The orginal online frontier

© Mark Ollig

It was February 1978, and a severe blizzard kept Chicago Area Computer Hobbyists Exchange (CACHE) members from meeting in person.

During this blizzard, two members, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, created the world’s first public telephone dial-up computer bulletin board system (BBS).

During and after the blizzard, CACHE members dialed into the BBS with their home computers and modems to exchange files and engage in real-time text-based conversations, fostering an online camaraderie despite their physical distance.

Soon, other computer hobbyists were configuring computers with modems and BBS software.

Before the web became widespread, a BBS was the online platform among personal computer users, bridging physical boundaries and fostering virtual communities for discussion, software sharing, camaraderie, and commerce.

In the late 1980s, I read Boardwatch, a popular computing magazine providing in-depth coverage of computer bulletin boards and managing one as a system operator (SysOp).

Many computer hobbyists, including myself, were eager to participate in this new virtual online frontier.

I used Galacticomm’s MajorBBS software, an operating system specifically designed for running bulletin boards.

After installing the software from 3.5-inch disks onto a dedicated computer, I programmed the BBS configuration.

Winsted Bulletin Board System was the name of my BBS and advertised as WBBS: OnLine!

To promote it, I distributed paper flyers, wrote a newspaper article, and installed WBBS license plates on my car - which captured some attention.

WBBS used six analog phone lines connected to six 14.4 kbps Hayes modems configured with the communication protocol: 8 data bits, no parity bits, and one stop bit.

As the SysOp, I maintained the BBS, which handled up to six simultaneous dial-up connections.

Computer users dialed into the BBS using a terminal emulation program with telecommunications software such as ProComm, Kermit, PC-Talk, and Qmodem to access bulletin board systems.

During the early days of the WBBS platform, members participated in real-time texting, exchanged BBS electronic mail, took part in text-based games, polls, and questionnaires, and shared public-domain DOS software.

The virtual chat rooms provided a platform for computer users to spend considerable time discussing current trending topics, building camaraderie, and appreciating the virtual online experience.

Members of WBBS could send and receive internet emails using a batch software program automatically executed from the BBS after midnight via a remote telephone dial-up connection program I used called Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP).

The long-distance telecommunications provider, USLink, offered this service, which performed the transfer of internet email for my BBS through their direct internet connection.

Many BBSs used UUCP to handle internet email.

BBSes were developing technologies such as file transfer protocols, message boards, online gaming, email, social media chat rooms, real-time instant messaging, and a virtual community of camaraderie.

Most WBBS members were from the Winsted and Lester Prairie area, as it was a local call to the BBS.

With the popularity of the Windows operating system, Galacticomm subsequently developed a client-server graphical user interface (GUI) BBS version named Worldgroup Server, which I installed.

After downloading the client software, users could connect to the BBS and easily navigate through a colorful hyper-texted Windows graphical user interface using a mouse.

In 1993, I gave a presentation on a specially configured business BBS during the Winsted Civic and Commerce Association business luncheon.

The presentation highlighted the various features of the BBS, including its user-friendly interface and ability to support multiple users.

I used my Hewlett-Packard OmniBook 300 laptop and Dell 486DX2 66 desktop computer for the demonstration.

My Dell desktop computer ran the BBS software program, simulating a business online store, and my OmniBook laptop acted as the customer’s computer used for dialing into the BBS.

Each computer and modem were connected to a dedicated phone line.

During the luncheon, I provided attendees with a live dial-up BBS experience.

I showed how a Bulletin Board System could be used as an e-commerce platform by having online customers use a store menu system, enabling them to browse the product and service information and easily make online purchases.

The luncheon attendees appreciated the BBS’s potential to enhance business communication and serve as a centralized hub for local online business collaboration.

Many walked up to examine the BBS setup and carefully reviewed the computer monitors’ information.

Some dialed into the BBS from the laptop.

The local business community’s interest in the demonstration of the BBS thirty years ago remains in my memory.

According to a report by InfoWorld magazine in 1994, there were around 60,000 BBSes in the US, with approximately 17 million online members.

The following year, the presence of commercial service providers offering low-cost internet and web connectivity and access to a wider range of online services (including commerce) hastened the swift decline of BBSes.

By the early 2000s, the era of large commercial and smaller BBS platforms that once dominated the online landscape ended.

Some BBSes still exist, although they are mainly accessed for nostalgia.

Computer bulletin board systems fostered a culture of online collaboration and communication and laid the foundation for today’s internet-connected world.

Original disk used with my BBS in 1993

One of the paper flyers I distributed in 1993

Recognizing tech pioneers of the internet and web

© Mark Ollig

Since their inception, the internet and the web have undergone an unprecedented evolution, fundamentally transforming communication, information access, and global interaction.

