was a lot of fun. A 15 year old kid had written a
BBS program called Quick BBS and thousands of guys were running bulletin
boards across the country. I think the kid lived here in Denver, too. I
won't say, those were the days, because the way the net is now is like going
from a single wheel broken roller skate to a Roles Royce. All websites were
lynx and ran on DOS for the users logging on so everything was text. So it
has been fun watching the changes over the years and the same goes for ham
radio, too. When I think of the advancements to ham radio over my 48 years
of being on the air, I can't hardly believe it. Just think of telephones
with a rotary dial and paying 75 sents for 3 minutes, if not double that,
depending upon where you were calling and what time of the day or night.
You got it for less, 3 minutes I mean, on weekends. My iPhone is just as
amazing as my transceiver and you add ehcolink and IRLP and things like that
to the cell phone, it definitely is a different world.
Phil.
K0NX
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Behler" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2014 12:59 PM
Subject: Re: The value of our Blind Hams list
> Phil:
>
> So, just out of curiosity, when exactly did this list get started?
>
> I joined back in 2000 or 2001 as the result of a recommendation from our
> highly-respected departed friend, Kevin, K7RX.
>
> Tom Behler: KB8TYJ
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Phil Scovell
> Sent: Monday, September 01, 2014 2:49 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: The value of our Blind Hams list
>
> Ron,
>
> I've been on this list since probably day #1 and when I have a question on
> just about anything, I always post here first because I've gotten more
> answers here than just about any place. I just wish we had more
> subscribers
> to widen that data bank of knowledge even further.
>
> Phil.
> K0NX
>
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