The Computer Chronicles - Computer Networks (1985)

This episode explores the constant development of LANs as well as potential applications of dial-up networking.
Special thanks to archive.org for hosting these episodes. Downloads of all these episodes and more can be found at: archive.org/details/computerch...

[@topgun9666]

30 years later and the term "Token Ring Network" still sends chills down my spine.

[@blackneos940]

Is it ASMR, or something that bugs you? :)

[@Blackadder75]

We had one of those, but the line broke and the token fell out and rolled under a file cabinet, we never found it again.

[@AcornElectron]

@@Blackadder75 😂

[@MrGeigerZ]

Sad to say - but we still have TRN in production at one site, one printer. Yep.

[@BlownMacTruck]

Token ring worked fine. No idea what this guy is complaining about. It actually had a lot of advantages over ethernet. However it didn’t quite scale the way it needed to and eventually lost. But it wasn’t anything that would send “chills” down anyone’s spine.

[@leonardovalencia8928]

This program never ceases to amaze with the quality of the guests. Robert Metcalfe no less, one of the inventors of Ethernet when he was back at Xerox, and also the cofounder of 3Com, what a legendary figure.

[@ferrreira]

Not to mention one of the hosts Gary Kildall, the creator of CP/M which was the foundation for MS-DOS.

[@mojoblues66]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Metcalfe#Incorrect_predictions

[@oldtwinsna8347]

The early shows up to the mid/later 80s were like that. Had the actual big names in engineering and CEOs appear (Jack Tramiel, Wozniak, Alan Shugart, Trip Hawkins, etc). Then in the early 90s it slowly degenerated into more product driven with appearances by marketing reps, although the senior corporate level ones who were truly very knowledgeable on their product lines. In the mid 90s onwards it then continually spiraled downwards with companies sending junior employees to the show, with Stewart visibly angry he was getting these people when he himself ran a show that was up a high pedestal. This is why you see him get so snappy in the later years - he wasn't going to let some junior employee start to talk over him.

[@spladam3845]

The show had a really good credibility, always kept it professional, and they had Gary, and as humble as he was, some of these guest were just as happy to meet him I think. Everyone seemed to like him, and he was already a legit legend.

[@marctronixx]

@@oldtwinsna8347 cant agree more with you on this. i dont like watching the later shows in the 90s because stu's attitude was just nasty. made the show uncomfortable to watch.

[@chell_1.]

6:19 "...the standalone PC is sort of a transient in the developement of computers, useful up to a point..." Wow that turned out to be extremely accurate

[@connclissmann6514]

Founder of 3Com and inventor of Ethernet interviewed by Gary Kildall. George Morrow calling IBM out at the end. They certainly got big hitters onto the show.

[@azmedz]

Production levels were pretty high for the time that the show was debuted. For technology themed broadcast it had to have the technology behind the show. Both in people and topics. The reason why there's big names in this show is because this was early marketing for these big companies to mass-market this stuff if you look at the early 83 versions of this show.

[@James_Knott]

Anyone remember Morrow's Micro Stuff? They sold hardware back in the S-100 bus days.

[@CanadianPrepper]

Amazing how little has changed.

[@James_Knott]

???? A heck of a lot has changed. Look at my other post.

[@Bag_monkey]

"Our hard drive is 2-3 times faster than a floppy..." Now who would need those crazy speeds?

[@Wulfdane]

I miss these educational shows, love them when I was a kid and still do. PBS had a lot of these shows growing up.

[@jimastro67]

i'm hearing lots of good things about this "world wide web" thing.

[@BlaBla-pf8mf]

Not for another 5-6 years

[@Bendaak]

@@BlaBla-pf8mf Yeh, they were talking about the early internet in that episode such as Arpanet. Bulletin Boards would soon become popular also as a method of connecting people over states and continents.

[@NathanChisholm041]

Not long now🤞

[@stewarthayne8304]

This is an amazing historical document.

[@julioagueros]

At the end: "a program with an AI assisted spelling check" top notch

[@Bendaak]

Nice to see a little Mac networked there. I have an ‘84 Macintosh too which has been hooked up online so I can still communicate with people in 2020 with 80’s tech. So happy that these old machines are still useful today.

[@ubiased23]

How? Like sending emails?

[@Bendaak]

@@ubiased23 Bulletin Board Systems. It’s like a very early version of a public forum. You can also e-mail other users. It has a decent sized following of people who are fed up with modern social media and want something simpler from an earlier time.

[@robwebnoid5763]

My first direct experience with a computer network was in freshman highschool computer class in the early 1980's, where there was a bunch of TRS-80 III's & IV;s attached to some box. Eventually I figured out it was some sort of CP/M network. I think it was attached to a impact printer & a 1 megabyte hard drive. While I learned a lot in those classes, my favorite had always been the Commodore 64, first one bought in that same year, of which I still have all that stuff, including peripherals, manuals, magazines, disks, boost cpu, etc.

