XPost: alt.comp.linux   
   From: hayesstw@telkomsa.net   
      
   On Mon, 2 Feb 2026 15:51:29 +0100, "Carlos E.R."   
    wrote:   
      
   >Oh, and here we had (have?) to pay local phone calls, so we tried to   
   >make our calls to Fidonet or Internet as short as possible.   
      
   There was a point at which all of South Africa's internetional   
   internet traffic was on a 9600 bps dial-up line via Fidonet, between a   
   BBS at Rhodes University in Grahamstown and Randy Bush's BBS in Oregon   
   USA. When TCP/IP connections became more widely available, it was the   
   other way round -- Fidonet packets were exchanged over the Internet by   
   FTP.   
      
   That was also the time of the distinction between the Internet   
   (TCP/IP) and the internet, which included Fidonet technology networks.   
      
   Fido techniology was developed after uucp, and was more sophisticated:   
   in nested replies it would show the initials of who had posted what,   
   so it was easier to follow conversations. I miss echomail for that   
   reason. And yes, there wqas a lot of social chitchat, so FTNs were, at   
   least in part, social networks.   
      
      
   --   
   Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa   
   Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm   
   Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com   
   E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)