Cooking on Gas

April, 16th, 1988

The second computer show of the year, which was at the Toronto airport exhibition centre, provided me with the blazingly fast, 1200 baud modem (from a combination of MOdulate and DEModulate) and all I had to do when I arrived home and plugged it in was to find something to call...

The Commodore online service back then was called Quantumlink, or QLink, a dial up bulletin board which eventually turned into America Online. The basic monthly fee was $9.95 and Ajax had a local access number.

I would sit in the spare bedroom, my little mission control room in Falby Court, and connect to this exciting portal into the outside world, which, at 1200 baud, might sound pathetic in this broadband society we live in, but everything has to start somewhere.

And it was four times faster than a 300 baud modem...

In later months the "habit" would evolve with C64 specific terminal programs, Darkterm being one of them, and local BBS (bulletin board) sites that would provide downloadable content and an online messaging forum.

It would eventually result in a dusting down of the pirate costume, however, before that happened the 1200 baud modem would be replaced, and then replaced again to support a rapidly changing online world.