[@gerrycrisostomo6571]

Way back in those years, only the corporations have networked computers using 10BaseT connections with 10 Mbps speed. That's because it used to cost a lot to network the computers. Today in our homes, we have networks using Gigabit LAN hub/switch and Category 6+ Ethernet cables that are capable of 1 Gigabit per second or more, connecting computers with the power of supercomputers used only a few years before the year 2000. It is also capable of wireless connections so we can also connect our smart phones, wireless computers, gadgets and appliances like smart TVs to our routers to access the internet. Now that really makes me smile.

[@Steveos312]

You come off too proud of the present, not looking at the past standing still. And you're using liberal use of "we", you can't speak for everyone.

[@gerrycrisostomo6571]

@@Steveos312 What do you mean by "too proud?" Did I mention anything that is beyond the truth? I said it because I myself experienced working in the office with 10BaseT LAN connection which was the fastest at that time, way back in the late 80's. Is that "not looking back" at the past? What I said is with reference to history, how technology evolve and nothing more. Also when I say "we", that means anyone today can avail himself or herself with the equipment that I mentioned above because those are for sale in many computer stores. So before you criticize anyone, do your research and stop insulting yourself by posting stupid comments OK?

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

Hard to believe there was a time when people reflexively looked to IBM for leadership on all things computing-related ... Just a couple of years after this, their introduction of the PS/2 range demonstrated quite clearly the shrinking limits of their market control.

[@marctronixx]

at that time is was not hard to believe. IBM was the Big Cheese. My mom worked there as well as one of my uncles.

[@richardhall9815]

12:12 My jaw dropped right there. "How much does this system cost?" "About $10,000, plus the cost of the PC's."

[@pata5187]

"okay we gotta move on"!!🤣

[@straightpipediesel]

Not bad in that timeframe. In the late 80's-early 90's, a single professional workstation, which would be used by an engineer or scientist, would run about $10k. Even a Mac IIfx started at $9k. The phrase "megapenny" was coined for this price level.

[@richardhall9815]

@@straightpipediesel Yeah. Not exactly a system for your average Joe.😁

[@straightpipediesel]

​@@richardhall9815 I think it's the opposite. It's screwed up modern cost cutting. In the 60's professionals had secretaries and transcriptionists. In the 80's they had computers worth the same as a car. Today, they get a $1,000 work laptop and have to figure out everything themselves. That's why office worker salary growth fell behind, their productivity has been stagnant. A bus driver runs a $120k vehicle, an average factory worker runs $250k of equipment, a farmer operates a $400k harvester, it's no wonder why these people often make more than your typical cubicle dweller.

[@lawrencescales9864]

@@straightpipediesel I’m interested in this- what does the price of the equipment have to do with pay? As in, the company won’t shell out for gear, so they won’t pay well either? Or do you mean something else?

[@lifeinhd4053]

5:32 "The average person in the home really doesn't have to have a local area network" hooo boy how times have changed.

[@gerrycrisostomo6571]

They had no idea what's going to happen in a few decades...

[@AcornElectron]

Gerry already said so but it was 35 years ago.....

[@BlownMacTruck]

Well the idea of local area networks from back then have little to do with the ones from today. And most everyone in the modern era would have zero idea of how to set up a network back then - it’s completely different. Not to mention people STILL don’t know how to manage their own networks - plenty of people just plug in a router and possibly change the wireless network name and password (often times not even that) and reboot it if something goes wrong. God help them if they need to do any kind of troubleshooting with access, addressing, and performance.

[@____0____]

"an L, A, N, Lan as it's sometimes called" This took me back to old MPU (MultiPlayer United) LANs in Sydney back in the early and mid 00's. Before that I used to visit my cousins often to connect to his LAN and share his broadband - it was pretty amazing in early 2000s to get 50mbps, especially in Australia.

[@mikepilyih6524]

22:19 “Where will all this network technology go?” Sadly its what made Tik Tok a thing.

[@DouglasLippi]

I love all this history. In computer class in 1999 we learned about token ring. To this day I have never actually encountered one. Haha AppleTalk too. I'd forgotten about that protocol.

[@mkaney805]

LOL @ 4Mbps. But it's honestly AMAZING how much business managed to operate successfully at that rate.

