QModem 4.51 Source Code(github.com) |
QModem 4.51 Source Code(github.com) |
I would read/reply offline using OLX (Offline Express, a QWK reader also part of the Qmodem suite), and then batch upload my replies (.REPs, also compressed) to the BBS.
This was back in the day when you weren't connected 24/7, and when dial-up wasn’t unlimited (in my country — even if it was, BBSes were node limited so you couldn’t stay connected forever). So participating in BBS conferences meant quick dial-ins and uploads, where most of the messaging/replies was done offline.
Although bandwidth is abundant these days, I still think the QWK/REP idea is an attractive one. There is an art and a beauty to crafting replies offline from the cozy Turbo Vision UI that was OLX.
RoboMail wasn't TurboVision, but it was very nice as TUIs went at the time. It seems mostly vanished from Google. I was a Turbo Pascal developer myself at the time, and I made an offline reader that I thought was far superior (multiple Turbo Vision windows etc.), but by the time I had gotten close to the point of release, the Internet arrived and I completely lost interest.
I still wish there was an archive of RelayNet, because I used to post a lot, and of course I never kept anything myself. I've never found any archive of the content since it was shut down in 2007.
Also, it's sad to hear that the QWK format's creator died in a swatting incident in 2020, of all things.
Oh, man. That sucks. I knew about that tragedy[0] but I never read deep enough to realize that Mark Herring (the gentleman who, arguably, was killed in the incident) was the creator of the QWK format.
It was already a horrific story. Now it just feels that much closer to home. Ugh. RIP Mark Herring.
I miss Turbo Vision. It was way better than many of the TUIs of the day, not only on DOS but also UNIX.
Mustang Software (Wildcat! BBS) bought Qmodem and SLMR (and renamed the latter to OLX).
At that time, I had no background in "real" CS or best practices. I didn't have the internet advising this way or that, and my only resource was a book or two from B. Dalton. I didn't even really think about good or bad code... merely: does it do the thing I want it to. I just made my programs however I wanted and thoroughly enjoyed it.
Lately, I've wanted to get back to that mode, at least a bit. It is really tough to set aside all of the rigor and analysis I'm accustomed to and just bang something out. Ugly, buggy, happy path only, but at least they exist. Things like Cursor et al. have come along at the right time...
Update: it is also neat it was written in Pascal which was my 2nd language and holds a special place in my heart. I realized early on that BASIC was not ideal for writing professional programs and hadn't yet moved on to C, so Pascal had my attention for a number of years as a teenager.
Now also remembering we could assign macros on Qmodem to function keys. That let us automate playing games like Trade Wars. I'll be honest and say we were using it to also pirate games like Space Quest, Ultima, Leisure Suit Larry.
My lord, where has the time gone since then?
Maybe some places like the Bay Area and New York City had more local BBSes but it wouldn't surprise me if Atlanta was in the top five or even the top given the huge free calling zone.
I normally wouldn't care about a mistake that'd be corrected when someone clicks through, but I think this is release supposed to be a sort of memorial to his life.
Plus, AI crawls the world, and if it sees an error enough times, it becomes the truth for millions of people.
The two Linux box were one with the modem and the other via Nat (Ethernet but with old coaxial cables). The AT was just a terminal.
Thanks to the author for adding a very interesting readme.
I know this is for archiving and historical value, but I'm wondering what kind of license this work would/could fall under?
I see some files have copyright headers from probably long gone companies (upgrade.pas for example).
Also, the readme mentions the original documentation is not included but the src dir does contain a 98kb .HLP file, which I thought was more associated with early windows era software and not common for MS-DOS but someone might want to take a look
I'm not sure what tipped the balance to C/C++. Maybe the Microsoft compilers? Maybe the merge of the minicomputer world into microcomputers? Either way, Pascal held on (via Delphi) into the early 2000s.
Our microcontroller code was written in Turbo C++
Countless people were touched by his work and remember it decades later.
Thank you for sharing this!
And it all started with QModem..
AT&F^M
ATDT 12345678
Great memories !
If Zmodem isn't available, choose Qmodem because Xmodem is slow as heck with ack after each packet
I'm sure someone has a simulator around the web somewhere but not quite that nostalgic
At one point I learned about the QWK format and wrote some code to build a QWK packet out of text files. My idea was to distribute an e-zine as a QWK packet. I successfully made QWK packets but never had any actual content to release.
What a cool idea! I would have loved something like that.
This hearkens back to the day of Byte and PC Magazine where I would actually buy paper magazines to learn about the latest tech -- and I wondered, why couldn't there be an electronic version of this? (the QWK downloadable e-zine idea sounds so ergonomic). But eventually the Internet happened and we got these in the form of websites.
But I feel websites still lack the nice offline, self-contained natures of a magazine. Links on a website feel dispersed. Whereas an offline packetized magazine would have a linear nature to it, and you'd be able to browse in one sitting. And look at full page glossy ads (hey, I looked at the ads -- they were so cool back in the day with Gateway and Dell feuding).
Ah water under the bridge now...
It could connect you to a machine that had Internet access. Some ISPs offered that as a service (you'd get some kind of BBS-like interface or - if you were lucky - a UNIX shell), but that's not the same thing.
QMODEM was essentially just a terminal emulator that used a serial port and understood how to control a modem.
Having the IBM AT a a serial terminal would let somebody run CLI-based software on the Linux box (like Lynx, an IRC client, FTP, etc). You'd just be using a shell account on the Linux box.
I did stuff like this in the early 90s at home and later at a company I worked at (sharing a single dial-up connection over 10Base-2 with 5-ish Windows 95 PCs).
BUT, it was definitely possible to do what you're describing with some combination of a dialup shell account, a terminal program like qmodem and something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slirp
> that's not the same thing.
I think your definition of "connect to the internet" make sense today, but would be ridiculously narrow when applied to the QModem era given the computing landscape at the time. Where do you draw the line? Using a tty style terminal connected via serial to a unix box connected via ethernet? How about SLIP/PPP?
I guess my problem with your definition is that you end up saying that a very large percentage of people who were online at the time were using the internet through computers that were not "connected to the internet".
Until the mid-90s the internet was predominantly text anyway, so it's not like you were missing out on a whole lot if you were "only" using a terminal.
However, the user running QModem was on the Internet.
After all this discussion here my conclusion is that "connecting to the internet" is an ambiguous term.
It can mean "have IP connectivity, i.e., IP packets routed to and from the internet" in which case the described PC was not "connected to the internet with QMODEM". It didn't do anything IP.
It can mean "have a terminal that can interact with information from/to the internet" in which case the PC was indeed "connected to the internet with QMODEM".
To me, the second meaning is quite the stretch, but apparently to others it's fine.
My problem with your definition is that it doesn't take into account the reality of connectivity at the time (at least in my experience of the early 90s) - not a whole lot of machines had IP stacks that were connected via ethernet/isdn/t1/etc and online all the time. Certainly you'd have to be pretty special to actually own one or have one at home. Connecting over some kind of tty or dialup was extremely common.
So using your definition, a sizeable percentage (possibly even a majority?) of people who were online and doing things on the internet during the QModem era were doing it through computers that were not "connected to the internet". Which seems obviously silly.
I agree it's highly unlikely that the AT was running slirp. Wikipedia says an AT was a 286, so it wouldn't have been linux. Not even sure what the options would have been. Minix? Xenix?
I can confirm that they did run Minix OK, although I remember the network support was iffy at best. We never got it to work at any rate. XENIX would have been hard to get your hands on. I think QNX would run on an AT as well, although my memory might be playing tricks on me there.