We often take the technology behind them for granted without acknowledging those who made it possible.

Here are some of the key individuals, the tech pioneers who have shaped the internet and web’s digital landscape:

J.C.R. Licklider (1915 to 1990) is often called the “father of the internet.”

His visionary ideas and contributions laid the foundation for the interconnected networks we rely on today.

Licklider envisioned a global computer network that would revolutionize communication and information sharing.

His 1960 article, “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” explored the potential for human-computer interaction, which is increasingly becoming a reality through artificial intelligence (AI).

Paul Baran (1926 to 2011), an engineer at Project RAND, played a crucial role in developing digital packet switching, a fundamental concept underpinning the internet’s architecture.

In his 1964 paper, “On Distributed Communications Networks,” Baran proposed a resilient network design that could withstand disruptions and ensure reliable data transmission.

His ideas were instrumental in shaping the development of the US Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the precursor to the modern internet.

Leonard Kleinrock (born 1934) was instrumental in bringing Licklider’s vision to life.

In 1969, Kleinrock and his team at UCLA established the first node of the ARPANET, connecting UCLA with the Stanford Research Institute.

This historic achievement marked the birth of the internet as we know it.

Robert Kahn (born 1938) and Vinton Cerf (born 1943), often referred to as the “fathers of the internet,” collaborated on the development of the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP) into TCP/IP, the underlying protocols that govern communication on the internet.

These protocols have revolutionized communication and information access, enabling seamless connections between computer servers and various electronic devices worldwide.

Peter Kirstein (1933 to 2020), a British computer scientist, was pivotal in developing the pan-European internet backbone, launched in 1992.

He also contributed to standardizing internet protocols and co-authored the TCP/IP specification with Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.

Kirstein is widely recognized as the “father of the European internet.”

Tim Berners-Lee (born 1955), an English computer scientist, is acknowledged as the inventor of the World Wide Web.

His groundbreaking work at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, led to the development of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), the fundamental building blocks of the web.

Berners-Lee’s vision and contributions have transformed the internet into a universal platform for communication, commerce, and education.

Robert Cailliau (born 1947) played an important role in developing the World Wide Web when he joined Berners-Lee at CERN in 1990 and co-created the first web server and web browser, laying the groundwork for the web’s early growth.

Eric Bina (born 1964), a software engineer, and Marc Andreessen (born 1971), a computer scientist, co-created the Mosaic web browser, one of the first web browsers with a user-friendly graphical interface, which the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released in January 1993.

Netscape Navigator, co-developed by Marc Andreessen and released in October of 1994 by Netscape Communications Corporation, dominated the web browser market throughout the 1990s.

Radia Perlman (born 1951), often called the “mother of the internet,” contributed significantly to developing network protocols.

In 1985, she created the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), a crucial algorithm that ensures reliable data transmission in large and complex networks.

Perlman’s work has been instrumental in enabling the efficient and scalable operation of the internet.

Robert Metcalfe (born 1946), along with David Boggs (born 1950), Butler Lampson (born 1943), and Chuck Thacker (1943 to 2017), co-invented Ethernet technology in 1973 at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto, CA.

Ethernet, a groundbreaking wired protocol, revolutionized communication and information sharing by enabling high-speed, high-bandwidth, and reliable data networks among various devices, including computers, printers, storage devices, and gaming consoles.

Without Ethernet, the internet as we know it today would not exist.

Ward Cunningham (born 1949), a computer programmer, created the WikiWikiWeb program in early 1994 and added it to https://wiki.c2.com in 1995.

The WikiWikiWeb’s emphasis on user-generated content and collaborative editing laid the groundwork for the development of the Wikipedia website.

“Wiki Wiki” is the Hawaiian word meaning quick or fast.

In 1974, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn used the term “internetwork” in their paper titled “A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication.”

While the term “internet” has been used occasionally in ARPANET documents since the early 1980s, it was not widely adopted until the early 1990s with the growth of the World Wide Web.

On March 11, 1993, in an article for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Bob Schwabach wrote, “Most of the general public doesn’t even know the internet exists.”

The internet, often dubbed “the network of networks,” serves as the underlying infrastructure of the digital realm, empowering the web, which acts as the primary gateway connecting individuals and devices worldwide.

Today’s community of tech pioneers are shaping the future of the internet and the web.

Stay tuned.

The first (and fastest) exascale supercomputer

© Mark Ollig

The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, TN, operates the Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Frontier exascale supercomputer or OLCF-5.