[@James_Knott]

The company I used to work for had a LAN running at a blazing 2 Mb! It connected disk and tape drives to the main computer.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@24:50 "Including the ability to program the home's electronics over the phone." Great! The first hackable homes. :)

[@movie0007]

Reminds me of the all electric home by Westinghouse in the 1950's. Now that we are 70 years ahead of that time, as many power surges we get, I would much rather prefer a home that has electric, but has a huge 12 hour backup battery for the home. Furthermore, I think having someway manually to charge those batteries would be needed, if solar charging is unavailable. Or even running a generator to keep the battery going. My dad will run the generator here when power goes out, but that's only as good until you run out of fuel. I saw a video once where a guy was using a crank to charge a battery, or like those emergency radios that have the crank on them. Problem there is you have to crank soooo much, and it only ends up lasting not even 10 seconds. We have a Cyber Power UPS for our modem/router and I've got an APC 1500 for my computer. So power goes out, my PC stays on, and I don't lose internet. Granted I'm able to run the PC for about the next 20 minutes before I have to shut down, but it's a lot better than losing devices to constant power outages.

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@@movie0007 Biggest downside to that however is that current technology batteries tend to wear out pretty quickly. A UPS lead battery only lasts 3-4 years before it needs to be replaced. For a battery that has enough capacity to store energy for 12 hours (it would be huge too) you can expect to pay upwards of $5000 to replace it every 5-10 years at the most. (Even when not actively used much they wear out due to drop charging and chemical processes inside it.)

[@movie0007]

@@PhoenixNL72-DEGA- Oh wow. Yea I'm not really that familiar with battery technology, but I do know you are right on that $5000 price tag every 5-10 years. I think having alternatives like that though, definitely beat relying on just one type of power source.

[@user-nr5zo5os2d]

Miss the golden days 😢

[@PhoenixNL72-DEGA-]

@4:00 "Two users can share multi-media information simultaneously" Multi-media in 1985? I'm guessing they are using the term to refer to texts, spreadsheets, database info and maybe a picture (or CAD file or something like that) @ 5:33 "The average person in the home really doesn't have to have a LAN" Until LAN capable multiplayer games came around in the 90s. Doom, Command & Conquer, Warcraft etc. @6:20 "Stand alone PC is sort of a transient in the development of computers. Useful up to a point." 2020: How right he was, at least 99% of computers (desktop, laptop, handhelds etc) are connected to a WAN, either directly or through a WiFi LAN.

[@blackneos940]

AND WiFI Hardware in Laptops and Desktops are GREAT if you want to make a Server with *nix and don't have an Ethernet Jack up in your room somewhere. :)

[@gerrycrisostomo6571]

Don't forget the game which is the greatest driving force behind home LANs, the COUNTER STRIKE.

[@papadocsamedi2544]

Why am I exactly watching this? Who knows. But it's fascinating.

[@kakhak]

Always interesting.

[@Wizardofgosz]

Man, sometimes George Morrow and Paul Schindler do these brief editorials, and they end up saying nothing.

[@StephenBlower]

21:38 Get networking now 🤓😎 Says Sherry. 1985 so many things suddenly changed.

[@DownassMusic]

I used to work for Madge Networks, we were to Token Ting leaders!

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

11:20 That was the theory. Right from the beginning, Ethernet would attract criticism for its collision-based approach. To most communications engineers, it just sounded wrong--too lackadaisical, too quick-and-dirty. Something with an explicit TDM schedule like Token-Ring just _has_ to be more efficient right? And yet, in the real world, the price/performance of Ethernet beat the competition every time. Around this time (the mid-1980s), big manufacturing corporations like General Motors and Boeing put their marketing muscle behind a protocol called “MAP” (“Manufacturing Automation Protocol”) which was built on IEEE 802.4 Token Bus connections (Token Ring was standardized as 802.5). Yet that never went into widespread production, as even its own biggest backers found that 802.3 (Ethernet) gave perfectly acceptable performance in the very situations where they said they needed absolutely predictable latencies.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

24:11 I knew it would get mentioned at some point.

[@James_Knott]

It's just one way of doing things and it worked. It was also inspired by ALOHANet, which the University of Hawaii used to connect campuses on the various islands.

[@wallacelang1374]

I am more interested in ISPs (Internet Service Providers) which provide access service online to people using various types of computer systems. For most of these networks discussed on this episode are designed for a specific type of computer systems being all linked up together. I don't care for either TLN (Token Link Network) and/or LAN (Local Area Network) for their preferred specific type of computer systems.

[@foxythedingo]

The hairpiece is epic 😮😂

[@ScentlessSun]

Rest in pieces Novell NetWare.

[@lucius1976]

19:30 MS Excel "clever program that can write to another format". Excel we know can not do that anymore

[@estusflask982]

Wild that 4 megabits was considered high performance in 1985

[@DataWaveTaGo]

At 5:33 "...the average person in the home doesn't have to have a LAN really..." I've had a home LAN since 1995. It now has 2 servers, home entertainment center and supports 12 computers of various types. Each family member has from 2 to 4 computers each. This is quite common in 2022.

[@GrunOne]

I wouldn't call what you have average though necessarily!

