[Mgs] Birthday

[Richard Lindsay]

   Thank you Mark, for the flashback! I connected to autox.team.net almost
30 years ago so I must have been one of your earliest participants! I have
come and gone a few times since those early days, just as various cars have
come and gone.
   My portal was a Sun Microsystems UNIX box from my office at Amoco
Research. Reading that team.net was registered in 1991, that all fits. I
transferred to the rock physics laboratory at Amoco Research in 1988. By
1991, I was writing code (fortran then C) on the Sun UNIX platform. We had
a graphics package but not a GUI builder, *per se.*. All graphics had to be
painted onto the screen pallet. UNIRAS, I seem to remember it being called.
User choices were identified by cursor location detection when the mouse
was 'clicked'. State of the 1990s art!

   Again, thanks for the story and for the support!

Rick, in Houston, and heading to PayPal

On Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:16 AM Mark J Bradakis via Mgs <mgs at autox.team.net>
wrote:

> April 11th.  As many of you know, the domain team.net was officially
> registered on April 11, 1991, by the late Bill Caloccia.  I have been
> managing the mailing lists on autox.team.net since then, actually for a
> while before that.  I took over  from Jim Muller, who took over from
> Dale Cook, and I wish I had archives of those first few years.  Actually
> I may have some in my office, on 1/4 inch tape cassettes.  Every now and
> then I consider trying to revive some of the old HP-UX boxes I have to
> see if I can still read any of those tapes.  Maybe someday.
>
> Anyway, in the beginning I was routing everything through the servers at
> the University of Utah Computer Science Department, where I was
> employed.  When my fellow sys admins started noticing just how much
> network traffic there was on a certain box, my boss strongly suggested I
> make other arrangements.  So I went about getting a network connection
> at home.  Back then, it was not that easy, or cheap.  And as I recall,
> the first dedicated Team Net server was an HP box with one of the first
> 100+ megahertz CPUs, and even with a deal through HP, who worked closely
> with the U in those days the system set me back about $2,500.  Hardware
> has improved since then.  And that money didn't all come out of my
> pocket, I initiated a fund drive among the list members and got a great
> response.  Back then it was all checks in the mail, and I mailed a thank
> you postcard to every contributor, or at least most of them, no doubt I
> missed a few.  And for some time there was an annual fund drive to cover
> the rather high cost of having sufficient bandwidth from my house.
>
> So here it is 29 and just everybody has fast network available to
> them.   I dropped the fund drives some years back, though folks do
> continue to contribute to the cause.  Now a few clicks in Paypal can
> take care of it, though some still prefer to send checks. Yep, things
> are different now.  And with the Covid-19 pandemic, a LOT different.
> But the Team Net mailing lists are still chugging along, providing those
> spending more time at home a bit of distraction, entertainment or
> education as we keep our beloved vehicles rolling along the roads.
>
> I plan to keep it going as long as I can, who knows how many years I
> have left.  April 11th is also my birthday, 66 this year, and I
> certainly won't live forever.  And I fear that when I die, Team Net will
> die.  Sigh.
>
> But for now, enjoy and stay healthy.
>
> mjb.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
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