How we did email 30 years ago

[@baremetaltechtv]

I'm so jealous of the span of machines in the opening shot of this video. You're so lucky to have a beautiful collection like that!

[@MKnife]

As a former MS-Mail & Exchange Server support tech at MS, I can tell you that you haven't really lived until you (at least tried to) help customers configure an x.400 over x.25 gateway on a flaky MS-Mail 3.5 post office on a Novell lan :D. Exchange 4 and the MS-Mail connector, dirsync and whatnot made life so much easier. Exchange Server even supported Bcc, which msmail mostly didn't.

[@TheErador]

That sounds like a lot...

[@TheErador]

That sounds like a lot...

[@idahofur]

That sounds like a nightmare. I came back into computers with Exchange 2003 server and wanted to pull my hair out.

[@TheErador]

@@idahofur give me postfix any day

[@Ramdileo_sys]

Now for get the full email experience 🙂​ ... you need to make 10 or 30 email account/users... and send to all of them a Spam or Phishing Scam ☹️​.... because as we all know,.. that's what mails are for, right?? 😡​😠​ I wonder if AOL used this back then.... or if they have some version of what is now Exim or Postfix running in Linux.. 😏​

[@albertstadt9853]

I'm still using my email address from 29 years ago! Didn't use MS Mail. I had to dial on to my email provider's server to get my mail. It is a Freenet email. I still popmail from that server and it's still my primary account.

[@mikesilva3868]

Cool 👍

[@TheErador]

Switched from POP3 to IMAP around 2000 never looked back.

[@video99couk]

Where I worked at the time we used VAX/VMS systems for our email from around 1988. The first time I used it, it felt like some kind of science fiction.

[@bubbavonbraun]

Oh the pain, the pain.. I ran one of the largest MS Mail deployments in AU and we couldnt wait until Exchange became available. Thanks again for the memories, this is a rush recalling share filesystem email and its sensitive DirSync across 210 postoffices :-). I recall an urgent MS support call New Years Eve as DirSync had corrupted.. it was a very very long night..

[@OQTIZZLE_ORLANDO]

Good luck on your endeavors. Don’t let anyone get you down. We are all just trying to survive in a day where everyone hates everyone. You can do this.

[@adhodgson1]

Wow that looks really dated now. I used Pegasus Mail at school and the DOS client was a lot better than that in 1993. Back in 2000 I had an old Netware setup with Mercury and regularly sent out emails from the DOS client and Mercury handled this, I think the latest Mercury running on Windows can still work with this setup.

[@olivierdebonne]

You could have also used the SUBST command to ‘map’ the M: drive to C:\MAILDATA’ on the server instead of using the -dc option.

[@spudhead169]

Back in 92-93, using my Demon Internet dial-up on my Amiga. We had to literally install and run our own SMTP server for email. Your IP and domain name from Demon was static, so it was up to you to set up your own DNS MX records. This is the era that really taught you how these systems worked under the hood. Sadly, hardly any of the new generation understands any of this anymore. Back then you HAD to know it.

[@mybachhertzbaud3074]

I remember setting up a 25 user e-mail system with only the mail program that came with Windows for workgroups. Worked quite well for a small business internal mail setup.😜

[@Lofote]

Looking at how strange MS Mail was I am so happy that I started administrating Exchange Server 2000 as a professional (and doing some 5.5 tests before but only in a test lab). That Microsoft Mail Server was really a joke - it was even bundled with the first BackOffice versions, even though it isn'T NT related and the admin programs - as you show - are all DOS :)... Thanks so much for this great video, that I finally could see how it was in action :)

[@shakeyourbunny]

Last time I checked 30 years ago, I did mail with Pegasus Mail, Eudora, Netscape Mail or good old pine. None of this primitive Microsoft dumpsterfire.

[@DavidWonn]

No idea why YT deletes my comments when I mention the same products by name. I used the 2nd one you mentioned in the Win3.1 era, and later switched to the 3rd, which still works even today!

[@BilisNegra]

No Netscape Mail in '92-93. That would have been in '95 at the very earliest.