The OLCF-5 (Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility) supercomputer is the fifth in a series developed by OLCF; thus, the five refers to its generation number.

The $600 million supercomputer was developed for ORNL, manufactured by HPE, and built with the collaboration of ORNL, Cray Inc. (a subsidiary of HPE), and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., aka AMD.

The OLCF-5 is located at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility in Oak Ridge, TN, and is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy.

In March, the OLCF-5 supercomputer achieved a groundbreaking feat by becoming the fastest computer on the planet.

It reached 1.102 quintillion floating-point operations per second in processing power, known as exaflop, crossing over into the exascale processing range.

This record was measured using Rmax, the standard benchmark for evaluating supercomputer performance.

Exascale computing is a type of supercomputing that can perform at least one exaflops (10^18) or one quintillion calculations per second.

The number one quintillion has 18 zeros and is also known as one million trillion.

A stack of one quintillion pennies would weigh about 8.8 trillion pounds and be approximately 11,826,923 miles high.

Indeed, one quintillion is quite a number.

But I digress.

Exascale computing has the potential to revolutionize scientific research by enabling unprecedented accuracy and precision for tackling complex challenges, empowering researchers and scientists to answer previously unsolvable problems in fields including climate science, materials science, energy research, celestial research, and artificial intelligence.

The OLCF-5 occupies an area of 372,4,004 square feet and houses 74 computer cabinets, some of which weigh as much as 8,000 pounds.

These cabinets are located in a climate-controlled environment to maintain stable temperature and humidity levels.

The OLCF-5 supercomputer features 9,472 AMD Epyc 7453s “Trento” central processing units (CPU) with 64 cores (processing unit) operating at 2 GHz (totaling 606,208 cores).

It has 37,888 Radeon Instinct MI250X graphics processing units (GPU), using an impressive 8,335,360 cores.

Each computing node of the OLCF-5 supercomputer is fitted with a 64-core AMD Trento CPU, 512 gigabytes of Double Data Rate, four Synchronous Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DDR4 SDRAM), and four AMD Radeon Instinct GPUs.

The supercomputing system is built on a seven-nanometer production node process using 16.6 billion transistors.

From a nearby electrical substation, a new 2.5-mile-long dedicated power line is needed to be installed in the room housing the supercomputer.

The OLCF-5 consumes 21 megawatts of power and has a peak power consumption of 40 megawatts.

The supercomputer has a storage system that can read data at 75 terabytes per second and write data at 35 terabytes per second and a flash storage system that can process 15 billion input/output operations per second.

In addition, the OLCF-5 supercomputer has a large file system called the Orion Lustre files ystem that can store up to 700 petabytes (PB) of data.

A petabyte of data equals approximately 1,000 terabytes or 1,000,000 gigabytes of data storage.

The actual number of bytes in 1 PB is 1,125,899,906,842,624.

Putting it into perspective, it would take 486 billion 1.44 MB 3.5-inch floppy disks to hold 700 petabytes of data, which is equivalent to storing 500 billion pages of standard typed text.

A popular 1980s storage method would require a mind-boggling 1.94 quintillion 5.25-inch double-sided 360 KB floppy disks to store 700 petabytes.

It would require approximately 652,421 one-terabyte hard drives to store 700 petabytes of data.

But I digress.

The OLCF-5 supercomputer plays a pivotal role in scientific research, improving efficiency and transforming research and data analysis.

With the help of supercomputers, healthcare medical researchers can analyze vast amounts of data, enabling them to quickly identify patterns and diagnose conditions, develop more effective treatments, and advance medical research in ways that were previously unimaginable.

The OLCF-5’s exascale processing power can shed light on the underlying causes of diseases, paving the way for future personalized medicine and medical solutions.

Supercomputers, with their colossal processing power, will become valuable contributors to improving artificial intelligence.

Scientists and researchers worldwide remotely access OLCF-5 through the self-service portal of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and the Department of Energy’s high-speed computer network ESnet (Energy Sciences Network).

Cerebras Systems Inc., an artificial intelligence company, recently claimed that the Condor Galaxy-1 supercomputer, owned by G42, a technology holding company based in Abu Dhabi, UAE, has achieved a processing speed of 4 exaflops.

Currently, no publicly available Rmax benchmark test results can independently verify and support this claim.

The HPE Frontier exascale supercomputer OLCF-5 is today the first and fastest exascale supercomputer in the world, with a theoretical peak performance capacity of 1.5 exaflops.

Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy

The Zilog Z80 microprocessor

© Mark Ollig

In 1969, Intel was asked to develop customized chips for the Busicom 141-PF printing calculator manufactured by Japan’s Nippon Calculating Machine Corp.

