[COLUG] Re: cbosgd (was Re: recommendations for revision control system)

[Rob Stampfli]

On Sun, Jun 29, 2008 at 08:18:38PM -0400, Jeff Frontz wrote:
>> cbosgd was more a local phenomenon.  Its only external notariety was
>> the fact that many people had accounts and posted from it (including
>> "cbosgd!res").  I think more people here might be familiar with ihnp4.
>
> Unless I'm completely misremembering, I'm pretty sure cbosgd was the  
> local upchain to the UUCP backbone.  I remember that osu-eddie (a big  
> honkin' VAX-11/780) was the machine that we talked to and then I think it 
> talked to cbosgd.  ihnp4 was for the Chicago-land area, mtunix/attunix 
> was for NJ, watmath for lower Ontario, etc.
>
> Take a look at http://www.uucp.org/history/uucp-map-1981.html

I always saw cbosgd as a leaf node.  Surely, it was a pretty big leaf,
as for a while it was the primary Netnews node for the Columbus Bell
Labs population.  But, did it ever serve as a Netnews distribution
node except to get news into and out of Columbus Bell Labs?  I can't
say for sure, but I see no evidence it did, and I know I personally
couldn't get a feed from them.  (I had to go to osu-cis, via n8emr,
for that.)  Still, I was sorry to see them decommission cbosgd.  I
actually felt a bit special because I had an account there.  By the
time Netnews came into general use, it was difficult to get an account
there.

(I'm probably the only person left in the world who still uses UUCP
for some mail delivery, but hey, the latest sendmail still supports
it!)

> Yes, MAH was the person that I think helped propel the Internet from the 
> ivory towers to The Rest Of Us--by calculating how much BTL was spending 
> on ferrying around things like net.abortion, the business case for 
> cutting everyone else off was an easy one to make.  I think the lack of a 
> free backbone (and SLIP) made mom & pop ISPs viable, since we couldn't 
> possibly do without our email or netnews.

Over the years, I've had Netnews feeds over phone modems, satellites,
and even digital ham radio.  The Internet?  It was probably the least
interesting conduit.  The next time I see you at lunch, Jeff, let's
chat about this in more detail.

Rob