My Net History

Beginning | 1995 Dialix | 1995 Acay | 1996 Dot | 2001 Telstra | 2003 Optus

The Beginning
It all began in year 7 - maybe earlier - when my Dad built our first computer - a Microbee [or here includes images] - Australian made, based on the Z80 chip running at the extreme speed of 2MHz - it worked for a bit before my dad upgraded it to the 4 MHz model which could be overclocked to 8MHZ [woot!] - these lasted long enough for me to learn BASIC, play emu joust and get on the road to computer nerddom.

I even did work experience in year 10 out at the North Ryde HQ of Applied Technology - the guys who made the Microbee - they had me soldering capacitors onto the motherboard of some prototype Gamma's they were an ambitious machine - built round 68000 motorola but with Z80's inside too - they were supposed to be multi tasking - colour - just amazing - I know one guy in the place said it would never happen cos they had worked out that it would take 1000 man years to write the new OS and they just didn't have the money to employ enough people - it never happened and pretty much finished off Microbee. I am sure my soldering never had anything to do with it ;)

During Year 10 I went to an AI and Logic course - found out that there were people heaps smarter than me, met Unix, and played with prolog.

Anyway our next computer at home was an AT IBM compatible which was an 8086 I believe. Dad also ended up with a modem so he could dial into work occasionally. He worked for OTC - later to be merged with Telstra.

Near the end of High School my Dad was working at AAPT and he had access to a number which got the raw newsfeed from AAPT - I wrote a simple BASIC program to parse the raw ASCII feed into headings, author, story, end of story. It sort of worked and I enjoyed doing it.

Around the same time Dad must have been talking about BBS - or I was reading about it in APC - a magazine I read each month, probably understanding half of it if I was lucky. I knew about hackers and cool stuff like that - though I never knew any or did any hacking other than the AAPT news feed.

So I got into BBS-ing and I remember that at one stage I noticed that some boards had links to discussion boards that were international.

Probably during Uni was my most BBS'ing time - who knows - I was training to be a maths teacher with a bit of computing thrown in - that was where I first met the Mac [some version of the old Classics] which looked and felt like a toy - although it's GUI was so much better than windows. We did Pascal on it. But I was 1337 [not that I had heard the term] and GUI's were for whimps, I was into command line stuff - windows sucked back then - but the command line was the best way - lol how ironic - not only did I become a Mac Lover but eventually the MacOS now includes and is built on Unix so I am once again crusin' the command line - full circle.

The transition to the net is hazy and I am rambling - I will add to the above at some stage but for now - thanks to my bank statements I can give some dates of Internet Access.
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12 May 1995 - Dialix - prob 19k modem - shell account
That is the date of the first credit card payment of $65. I can't believe I paid so much for a shell account - that is a command line thingy where you are actually logged onto a remote computer and using it's processing. From there I could do email [pine] and text web [lynx]. I think it was charged per kilobyte of data sent and received. There seemed to be monthly payments of $10.

I guess I got into cos of my computing teaching at Westfields High School - by this time I was probably half and half maths and computing teaching.

It was very cool to see that Dialix was still going strong as an ISP. Pricey but still going.
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1 Dec 1995 - ACAY - prob 28.8 modem - PPP
Again this is the first credit card payment date - $31.45 - and then $20 a month, plus excess usage - or so it seems anyway from looking at the bank statements.

These guys were crap - slow, I learnt later; heaps of disconnects; I am pretty sure they lost my web page at one stage; really bad service too.

I was surprised to see they were still trading.
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19 August 1996 - Dot Communications - 28.8k Modem - PPP
These guys were awesome - that date is the date on the letter they sent me with the disk I needed to get set up on the MAC - Acay knew nothing about macs at all - Dot had a disk to send me :)

This cost me $32.95 [inc GST] a month - there was a download limit [acctually I think it was time] - but I can not remember what it was. Their help desk was awesome. They knew what was doing and it was 24 hour weekdays and even open Saturday - Acay was business hours and didn't help you much anyway.

I was with Dot until 24th March 2002 - you might think it was strange but I was actually sad to leave them - I stayed with them even though dialup had dropped in price and risen in features - they had always been good to me - but I wanted Cable and they didn't offer it.

This is a copy of the email I sent them to terminate my account:
17:05 07/03/2002 +1100
Dear Dot,

I can't remember how long I have been with you but all that time has been a positive and well supported experience. I came upon you by accident after being very dissatisfied with my previous ISP and excellent service and reasonable pricing and low drop out rates were a welcome change.

However I have moved onto Telstra Bigpond Cable and although I have kept open my account for a few months as a back up I have only used it whenever I have been out of home and needed to test someone's modem/operating system is working properly - I knew I could trust dot and so used it to test other peoples machines.

And so I would ask that you would close my account at the end of the current paid up to date [which I believe is March 23rd].

If you wish to get other positive comments about dot I will always be happy to oblige, and you can quote all or part of this email if you so desire.

I have and still do recommend you to my friends as a dial up company and
will continue to do so. You have always lived up to the word SERVICE as my ISP.

all the best to all of you at dot.
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18 May 2001 - Telstra Big Pond Cable - Cable - 128/256 - 3 GB data limit
As you can see I stayed with Dot for 8 months after I had signed with Telstra - I reckon I must have used a few times too - cos Telstra was crap.

Slow, unreliable and the accursed Heart Beat program that had to be run to be on th net. They were pretty unfriendly to Mac users and the connection really only worked properly when I used a third party program - which they refused to support or acknowledge.

The price rose three times and the cap was installed in the time I was there. Thought if I remember right, by the end, the downstream speed was uncapped - but meh to that when you got charged a fortune if you went over your limit.

So what had started as a great deal compared to dialup, ended up being a complete rip off.

Having been burnt once it took me a while to decide to go with Optus Cable.
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26 March 2003 - Optus - 2 Meg cable [128k upstream] - 3GB data limit then runs at 28.8k modem speeds
Ahh - After 4 months of losing a day or more of internet connection with Telstra and two mates who had Optus in the same area [one of who lived just around the corner] I took the plunge and moved to Optus.

Since I have been with Optus the price has not change, the limit has not change, they have had slow days - but mostly it was been on and fast.

Faster than Telstra - no heartbeat - and although they are not great mac supporters they are getting better - the last guy I spoke to claimed he had a mac in front of him.

Their TOS are more restrictive than Telstra - but that is not a problem. They are always on and very fast and that is what I wanted.
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changelog:
25/10/2003 - initial version all dates and comments
26/10/2003 - added more Microbee details and links, commented more on first Mac use. Fixed some spelling and grammar.