In 1971, Intel Corp. engineers produced the 4004-computing silicon chip used in the Busicom 141-PF.

The Intel 4004 is the first microprocessor produced for commercial use.

A microprocessor is a small integrated circuit that combines data processing and control functions for executing instructions and performing calculations.

The Intel 4004 was the first single-chip integrated circuit (IC) microprocessor to combine all processing components into a single chip.

IC chips are small semiconductor materials that contain electronic circuit components such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors.

By integrating these components, ICs can deliver high-speed, compact, cost-effective circuits while ensuring optimal performance.

ICs have revolutionized the electronics industry by enabling the design of smaller and more powerful electronic devices.

The Intel 4004 microprocessor has a four-bit (known as a nibble in binary) architecture and is an integrated circuit chip with a clock speed of 740 kHz.

The on-chip oscillator circuit generated the clock signal using an external quartz crystal to maintain a stable frequency.

The microprocessor could execute 92,000 basic operations in one second. These operations could include arithmetic calculations, data transfers, and logical comparisons.

The microprocessor used 2,300 transistors and had a 16-pin DIP (dual in-line package) plugged into a rectangular socket with two rows of eight pins soldered to the electronic circuit board.

Four individuals were responsible for the creation of the Intel 4004 microprocessor.

Federico Faggin designed the Intel 4004, while Marcian E. Hoff was responsible for the architecture and development of the instruction set. Stan Mazor created the software, and Masatoshi Shima collaborated with Intel during the microprocessor’s development.

The Intel 4004 consolidates all the essential components required to operate a computer, including the central processing unit, memory, and input/output controls, onto a single chip made of silicon.

The Intel 4004 was the first programmable microprocessor available for purchase. With them, engineers could customize software for various electronic devices.

The Intel 4004 US Patent is No. 3,821,715.

During the 1970s, microprocessors revolutionized electronic technology and paved the way for the development of today’s digital computing systems.

The Intel 4004 was integrated into electronic devices such as automated tellers, cash machines, the Wang 1222-word processor, Bally Flicker pinball and Bally Alley arcade bowling machines, and others.

In 1974, Federico Faggin, Ralph Ungermann, and Masatoshi Shima founded Zilog, Inc., known for producing microprocessors, microcontrollers, and other integrated circuits.

The company developed the Zilog Z80 microprocessor, which hit the market in 1976, followed by the Z80A.

Computers such as the Osborne I, KayPro II, Sinclair ZX-80, ZX-81, ZX Spectrum, and the popular Radio Shack TRS-80 used the Z80 microprocessors.

The Z80A microprocessor had an eight-bit data bus, used a 40-pin ceramic side-brazed DIP package, and required a five-volt power supply, a current draw of 90mA, and a maximum clock speed of 4 MHz. It also supported a physical memory of up to 64 KB.

The Zilog Z80/A processors were used in eight-bit CPUs that ran the Control Program for Microcomputers (CP/M) operating system. The Intel 8080, released in 1974, was also used with the CP/M.

The Z80A was also used in video game consoles and early arcade games such as Pac-Man and medical, telecommunications, and networking equipment.

In 1989, Zilog was acquired by a group of investors and then by Texas Pacific Group in 1998.

Zilog has continued to produce eight-bit microcontrollers since 2007.

In 2009, IXYS Corp. acquired Zilog, a company based in Milpitas, CA, and redirected its attention toward the industrial and consumer markets for electronic components used in motion detection, motor controlling, wireless, and security applications.

In 2017, Zilog and IXYS Corp. were acquired by Littelfuse Inc., an American electronic manufacturing company based in Chicago.

Zilog provides 8-bit and 32-bit microprocessors and customized system-on-chip solutions for automotive and industrial control systems, home appliances, consumer electronics, wireless communication, and security devices.

Today, you can purchase the Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator, which uses the Zilog eZ80 8-bit microprocessor (introduced in 2001) with a clock speed of 48 MHz.

According to the much-referred UserBenchmark website, the AMD EPYC 9754 ‘Bergamo’ and the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D are recognized as the fastest processors in 2023. 

The Intel Core i9-14900K and the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX are also mentioned.

I wrote today’s column using my HP Laptop 17-cn3, powered by the Intel Core i7-1355U processor and running the 64-bit Microsoft Windows 11 Home operating system.

Zilog’s success with the Z80 microprocessor contributed to establishing California’s Silicon Valley as a hub for technology innovation. 

From my collection of stuff, I found a Zilog Z80A SIO/1 (Serial Input/Output Controller/single-channel device) 4 MHz 40 Pin DIP microprocessor and took a photo to feature in today’s column.