32 years ago I had just finished my "erikoistyö" (a pregrad exercise) in CS at the Helsinki Uni about combining object-oriented programming with relational databases and uploaded it to nic.funet.fi for all to see and enjoy - I was that proud of it. Even promised to send a 1.4MB diskette for those who couldn't download it for whatever reason.
Only curiosity value is left probably, but back then it felt like magic to be able to publish something like this on my own. Half a dozen people even asked for the diskette, which I sent to them.
Because 7-bit ASCII didn't include accented characters used in many European langauges, there were national changes. The Finnish variant replaced {|}[\] with äöåÄÖÅ.
Wouldn't claim so - perhaps the ideas were floating in the air. What I know for sure is that my work wasn't used for much.
What's more alarming is that it seems those 32 years old files at ftp.funet.fi are mostly unreadable by now. Back then I thought PostScript would last but alas! that is not the case. Ghostcript can show just about the cover page and that's all.
Libreoffice does a little bit better with the DOC-file but it's still not quite right.
So if there is anything to learn it's about persistent document formats. I wish I had known about LaTeX back then.
I was 6-7 at this point in time but I went from DOS to Win 3.1. I don't remember ever hearing about Win 3.0 and a quick google search makes it look like Win 3.0 and 3.1 were drastically different for some reason that I'm not really tracking down. I wonder why my dad held off until 3.1.
Downvoted for literally being curious to a Win API developer as to why 3.0 and 3.1 were so drastically different. I have a feeling the people who downvoted me didn't even go through this code base and realize how specific to Win 3.0 it was. Good on ya, mates. Keep reading only headlines.
It is so wonderful that we have repositories / archives like FUNET. So much history can be found in one place, along with everything we need to (re)experience what things were like back in the day.
As someone who runs an Aminet mirror (us3.aminet.net, which happens to be hosted on a real Amiga), I'm always grateful and appreciative we have resources like these that aren't based on popularity or on the OS du jour.
Some of the appreciation should go to the academic roots, culture and tradition of the early internet. The internet originated at DARPA but many of the earliest participants and adopters were academic institutions.
FUNET is the Finnish University and Research Network. They provide backbone connectivity and networking facilities to universities in Finland and have done so for decades. They've also run the public FTP archive (actually HTTPS by now) since 1990.
It seems to me that at the time, providing a server that distributed freely distributable and open source software was part of an academic culture of sharing and of providing a public good. (The free software movement also has its roots in the academia. Of course "open source" as a term didn't exist back then, but some of the culture did, without the commercial connotations of open source necessarily.)
In today's rather commercialized world, I appreciate it that a public institution still runs such an archive in a similar spirit with no direct commercial interest. (FUNET is run by a state-owned enterprise.)
Totally agree and thank you for being so perceptive! It was swell to hear someone say aloud "academic culture of sharing and providing for public good". I think that's what humankind would be wise to aim and seek for: equality of all and caring for the welfare of the weakest.
University education does not need to be expensive. On the contrary, it can be free.
Not FUNET but from IBIBLIO I've got the sun multimedia sounds for notifications in my machine along herbe. I use beep_casio.au for some calm and unobstrusive sounds for instance with an IRC client on messages or for SPT (simple pomodoro tecnique) to stop/continue working.
The SUNET Archive began its life in 1990 as an ftp archive created by Lars Gunnar Olsson of the IT-Department at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, or SLU, in Ultuna, a few kilometers outside of Uppsala.
The archive became a SUNET facility in 1993 and was assigned the name ftp.sunet.se. In the SUNET newsletter SUNETTEN from 1993 it is noted that the archive already contains 4 GB of data and there is room for another 4 GB.
By 1994 the SUNET Archive was ranked among the largest and most visited archives in the world. Its total storage capacity was then 28 GB.
I faintly remember when around the turn of the century the Irish equivalent, HEANET put in an Intel Itanic server for a similar purpose (or was it two?). I hope someone will correct me if I remember wrong but it had an absurd amount of memory, like 32GB.
