So the other night I'm cruising the old information superhighway as an oldster like me would say right? Uh, no. That phrase was coined by absolute luddites and was ridiculed as thoroughly as the phrase cyberspace was. At least by people like me and my buddies Jeff C. and John C. back in the day.
But I digress. Somehow, I stumbled across Google Groups. Apparently I had discovered this combination forum platform and news reader before, since it looked like I had been signed up on a group that had focused attention on Will and RJ, the gay YouTube vloggers I followed a decade ago. Well as is the case with me often now, I totally did not remember being a member of this group. Apparently this section of Google Groups was designed, probably back in the days when Google Plus was a big thing and they were trying to corner the market on several social media fronts including, in this case, reddit.
All that aside, I noticed a little banner on the page that said that they would no longer be accepting new subscriptions for access to Usenet. Or something to that effect. Furthermore, it said that though no new postings would be allowed, searches of archival posts would still continue.
So here's another case of a service that I hardly knew existed, exposing the possibilities of "what if?" similar to the way I found the newspaper clippings site on my hometown library website through a circuitous route. Funny how things like that happen.
So on a whim, I did a search to see if any of my old, no I mean REALLY OLD, Usenet posts were still extant. OMG, they were.
Now, truth be told, by the time I came on the scene in the early 90s, even Usenet was starting to fall out of favor in deference to the up and coming big daddy of them all, the fucking World Wide Web, baby! But, for tech geeks like John and I, trying to sell our wares to other tech geeks, it was still essential.
Here's a couple of old ads I placed as a Usenet post back in the ancient year 1996. I copied and pasted them since they didn't fit well with the Google modern conversion. Back in the day, these would have been represented as ASCII in a Usenet newsreader program anyway, so...
FS: Assorted Gizmos
Michael Chausse
Nov 13, 1996, 3:00:00 AM (EDIT: I think the time stamp is a Google thing since it's 3am for everything.)
to
Cozmo's Gizmos
http://w3.bbsnet.com/~users/infopump
cozgiz@worldnet.att.net
FS: Assorted "Gizmos" : )
Multimedia
Mitsumi® 8X IDE CD-ROM drive: $109
Lite-On® 12X IDE CD-ROM drive: $159
ESS® 16-bit Sound Card (IDE): $49
Sound Blaster 16-bit Sound Card $69
Sound Blaster AWE32 $119
Labtec® stereo PC speakers $19
Premier® 80 Watt PC speakers $39
Premier® 160 Watt PC speakers $79
Sub Woofer System $139
Parts
Mid Tower case, 230W $64
Full Tower case, 280W, 8 drive bays $109
104-key MS® Windows 95 keyboard $14
Microsoft® Mouse (ergonomic) $35
Mitsumi® Cordless Mouse $68
Hard Drives/Storage
Maxtor® 1 Gig $149
Maxtor® 1.6 Gig $220
Maxtor® 2 Gig $259
Maxtor® 2.7 Gig $299
Video/Monitors
Princeton Graphics® 17" .28 N.I. 1280 X 1024 Flat Screen $529
Techmedia® 15" .28 N.I. (Digital) $285
Techmedia® 14" .28 N.I. $218
Number 9 Vision 330 PCI video card w/ 2 meg DRAM $109
Diamond® Stealth 64 PCI video card w/ 2 meg VRAM $180
Modems
Digicom® 28.8 Internal $84
U.S. Robotics® 28.8 Internal Voice $139
Monterey® 33.6 Internal Voice $119
Memory
4 MB 72-pin 60ns $39
8 MB 72-pin 60ns $52
16 MB 72-pin 60ns $100
Cozmo's Gizmos
http://w3.bbsnet.com/~users/infopump
cozgiz@worldnet.att.net
Nov 29, 1996, 3:00:00 AM
to
DC 600A backup tapes:
3M or BASF: $3 each ($2 each if more than 100)
Free delivery for more than 50
Caddies availiable.
Some 6250 and 6150 tapes also avail. ($5 and $4 ea. respectively)
Michael Chausse
cozgiz@worldnet.att.net
All this is probably as boring as a million year old crumbling fossil to most, but to me, it's digital evidence of my longevity on this awesome thing we call the internet. Kids today will never know how special this all was and still is.
BTW, the misspelled "available" above is SO ME! I suck at spelling. But this was before spell check so I love that it's yet another little snippet of ancient history.