1983

One of my co-workers (James Taylor) at my first assignment in the USAF had the first home computer I had ever seen, I can't even remember what model it was, but I remember one time when I was at his house and he had his phone hooked up to an acoustic coupler and was downloading information. I still remember seeing the data stream scrolling down his monitor as he downloaded the information.

1985

In the Automated Test Equipment shop that I worked in during my tour in NATO our electrical engineer (Gianluca Floris) used to program EEPROMs with a first generation IBM XT computer, this was the first business use of a personal computer I had ever seen. I had thought of buying a computer but couldn't decide whether to buy an IBM clone or a Commodore 64. Mr Floris simply told me that if I wanted a toy to play games on then to buy the Commodore or if I wanted a computer that you could not only play games on, but be used as a tool as well to buy the IBM clone.

1987

I purchased my first IBM PC clone via mail order while stationed in Germany, a CompuAdd 286/10 with MSDOS 3.3, and used it mainly for word processing. It had a 14" amber screen, 20MB hard drive, 64Kb of RAM and two 5.25" floppies. I later added a 5.25 HD floppy drive.

1989

I think I upgraded my old 286/10 to a 386/33 around 1990 or so. Added a bigger hard drive (Seagate 80MB). I also got into Bulletin Board Systems. I started using Desqview to “multitask”, this allowed me to run my Wildcat BBS software system and still used my computer for other uses at the same time. I didn’t like Windows v2 that was out at the time, so I just stuck with Desqview running on top of DOS. I had been upgrading DOS each time a new version came out so now I believe I was up to version 5. I still remember paying over $800 for that US Robotics Dual Standard modem (HST and v.32bis).

I can blame an old friend of mine, Rich Buch,  for getting me involved in the online world. One time while at his home he showed me how he was able to go online with CompuServe (text version of the service) and download GIF files. I was hooked, after that I started the BBS.

1992

I transferred to Osan Air Base in 1992 but still kept my BBS running from my dormitory room, but by now Windows 3.0 was out, so I upgraded to Windows 3.0, running my BBS in a background window. I believe I was up to DOS 6 before I made the leap to windows and dumped Desqview. During this timeframe I started experimenting with "Door" games for the BBS. These were simple ANSI games that the users could play online while logged into the BBS. I still remember the "TradeWars" fanatics that would log on from the different military bases in Korea via the DSN (military phone system) phones lines and battle each other. Legend of the Red Dragon was starting to get popular as well.

1993

In Florida was were I really became a BBS geek, before I left Florida in 1995 I four computers networked using Lantastic, I was using Wildcat BBS software on three of them with the fourth as my private computer which was a 486/33. I was still using Windows 3.1 on my private computer, but was running straight DOS 6.22 on the other three BBS computers. These were just 386s and 286 since you didn’t need much horsepower to run a straight DOS BBS. I think I got up to 200MB total in file storage for the BBS system, I had three phone lines into the BBS system and also had about 8 CDROMs total online with shareware files for people to download. Six of the drives were on an external Pioneer "6 Pack" SCSI CD tower. I was using a program called ROMDOOR which allowed the users to access the files on the CDROMS. I think I was up to version 3 or 4 of the Wildcat BBS software by this time. The OS wars and modem wars were in full swing by this time, Microsoft Windows vs. IBM OS2 and Hayes v.32bis vs. US Robotics HST.

I also got involved with the FidoNet Network and became a node on the network during this time. This messaging and file system (Filebone) was somewhat similar to today's Internet UseNet Newsgroups. I was still adding online games to the BBS for the users, I think I was up to around 60 or so games online.

The Web was starting to evolve into something useable about this time. I still remember getting my licensed version of the Netscape Web browser v1.0 in the mail on CDROM (directly from Netscape). I actually purchased a Web based copy of the Wildcat BBS software right before I left for my assignment to Woomera Australia in late 1995. I could see the beginning of the end for DOS based BBSs that used dial-up modems. The writing was on the wall, the Internet would soon be king.

1995

In Australia I continued running the BBS. I added UUCP software that allowed the BBS to dial-up (long distance call) to an ISP that in turn allowed the users on the BBS to have Internet E-mail accounts via the BBS. I finally had to give running the BBS in 1997. Users on the BBS had discovered that they could Uuencode files (mainly JPEG/GIFS) and send them via my UUCP E-mail Internet connection on the BBS. When you Uuencode a binary file for transmission over the Internet it balloons in size up into the megabyte range, even if the file is only a few hundred kilobytes. This wouldn't have been a problem as I could limit the size of outgoing E-mails, but I was being charged per megabyte, inbound and outbound, by my ISP. This meant that any inbound file attachments to my BBS were going through my ISP first and I was being charged for them. I could limit the size of inbound file attachments in the E-mails at the BBS after the file attachments arrived from my ISP, but by then it was too late I was already being charged by the ISP. One single file attachment could, and did, cost me as much as $20 dollars. I literally begged the users to stop sending and receiving file attachments but they wouldn't listen. I could no longer afford to run the BBS this way and the town only had 1000 people total who lived within local calling distance, about 100 who were BBS users.. This meant that even if I charged for the use of the BBS I would never get enough people to pay to use the BBS to make it economical. Also there was no way to accurately track within the BBS or UUCP software for how to charge the individual users for the file attachments that were being sent and received.

