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Notes On The World's First PA Unix System

Posted by Nik on from the NP:-Enid dept.

AC submitted this article at RootPrompt, about M-Net, which claims to be the world's first public access Unix system. The politics, the gossip, and the flames predate IRC, MUDs, and Usenet. Just going to show there's very little new under the sun.

3 of 89 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Not the earliest by cccdoug · · Score: 3

    I was going to contest the claim, too. But I'm still researching.

    For example, I remember way back in those days (I was in high school...gee, I'm old) Freenets were popping up all over the place. I remember the Cleveland Freenet was the first of these, but a quick search shows that it began in 1986.

    Prior to that, yes, Usenet existed, but I don't remember it being public access. You had to be a university student at a university that had access or perhaps work at a company, research lab, or government office that had access.

    But there was a public-access unix account that could be had on a system at a university in Colorado around that time...I really want to remember its name so I can look for some history on it. They would let you use their compilers and access Usenet (only if you snail mailed them a signed disclaimer and a photocopy of your driver's license/state id card). If anyone can remember that system, please post about it!

    --
    Doug ---- Co-host of Ghostly Talk
  2. public access unix by Jeep+Bastard · · Score: 3

    They were often proving grounds for many a hacker in the pre-web days. When password files weren't shadowded and UUCP config files were great for finding other computers. When sex ruled USENET and people traded ASCII pictures of women. UUNET was the gateway for plenty of mail.Back when the whole host database for the internet could fit on a small HD. After a while , there were quite a few public access unix providers for a while before SLIP and the advent of the WEB. But none of them ever had 3 billion dollar market caps like free ISP's do nowadays. flash cartoons

    http://www.iretro.com

    --

    http://www.iretro.com
    Empeg Kicks Ass
  3. THey were really the second by Mr.+CBBS · · Score: 5

    Actually, Chinet was the first public access
    unix system. It was up in 1982 on a compaq lunch
    box portable with a pair of 300 baud modems. It was called wlcrjs then (no domain names, just ! paths) after randy sues and ward christensen, the inventors of the first BBS, CBBS, first up in Feb 1978. It then went to a pair of Altos 586's worknetted together, a 3b2/300/310/400, a few 386 machines and its current dual p2. Been up continuously since 82. It was the major news and email feed for the chicagoland area. Had a full news feed from ihnp4, the bell labs machine at Indian Hill. Used a trailblazer modem for the news feed. A single 70 meg drive held a full week's worth! Many of the owners of former and current ISP's in Chicago started off as kids on chinet, learning unix and hacking away. For a while, chinet even had its own resident FBI agent. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Polish agents were using chinet as a mail drop for communicatin to their government. Up until the wide spread use of the Internet, chinet would have up to 300 users at any one time, all hammer-dialing on the 12 dialup modems. A majority being Eastern European, Indian, Pakistani people with no other way of getting email and news.
    M-net was a much more heavily used system because of the local Univirsity, but chinet was the first.