[@CommodoreFan64]

@@DavidWonn Yeah YT has been really aggressive as of late about deleting comments. I think it's to do with fighting the bots that are all over the site, lets just hope they get it fix soon, and it's making legit commenting that much harder to do.

[@paulwarner5395]

Thanx for the great video. Thank god I never had to do email in those days. My fist email experience was PMail about 1990 as an end user. Now we just take it for granted.

[@TheSimoc]

I would much rather have to do email in those days than today. Today's email software is horribly bloated, cluttered and complicated, while at same time attempted to be oversimplified. Pleasure to see how even the server software is that simple yet functional.

[@cpm1003]

I used email 30 years ago, but I only accessed it on Unix machines that I would connect to by modem. I used Procomm Plus and a generic 14.4K modem, on a 40MHz AMD 386. I remember "vi" and "nn", but not the email program.

[@idahofur]

Procomm plus and scripts. :) Great program. I also used Minicom in Linux.

[@afnDavid]

UUCP and Bang-paths! The dialup systems were either Galiticom Worldgroup or UNIX based so there was NO real email clients used. Once we had SLIP then we used Netscape Communicator's email client. Paying for MS's email client or server software was NEVER an option. Trumpet WinSock with wfw 3.1

[@retrotech.oldschool]

this brings back a lot of memories... I setup ms mail for some companies...

[@RETROMachines]

Quite nicely explained, this is the time you received 1 email per week. No Social spam...

[@chaoticsystem2211]

The first (internet) mail i sent was via a BBS which had a gateway to the internets...

[@BilisNegra]

Quite weird to see email working without mail addresses, isn't it? Never experienced the "pre-@" era of electronic mail.

[@rubiksfaq9214]

Out of all the devices PCBway sells, Cabbage dog is the best one

[@naquirodriguezdelatorre2958]

For us non-windows guys we just used Unix accounts to get our mail and connected to the server via a telnet session.

[@Timescratch1]

Get well soon!

[@RetroTechChris]

The second mail user had a very unique name.. or at least an interesting email signoff! Something similar to "Bart" I think? 🤣🤣 Anyway, great video, this was just the type of thing that I would love to try out!

[@widicamdotnet]

The weird bit here is that all of the clients would be connected to that shared folder on the "mail" server to exchange messages. With that in place, mail is really just an exotic file browser and editor. Messaging to and from the world outside your own company (as with SMTP) seems to have been only added later as an optional gateway thingie?

[@nickwallette6201]

Yeah. When I saw how the Win Mail client just opened the data dir, I thought... Oh. Well that’s _one_ way to do it. I guess. I suppose “scale” was not in their vocabulary at the time.

[@zwirwel]

This was back in the era of intra-mail, or e-mail *within* the company as each employee began to get a PC on their desk. MS Mail (formerly Network Courier) competed with and adopted the shared mail folder structure used by for example Lotus cc:Mail which was way more popular at the time. Eventually, these products gained functionality to send to other companies but that really took off with their successors which were database structured scalable systems like MS Exchange (and Lotus Notes).

[@CommodoreFan64]

Great video, and glad I never had to use this.

[@airfixer9461]

Congrats with this video, real coooool stuff....enjoyed it very much...glad the surgery worked out fine...looking forward to the next vid in the series ;-)

[@eerchant]

Amazing video! Thank you so much!

[@schifoso]

Microsoft Mail is the Network Courier by Consumers Software.

[@andresbravo2003]

Early days of E-Mail from the Internet. Good times man.

[@dykodesigns]

I wonder, can the DOS version handle attachments with images and other multimedia content (like wav files)? I bet it would need a 32 bit dosextender for all that fancy stuff.

[@zwirwel]

It has a built in text viewer if I recall correctly. Binary files of any kind is just storable, and then you'd quit out and open them in another program.

[@domdecosa]

That mouse cursor is driving me crazy.

[@stefanmarinescu5086]

Used pine or some form of web mail ~ '98. Never knew The amount of work behind it...

