This is the Modem World: The sinister side of the '80s BBS

After acquiring an APPLE ][+ with also a Novation AppleCat][, a few months later I was able to get a super deal on a 64k ram card through a CALL A.P.P.L.E.group purchase for only $110.00. It astonishes me today I can get entire dated 9" netbooks on eBay for less with so much more living room.

CALL A.P.P.L.E.'s Val Golding, lived in a basement with many cats and dreamed 6502 assembly and would welcome anyone's voice calls.

I had the 15(?)th BBS in Seattle listed in the back of that freebie computer newspaper you could find on ferries(NW Computer User?).

Same here, the whole BBS social thing was accumulating vast index rows of copied 5.25" floppies.

The university had the unix shells and emacs, so ftp and telnet about brought us up today facile wise though we watched individual remote characters stream along at 300 baud.

Maybe why my favorite comfort space is still simple monochrome tty console.

I also had H19(~Z21) terminal and a 300 baud wooden phone handset box. The H19 was heavy as a populated desktop, and likely would still be functional if you could find one. I miss that modem handshake babble.

Maybe I'm just jaded, but none of that sounds particularly sinister compared to what a few hours' work could net you via Tor or other deep web portals.