Today, the average user takes their computer technology for granted. Internet connection is something that we can’t live without any more. But how was it in the early days? Is Wi-Fi connection really so new?
First computer I ever used and started to work with, not counting terminals, was Iskra Delta Partner, a computer developed by Iskra Delta (Slovenia) in 1983. In the same time Sinclair ZX Spectrum was released. It took some time to get ZX Spectrum from UK, but it was well worth waiting for. That was the beginning and since then I’m working with computers, users, IT projects and IT management.
Figuratively speaking there were some kind of wireless computer communications already present in those early days. But we probably never tough about that in a way we see WiFi today.
All it took was a ZX spectrum48 KB and a little mono radio receiver.
Since ZX Spectrum used tape recorder and audio-in to load programs it was not hard to wire those input jacks with speaker of the radio receiver. Next step was to wait until 12:30 pm when a student radio station aired a demo game. That’s how I started to use wireless communications. It was one way communication but it was not far away from the way the satellite internet is working today. It was easier to record those games and load them later. But loading them directly from radio onto a computer was more interesting.
The first time I worked on the internet was in Holland, 2400 bit/s modem was used and there was no graphic interface. Simple textual university and research news groups were available. We used Gopher protocol to search for documents. Very soon faster modems were used and WWW was introduced. Modems were still slow, but it was not a problem to wait a few minutes for a picture to download. I do remember that when I got my 14400kb modem I thought that it’s really fast. It was a significant difference in speed of data transfer. In that time I worked a lot on connecting different locations, remote access, data exchange, leased telephone lines etc. Of course I could not resist creating my first web page with some basic html knowledge.
Telephone lines did not provide enough speed and internet service providers were just a few. Dial-up access in our company was expensive and we started with wireless internet and got connected directly to ISP. It was the only viable solution to get enough bandwidth for company usage. Normally it was not meant for home usage, but I was there and I wanted something faster than dial-up modem and new ISDN technology was something I did not want to use in that time. I won’t go in to details but I managed to get a good link of 11MB on a distance of 3Km from access point. And I still use the same link. Now and again I have to cut some branches off our tree.
Today wireless is obvious and sending an e-mail with big attachment is nothing special. Browsing web on a mobile phone is daily routine. Getting information today is much easier and faster and I must say that I’m happy and lucky that I was a part of all this when it was everything about getting a new demo game into my ZX spectrum over the radio receiver and getting late for school!
It was fun ha 
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