[@januszkszczotek8587]

At 12:31 Windows File Manager shows a list of files. What's the meaning of the @ sign at the end of some .dll files? E.g. "pmmeta.dll@"?

[@Ts6451]

If I recall correctly, the .dl@ extension indicate they are compressed files. I believe these DLLs would be used for Presentation Manager(The GUI for OS/2), so are not used when installed in Windows.

[@nickwallette6201]

I seem to remember OS/2, and PS/2 Setup disks, using file names with weird symbols. Compressed files were usually DL$ or DL_ but I guess it is kind of arbitrary and could use the at symbol.

[@fantashokata]

Microsoft Office 3.0 included user license for Microsoft Mail

[@yogibear2k220]

Is this for internal e-mail only or could it work like, Gmail and send to other computers over the internet.

[@Bwyan]

RetroSpector has so many networked retro pc's he needs a class A subnet :P

[@nickwallette6201]

It blew my mind when, a few years into a networking career, I read an old TCP/IP book that showed how old Ethernet devices would infer the net mask from the IP address. It didn’t even ask you. It just configured a Class A, B, or C mask automatically. Then I learned about RIP. ... Wow.

[@mrgadget1485]

Windows email worms... Ahhh, good times!! :D

[@thebassplayer1985]

Hey man. Off topic.. or maybe not. I have a whole lot of pc stuff. How do i reach you mailwise?

[@RetroSpector78]

Email is the channel about section.

[@thebassplayer1985]

@@RetroSpector78 I only see a twitter link and a link to this channel..

[@RetroSpector78]

@@thebassplayer1985 it's the channels name at gmail dot com.

[@ran2wild370]

Post surgery mail system for skyscrapers! 😮😮 The biggest mystery is how to connect this inner office mailboxes to the dangerous internet.

[@thatLion01]

Was this product out before exchange server?

[@nickwallette6201]

Yes. Exchange was first the mail client in Windows 95, then later Exchange Server happened to us, and Exchange got replaced by Outlook. But before all of that, there was Mail.

[@goodgoodstuff]

I miss pine.

[@mikesilva3868]

💖💛never used email when I was 10 in 1994 my family didn't have dsl at the time we just had dail up

[@Blackadder75]

people used dial up for mail for many years, mail is perfectly fine for slower connections because it was pure text based in the beginning

[@mayanksingh6663]

Looks like LotusNotes

[@neozeed8139]

I never could get mail to connect to anything useful. At least Exchange 4.0 became a thing and it was so much better

[@tamphex]

I remember using PINE

[@konsolendoc]

WOW

[@Frank787-9]

Second! Love to see the MSFS95!

[@illegalsmirf]

Never forget to fart! Look up Mr Methane rofl

[@astyfoo]

first! but probably not by the time I type this out. Love the channel!

[@leonardocastro742]

You were the first

[@TheErador]

I'll stick to Pine ;)

[@Ramdileo_sys]

Now for get the full email experience 🙂​ ... you need to make 10 or 30 email account/users... and send to all of them a Spam or Phishing Scam ☹️​.... because as we all know,.. that's what mails are for, right?? 😡​😠​ I wonder if AOL used this back then.... or if they have some version of what is now Exim or Postfix running in Linux.. 😏​

[@BenState]

Nice vid man. I hope you're feeling better. Penis reduction surgery is painful, i know.

[@nickwallette6201]

Gotta be done though.

[@Ramdileo_sys]

na na... pines enlargement..... that's what he gets in the mail 😆​😅​🤣​ ....

[@tomtaylor135]

I used Pegasus Mail.

[@ZXSpectrumHotel]

MAIL on OpenVMS was less advanced

[@dxrk81]

hi

[@mdamaged]

email's just a fad!

[@Gamescommentary]

nice addition of fart.

[@cyberp0et]

No Microsoft feMAIL? not "inclusive"! :))

[@maxtornogood]

From: LGR To: RetroSpector78 Subject: FARTS Greetings, FARTS!

[@anandmoon5701]

Mission Impossible plz sent an email to "Max@Job 3:14"

[@Blackadder75]

lol, I just watched that movie for the first time in like 20 years