FTP is such a horribly dated protocol; it's actually older than TCP!
The NAT issues are well known, but resolved in a standard way. However, the intersection of {Features defined in RFCs} and {Features implemented in FTP Servers} is much smaller than the sizes of either set. Many useful things are implemented outside of the spec, and most of the spec is not implemented in servers.
There were several application protocols in use at the time of the TCP cutover (1981?), including ftp and telnet. We didn't just throw them away, we ported them over from TCP's predecessor NCP. The one we did throw away was email, which was not a separate protocol, but was implemented as part of ftp. We got rid of that and replaced it with smtp. But the new ftp/tcp servers still supported email for several years as a transition.
The "FTP" archive is also served over HTTPS nowadays, and has been for a long time. The hostname may still be ftp.funet.fi but there's an HTTP(S) server listening.
I'm actually a bit surprised that they do also seem to still run an actual FTP server there as well.
If you like working with old machines, you quickly learn to appreciate the availability of FTP servers. Encrypted connections are quite CPU intensive, particularly when negotiating the connection.
The list of TCP and UDP port numbers [1] is a treasure trove of historical artefacts. It's amazingly hard to find information on e.g. "compressnet", which is wasting port 2 and port 3 for eternity.
It is not bad design. At least in world without firewalls or NATs. It potentially allows things like one machine setting up file transfer between two servers. Not sure if this was done, but could be done.
Lot of stuff was rather interesting design, which we really have gotten away with how our current networks are build. Like multi and broadcasting for actual content.
It is much more complicated than using two ports. There are two modes of ftp, active and passive.
In active mode the client connects to the server on port 21. It then issues a PORT command which tells the server which port on the client to connect to for data. The server connects to destination port on the client using port 20 as the source port.
In passive mode the client connects to the server on port 21 and issues the PASV command. The server chooses a random port for data and responds back to the client with a PORT command indicating this port. The client then connects to this destination port on the server using a random high port as the source port.
early network engineers were often rude and insulting. It was common to be berated about "vi or emacs" or other dense topic. Communication between engineers was often verbal commands or mild insults like this one.
> early network engineers were often rude and insulting. It was common to be berated about "vi or emacs" or other dense topic. Communication between engineers was often verbal commands or mild insults like this one.
Indeed; try suggesting any circuit-switched solution with Vint Cerf in the room and see what happens!
I have a spiel about "the old days" (pre-2000) internet, when the Web wasn't the only protocol. How we had FTP, Archie, Veronica, WAIS, Gopher, Telnet, Finger, etc...
I'd bring up all the great FTP sites I remembered:
spies.com (and "wiretap")
funet.fi
sunet.se
monash.edu
ac.oak.oakland.edu
I feel like there were a few other great repos out there, but those are the great ones that stuck in my memory.
Archie, X.500, ftp, gopher, telnet, irc, mailing lists, USENET, WAIS, WWW (remember to use WWW clients), a caching WWW server for Funet members, Alex ("Global filesystem for all anonymous ftp sites with caching (experimental)")
You could telnet into the system with username info and use command-line clients for some of these services if you didn't have access at your home university.
I vaguely remember using an email-based service to access web pages: you sent the URL to an address and got a reply with the page contents rendered as text. That probably wasn't Funet but something else.
tsx11.mit.edu, where lots of unix and early linux binaries could be found.
Unfortunately also university servers retire, and with them we lose the digital history they contain. Shout out to funet.fi and archive.org for taking good care of old files!
I should really get around moving to iki.fi as email address. It is forwarder designed to last forever. Which with companies acting like Google makes lot of sense.
Better to be beholden to non-profit that has driven the same mission for long enough time.
>It runs on a Linux server with dual 20 core processors, 786GB of memory and 80+TB of NetApp NFS storage. It has a 2 x 25Gbit/s connection to the Funet backbone.
Imagine an IT expert waking up from a coma they had been in since 1991 and seeing this.
