September 30, 2015

A Dialup Modem Answers the Phone

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

Back in the 1980s, I paid the extra money to have two phone lines installed in my apartment. Both apartments: I outgrew my single bedroom apartment, where the computer sat in the living room. The second apartment had a second bedroom, which became my office.

The first line was for me. The second line was for the computer. Specifically, it was for the computer’s modem.

I don’t remember talking on the phone much while I was online. That did happen, but as I look back I don’t recall it happening often enough to justify the expense. Anyway, eventually I ran a BBS on that second line, BBS meaning Bulletin Board System, which is how most online activity took place back in the halcyon days of microcomputers, in the 1980s.

My very first modem.

My very first modem.

I purchased an Apple IIGS for a couple of programming books I wrote. After writing the books, the computer just sat there, so I ran a friend’s BBS software on the system. The software was named ProLine, and my friend was the same guy who co-wrote the programming books with me, Morgan Davis.

We called him Modem Davis.

ProLine was based on TCP/IP, which used Internet style packets and could communicate with ARPANET systems back in the day. So my Apple IIGS would accept incoming calls and route network traffic to other ProLine systems across the country, all over the regular phone lines.

When I moved, I took down the ProLine BBS, but I kept the second line out of habit. One day, I was working and I looked at the dialup modem. The lights were blinking; a call was coming in. I had a phone on that line, so I picked it up. To my surprise, it was another computer calling; I heard the telltale sound of a carrier signal trying to connect.

Quickly I started a terminal program. Back then I knew all the modem codes, so I typed the code to answer the phone. I believe it was ATA.

The modem picked up the line. In the terminal program, I typed, “Hello?”

The other person responded. As they typed, I saw the text appear: “Your an asshole.”

So obviously it was someone who knew me and who couldn’t spell. I figured it was a friend or something, but found it odd that they chose to dial into my seldom-used, relatively unknown phone line.

I replied, “Thanks!”

The conversation went on for a while, but eventually I figured it out.

I recently started dating a girl and the person dialing into my modem was her former boyfriend. Apparently he was steamed that she broke up with him, but too timid to dial me up or meet me face to face. So he did the digital thing, and berated me like a whiny puppy. It was actually kind of cute.

I’m sure such things happen frequently today via text message, Twitter, or wherever. But back in the late 1980s, it was pretty odd to be digitally confronted via modem.

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