 I thought about simply becoming my own ISP but the startup costs in Australia were outrageous ($1500) and a simple 64k line to my proposed Web presence would have cost over $500 per month at the time. Remember, I was in the Australian outback in a town of only 1000 people with just under 100 BBS users. Plus we had Internet access at work. It looked like my hobby was doomed, so around 1997 I sold off all the computers except my new Gateway PII 266, which had Win95 on it. In 1998 I upgraded to Win98.

Instead of spending most of my spare time managing  the BBS I used to have I started taking advantage of my tour in Australia. I turned back into a normal PC user. This wasn't too bad of an idea at the time, now I had time to go scuba diving, play baseball, tour Australia and even keep a steady girlfriend.

1999

After arriving ion Las Vegas I slowly upgraded my PC to a P4 2.4Ghz, 160GB RAID0/1 with a gig of RAM. I was still just an average PC user hitting the web daily and using E-mail like everyone else. I still had the "online" bug real bad and I knew it would only be a matter of time before I started dorking around with some type of online presence again. The days of BBSing were over though, too bad, I really missed it. I used to have a lot of fun inter-reacting with the users and attending the "Sysop" meetings with the other BBS owners.

2003

In 2001 I started running my squadron's "Infrastructure" shop which maintained the squadron's LAN. Since I was within a few years of retiring I thought I'd better decide exactly what area of computers I wanted to work in when I retired. The natural choice was networking, but I didn't have the Comptia, Microsoft, CISCO certifications or an IT degree needed to get a decent paying job in the network field. Around this time I started going to college and taking networking courses, since I didn't want to drive to the college to use their lab when I had home work to do I decided to setup my own home network again to use as a lab. This time it would be a "real" network, not just a peer to peer group of PCs.

A job opportunity working with the ground communications associated with the Predator system opened up for me and since I still didn't have the necessary certifications to get a good paying job in the networking field I immediately dropped my retirement papers and took the job with the idea that I would eventually get back into "true" networking in a few years after I completed my schooling.

This web site is being hosted on my home network fed by a cablemodem with a speed of 3MB down, 256K up (outbound from the web site) and 15GB limit on outbound data from the web site. I'm up to five computers and a laptop behind both a hardware router and a software firewall. Anti-Virus software is run daily on all the computers and the Anti-Virus software is checked daily for updates, same for the router firmware.

Various operating systems are running on the network, Windows 2000 Pro, Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Windows XP Pro. I'll soon have a Linux box on the network as well. The Web site is running on an 2000 Advanced server box running IIS. I've got two Domain Controllers running Active Directory on two of the 2000 Advanced Servers boxes, along with various other services such as DHCP, DNS, RIS, DFS and TSWeb. I also run Symantec Ghost Corporate Edition to image the PCs, plus important data is backed to to both DVDs and CDROMs periodically. I literally beat the crap out of this home network with the MCSE & CCNA lab work I'm given, it seems my little network is always in a constant state of flux with the reconfigurations I'm always doing to it.

The web site is turning out to be sort of like the old BBS I used to run, it seems I'm always trying to find things to do to improve it or add to it.

2005

In 2005 I transferred to San Antonio Texas (after a divorce and remarrying) with an organization called the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), so I'm finally back into a normal computer job. The Website has turned into mainly a family photo website. There's about 6 computers on the home network now, 2 Domain Controllers, one system running IIS for the website, plus a "virtual machine" hosting SharePoint. The rest are personal computers for my stepson, wife and myself. SharePoint may one day turn into an "Ancestry Portal" site for my family, mainly managed by me with the ancestry data collected by my sister. I'm not sure if this "Ancestry Portal" will ever take place though.

2007

After the move to Houston not much has changed on the network. All the computers are running either VISTA, XP Professional or Server 2003. There's about 9 computers and a laptop on the dacoleman.com domain. I removed the SharePoint portal since it wasn't being used. The website is still hosted at home on a PC running Server 2003, I'm still adding photos to the website when I have time. One of the things I like about the house we purchased in Katy is that I actually have a fiber-optics cable running all the way to the side of my house. The cable modem is mounted on the external wall of the house and I've got a 10MB connection on the down side and a 1 MB connection on the up side. Even during high traffic times I still manage to get about 6MB on the down side. When there's not much traffic I get the full 10MB on the down side. This beats the hell out of that old 2400 baud modem I had in 1989.

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