Introductions - Formal Introduction

Hi,

I'm not as quite as new as my profile makes me out to be. Originally, I made a quick and dirty profile ('rchan') just to post a dumb question. But in spite of myself, I ended up visiting and posting often... who knew that polite online forums actually existed on the Internet?! Even back in the days in 300 bps hobby BBSs, I was wary of flamers.

So I decided to spend some time and actually create a less generic profile just for fun, and actually post an introduction. So it is back to rung one on the seniority ladder. Oh well...

I've been biking recreationally since I was 6 in spite of the lousy (and often embarrassing) equipment I was given: 1. A fixed gear Murray w/training wheels... complete with bannana seat, 2. A girl's bannana seat bike (a cousin's hand-me-down), 3. 10 speed 'Royce Union' dime-store bike that I had to 'grow into'... complete with the infamous Shimano Positron II (an early attempt at index shifting), 4. Orange Lead-pipe Huffy 12 speed (the only bike I ever had stolen ironically enough).


Those old enough to remember the Positron II and 300 bps modems can probably peg my age ;)

That was a long time ago... but I was able to get a first real road bike during college and never looked back. I've upgraded twice since then and recently got a mountain bike, too now that I am making a living.

See you in the forums.

Welcome. great name.

Positron II. I think I've only ever heard Jim Kirk or Scotty mentioning that. :)

Welcome to BikeForums. :thumbup:


Originally posted by Veloci*Rapture
Even back in the days in 300 bps hobby BBSs

Can you explain this in English? :confused: ;)

Hello Veloci*Rapture. Good name. I AM a newbie admittedly! Haven't owned but two bikes in my life...my current one is a Gunnar and compares to my first one as a Model T to a 2003 Lamborghini. Love it

Sweet name...welcome.

Originally posted by RonH
Welcome to BikeForums. :thumbup:



Can you explain this in English? :confused: ;)

Before the Internet became available to the masses, people used to set up dedicated phone line(s) and computers in their own homes to run a "Bulletin Board System" (BBS) to create online communities very much like Bikeforums. It was amazing how much people were willing to put their modems on re-dial for a long time to log in since few people could afford more than a few incoming lines. State-of-the-art was 300 bits per second compared with a theoretical 56 Kbps today, so 'graphics' were limited to clever use of ASCII (text) art or special ANSI block character graphics.

I used to run a 1200 bps BBS. Fun days. A forum like this could have been conducted by something called FidoNet (or something similar) which at night, would move your message from one computer to another with automatic dialing, and post a copy of it, then dial another computer and post a copy of it there.

It was a cool way to share information on a topic with a nationwide audience before the web, and before i had access to the internet and usenet.