history - a brief history of minsk.zx-net'a.

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(c) Brom^E!E brom@tut.by
(e)dited by wrecker.smokers

 Brief history of Minsk ZXNet

Well, let's briefly go through the history.  After the appearance of the scheme
modem in Minsk, the first to try to assemble it were two
little-known people calling themselves NickSoft and Stinger. According to them
plans needed to recruit N number of people dreaming of seeing
(and indeed hear) a mysterious device near your
beloved Speccy, and then, in a creative atmosphere, their dream
turn into reality.  But, strange as it may seem, there are no applications
There were even ten (and this was the starting number).

Then came the second period for Nick and Stinger. After
the failure of the prepayment idea, an attempt was made to produce
modems to order. To do this, you just need to sit for a while
hours unwinding the board, and after another two hours winding
transformer  You can guess that this idea is also brilliant
failed.  The reasons were already different: if in the previous case
a dozen applications were required and that was where the problems ended, then
now,although the number of applications did not matter, but
the amount of time spent on assembling ONE modem is clearly not
cost 20$ U.S.D. Of course, taking into account that orders for
There were a lot of modems.

Sanalex stands somewhat apart: they tried modems
collect (namely collect, not sell) in two versions.
Moreover, the first of them appeared before the NickSoft&Stinger modem.
Then a diagram came from Vilnius.  She was more perfect and
generated a more perfect signal.   But practical
It didn’t even wait to be used, although its diagram is still in the possession of
Sanalex's.

The third who nevertheless made the dream of many spektrumists come true
years old, was the well-known Ars^Ftl, placing an advertisement for the sale
modems in printed advertising publications in the city of Minsk, he began
slowly sell people what they wanted, and the price
one modem was only $15.

There were also modems from Dien, which were better in their own ways.
characteristics, but in Minsk there are only a few of them, and at the moment
hardly anyone remembers them.

And with the advent of the first modems, the 8-bit modem boom began
cars For fans of the good old Spectrum there is an incentive
to creativity.  The waning interest in the platform began to flare up with
new strength.

With the advent of the network, bbs began to appear. Activity
users were forced to appear more and morenew bbs. On
at the initial stage there were about 12 stations in Minsk, this
such as: Black Night BBS, Fasa BBS, Fatality BBS, Hamer BBS,
No_name (aka Aquamarine) BBS, Brom (aka Chemical) BBS,
Dead BBS, Arny BBS, Stinger BBS, Abigor BBS, Delerium (aka
Energy) BBS, Ability BBS, S.Sturm (aka Legion) BBS. Running in
I will say ahead that by 1998 almost all of them, one by one,
"left" this mortal world.

For those who purchased the modem, a new life began. In the evening
the happy owners of this miracle of communication sat down at their
monitors and began frantically downloading and uploading files. In those
times the traffic was so high that in one 'shift' they could
fill up to 2000 sectors, but the number of calls was calculated
in dozens.

It is with the arrival of modem communications in Minsk that the emergence of
a huge number of electronic publications. I would like to note that
at that time Minsk ranked first in the number of electronic
newspapers per capita zx-population of the city.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last long, the surge passed
and a sharp and crushing decline began.

1998 comes, PC prices begin to fall and people
slowly starts to go away.

In the period from August 1998 to August 1999 there was not a single one in Minsk
permanent bbs, the only sysop at that time
daily biba Misha Brom, entered the flight school and spent a whole yearlived in the barracks.

I would also like to remember the Hamer BBS, which turned on occasionally
comrade Hamer, but due to low activity the sysop did not have
incentive to work, although attempts have been made to provide
access to networks such as FidoNet, Internet, HomeNet and SkyNet

After a year and upon Misha Brom's return home, the network
began its second revival, those who still have modems and
the desire to communicate with platform comrades began to increase
network, new people have been added.  We can say that autumn 1999
was truly the second birth of MinskZXNet. After a sharp
There was a surge in activity, people were full and thirsty for something new. And
at the beginning of 2000, just after the New Year holidays,
maybe from a big hangover or maybe there was some kind of sign, but on
One of the points at the headquarters of comrade Blaster was decided
finally forget about ZXWord and go to communicate with
centralized standards of ftn technologies, or to put it simply -
Lara Croft Mail Editor was issued to everyone. At first
People didn’t like this idea, but after live examples (
colleagues from Grodno), who by that time were already driving with all their might
Like normal people, the people seemed to agree.

Well, it seems like there are no problems, and then Blaster opened
daily bib, now in Minsk there are already 2 bib, it seemed
drive for yourself and don’t know the problems, butno. When quantity
There are about 15 points in the network, it was difficult to get someone to leave
on the 3rd node to Blaster, people are already accustomed to Chemical BBS, but only
Communication problems for some points forced them to somehow “go away”
from Chemical BBS.

Thanks to Equator, Minsk spektrumists now have access to
global ZXNet (such attempts to bring Minsk “to the light” have already
were undertaken by Ars and Hamer, but due to the little interest of the people, they
efforts were in vain).

Biba Blaster existed for no more than six months and for the reason
clogged sysop was closed (official reason for closure
banal and simple - no time, computer is glitchy, etc., etc.) Well
here again only Chemical BBS remained in Minsk, besides
time on the network there were about 8 people who returned to
second node.

I would also like to remember that timid attempts to discover one’s
bbs'ok served Chainick and One Man, but the public has them
stations were not successful, for this reason they
ceased to exist.

Since then, in the life of Minsk spektrumists, there has been almost nothing new
which didn't happen. And so we still exist.

At the moment, the most persistent ones remain online: Misha Brom^E!E,
Wrecker^Smokers, Equator, Seth^E!E, Rex, Midnight^E!E, Black
Angerl.

When writing the article, we used previously published
newspaper 'Energy' materials from comrades DjPsych^PsychoTeam  и
Spectre^O.B.

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