[@marctronixx]

you are not the average person. an outlier.

[@aliren6118]

40mbs, still faster than Comcast.

[@georgeh6856]

The cranky bald guy towards the end seemed to be calling Token Ring "unreliable and inefficient". I never noticed Token Ring as unreliable. It was much more efficient at the time to have token passing with no collisions vs. Ethernet which had constant collisions and retries because switched routers were not yet mainstream. That being said, Token Ring was expensive and I hated its bulky cables with their humongous jagged plugs.

[@metafis2490]

26:30 I wonder what this guy would have made of google earth.

[@CaptchaNeon]

What he would've thought about any part of the internet today would be incredible to know. I really hate that he allowed alcohol to take his life and isn't here today to see all of the incredible technologies.

[@thomase13]

Where do you get the idea that he's dead?

[@TheStevenWhiting]

thomase13 He's not. They are thinking of Gary Kildal. He did sadly die.

[@RogerBarraud]

Kinda quaint hearing LAN spelled out... and reference to a Winchester disk :-)

[@johnhupperts]

About $10,000 1985 money for Ethernet between the 2 PCs???

[@oldtwinsna8347]

Real networking was very expensive back then. You could do other hacks for peer to peer but it was not a true networked situation.

[@AcornElectron]

Sherry! Miaow!

[@RogerBarraud]

Good luck dealing with the incompatible dates in Excel on Mac and PC AT :-/

[@codemonkey2311]

I did not know gary kindal was the host of computer chronicles… the cpm inventor

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

21:45 ball buster!

[@RogerBarraud]

Six years BL (Before Linux).

[@TheBadFred]

Token ring - If you forgot the end resistor it can get very harry.

[@James_Knott]

???? There was no end resistor. That was coax cable based Ethernet. Token ring was a ring that didn't have an end.

[@linklovezelda]

Is that Tod Howards dad?

[@indenkellerag]

Wtf you are a random! Did you kidding me

[@Xenotypal]

@@linklovezelda once you see it you can't unsee it

[@linklovezelda]

@@Xenotypal yeah it really looks like him lol

[@rf8003]

The best computer technology TV program at it's time...

[@Sittin.]

14:06 WAWAWEWA

[@eskwadrat]

$10,000 for two 3Com Ethernet cards, hub and software, my god. Bob must have thought about cost with two Macs, still he added later "plus cost of Macs", weird. Few minutes later another chap says is $300 per PC.

[@GrunOne]

And still only $500 000 for 'the house of the future'. If only they could see the housing market now.

[@KarlBaron]

The 3Com system had an actual dedicated file server, that’s what made it cost $10,000. The TOPS system was peer to peer

[@richarddr1234]

People were so much better dressed not that long ago.

[@CaptchaNeon]

"Huge files" which at that time meant a megabyte. Considering that so many networks at the time ran at a whopping 8-10 KB per second, you'd be sitting there waiting on a file like Christians wait for God. Absolutely horrendous time for most people and I imagine that many years from now, our great grandchildren will be looking back at our technology and laughing it off.

[@ArumesYT]

It was by no means a horrendous time for most people. Downloading a huge file still takes a couple of minutes just like it did back then. And laughing it off is a pretty naive reaction. I hope yourgreat grandchildren will be smarter than that.

[@oo0Spyder0oo]

You need to remember that data wasn't as huge back then so speeds were relative to the data flow. We used to use 9600 bps modems but disks containing a game or such only came on a 360kb1.2mb floppys or 1.44mb 3.5" disks.

[@oo0Spyder0oo]

@@ArumesYT Agreed

[@CMDRScotty]

Amazing LANS cost thousands of dollars less the 10 years later computer nerds were doing in there house for a few hundred. Thats how Microsoft got so powerful cross platform compatiabiliy.

[@z84c00]

I think this network stuff will never catch on. Everything is much too complicated, too communicative, too social.

[@8BitNaptime]

A blonde Maura Tierney.

[@ceber54]

20:30 Mr. Morrow as always the least futurist person and the most pessimistic.

[@AcornElectron]

Yeah, unfortunately GM bet on the wrong horse but he wasn’t alone. And then everything went wrong at once for him.

[@AcornElectron]

@ungratefulmetalpansy your KZbin name belies a genuine good nature it seems.

[@James_Knott]

Back in the 70s, he was selling hardware (Morrow's Micro Stuff) for the S-100 bus computers. I had his multi I/O card in my IMSAI 8080 computer.

[@johnnylongfeather3086]

14:52 ugh, the accent

[@Leofwine]

So what? EVERYBODY has an accent in their speech. I speak English with an accent just north of London (not literally), that Goldberg guy has (at least in my ears) a classic New York accent.

[@marctronixx]

classic old school noo yawk accent @@Leofwine