🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <28b7t8$lgc@delphinium.rtsg.mot.com>,
Michael G Beirne <beirne@rtsg.mot.com> wrote:
>Actually Mark Jhereg started it by creating a Domain Park (chicago.org?)
>when he moved here from Michigan, where he had helped set up one
>there.

Actually Mark Colburn; his *machine* was named jhereg.  It was started as a
domain park, although in the odds'n'ends still on my system from the handoff
I don't find anything except references to chi.il.us, so if it ever was
anything else, it sure didn't last long.  Mark worked for AiC, along with me;
it was almost exactly 5 years ago, since I remember first meeting him at the
10th anniversary dinner of the branch in Chicago.  He was also heavily involved
with the POSIX effort, which eventually led to a full-time job in
Minneapolis. (See below.)

>He got a job in Minnesota and turned everything over to
>Dave Ihnat when he moved. This then metamorphosed into the Clout Project.
>When Dave got worried about legal liabilities he talked to Doug Price
>and I about associating it with /usr/group/chicago. Doug, Al Teslik
>and I were the original signers of the incorporation papers for
>/usr/group/chicago.

Almost.  What happened was that we (the royal we, meaning me) had been
running the chi.il.us domain as inherited from Mark; this was only
incidental to the forming of /usr/group/chicago, since I was in on the
early machinations to get that going.  (I know, I should have gotten *my*
name on the incorporation papers to prove it, but there's no $$ in it, so
who cares?)  Along about that time, ihnp4 was shutting down, so one of the
first efforts of the fledgling /usr/group organization was to host an Email
symposium at one of the local hotels.  We got a number of heavies, such as
Gene Spafford and Gary Murakami, to bop in and give presentations about
Email in general, and we talked about belling the cat (i.e., what to do
about the immenent demise of the only Email hub in the Midwest.)  This led
to the formation of the Email SIG, which proceeded to meet a few times.  At
the second or third meeting, I laid a little memo on the group which
described an idea for a distributed Email distribution machine.  We rapidly
came up with the name CLOUT (Chicago, y'know) and a scheme to prototype it
with the then-relatively-new HDB and spoofing.  (I.e., setting MYNAME=clout
in homebru's Permissions file entries for some test clients.)  Now it
begins to get a little confused in my memory; somewhere along the line, La
Monte and Matt helped get something running at UofC, and we really started
taking clients.  This led to about 3 years of La Monte and I not really
evolving the Alpha software much, since we got buried in the day-to-day of
actually running the production system.  A couple of years ago, there was a
major crash of the system, which led to lotsa fun recriminations in
chi.mail, and eventually to a reorganization of the Email SIG and the CLOUT
project to put it very much in the shape it's in today, i.e., an active
Administration group and a now-quiescent design specification group (for
the next generation of the CLOUT software.)

>I first read about Public Access UNIX in chicago on CBBS when Randy
>offered public accounts on the 3B2 named wlcrjs. I told Dave Ihnat
>about it and he didn't believe me so I gave him the phone number
>and told him to try it. I don't think he tried it, but when Randy
>asked for help in one of the Net News groups Dave responded.

Well, I don't remember this, but I'm sure it's pretty close to correct.
Actually, the yelpforhelp came on CBBS; something to the effect of, "Help!
Unix ain't CP/M!  WhaddoI do with *this*?".  This led to a long involvement
with Randy.  The first publically-available system was actually an Altos-586
running Xenix.  (Prior to that, wlcrjs--which are Ward and Randy's
initials--was incarnated on a Compaq portable with Venix.  Believe me,
while it was interesting, Unix does *not* like running on an 8086 with no
memory management.)  It eventually moved onto the 3B2, under which the
reincarnated wlcrjs became known as 'chinet'.  If I'm missing any details,
I know Randy will be glad to fill in.

>I used
>to use xmodem to download usenet sources like compress, xmodem and patch
>from wlcrjs to my CPM machine and then upload them to work for use.
>Randy usually has a lot of neat technical innovations on his systems.

Randy is usually playing with bleeding-edge stuff, yeah.  The Altos was a
very advanced box in its time--used a Z-80 for an intelligent I/O
processor, so it actually cranked pretty well even by today's
standards--and eventually became the first 'homebru'.  The 3B2 was a real
stretch for a home system then, and Randy's x86 boxes tend to be loaded
with goodies today, like CD-ROMS, multiple networks, satellite download,
lotsa X terminals, etc.

Oh, well...'nuff nostalgia...

		Dave Ihnat
		ignatz@homebru.chi.il.us (preferred return address)
		ignatz@chinet.chi.il.us