Readit News
Cannot help feeling good of seeing it's still there. https://www.funet.fi/pub/sci/computer/oop/
Only curiosity value is left probably, but back then it felt like magic to be able to publish something like this on my own. Half a dozen people even asked for the diskette, which I sent to them.
That is so wild to read in a time when OOP has more or less conquered the programming industry. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Replacement_Character...
The file was probably actually written in something like codepage 1018: 0x7B is ä there rather than {.
What's more alarming is that it seems those 32 years old files at ftp.funet.fi are mostly unreadable by now. Back then I thought PostScript would last but alas! that is not the case. Ghostcript can show just about the cover page and that's all.
Libreoffice does a little bit better with the DOC-file but it's still not quite right.
So if there is anything to learn it's about persistent document formats. I wish I had known about LaTeX back then.
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This was a fun watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuMeqcuTjSY
As someone who runs an Aminet mirror (us3.aminet.net, which happens to be hosted on a real Amiga), I'm always grateful and appreciative we have resources like these that aren't based on popularity or on the OS du jour.
Thanks, FUNET!
FUNET is the Finnish University and Research Network. They provide backbone connectivity and networking facilities to universities in Finland and have done so for decades. They've also run the public FTP archive (actually HTTPS by now) since 1990.
It seems to me that at the time, providing a server that distributed freely distributable and open source software was part of an academic culture of sharing and of providing a public good. (The free software movement also has its roots in the academia. Of course "open source" as a term didn't exist back then, but some of the culture did, without the commercial connotations of open source necessarily.)
In today's rather commercialized world, I appreciate it that a public institution still runs such an archive in a similar spirit with no direct commercial interest. (FUNET is run by a state-owned enterprise.)
University education does not need to be expensive. On the contrary, it can be free.
I guess I'm worried there are enough of them. I'd hold an offline archival copy of it helps, at least until I die.
I wish someone would create larger WORM media, like those DVDs made of rock.
*maybe
History: https://ftp.sunet.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/html/histor...
The SUNET Archive began its life in 1990 as an ftp archive created by Lars Gunnar Olsson of the IT-Department at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, or SLU, in Ultuna, a few kilometers outside of Uppsala.
The archive became a SUNET facility in 1993 and was assigned the name ftp.sunet.se. In the SUNET newsletter SUNETTEN from 1993 it is noted that the archive already contains 4 GB of data and there is room for another 4 GB.
By 1994 the SUNET Archive was ranked among the largest and most visited archives in the world. Its total storage capacity was then 28 GB.
> It runs on a Linux server with dual 20 core processors, 786GB of memory and 80+TB of NetApp NFS storage.
And they deliver.
> The main server is a Sun4/630MP-41 with (14-Feb-94) over 20GB GB archive disk space
https://web.archive.org/web/19961105014909/http://nic.funet....
ALthough it seems I remember wrong https://hyse.org/pdf/scaling-apache-handout.pdf
> a Dell 2650, with 2 2.4 Ghz Xeon processors, 12Gb of memory
but still, there was Merced there, it's just been so long ...
[0] https://www.funet.fi/pub/local/src/
6x 128G = 768G
As is 12x 64G
Seems in line with servers I see routinely
The NAT issues are well known, but resolved in a standard way. However, the intersection of {Features defined in RFCs} and {Features implemented in FTP Servers} is much smaller than the sizes of either set. Many useful things are implemented outside of the spec, and most of the spec is not implemented in servers.
It turns out that FTP has gone through some stages of specifications, dating back to 1971. TCP originated in 1974, according to Wikipedia that is.
The current version of TCP (RFC 793, 1981) predates the current version of FTP (RFC 959, 1985), and normality is restored.
> Until 1980, FTP ran on NCP, the predecessor of TCP/IP.
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I'm actually a bit surprised that they do also seem to still run an actual FTP server there as well.
FTP is more practical than a web browser. Midnight commander and Total commander have an integrated ftp browser.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbe...
Lot of stuff was rather interesting design, which we really have gotten away with how our current networks are build. Like multi and broadcasting for actual content.
In active mode the client connects to the server on port 21. It then issues a PORT command which tells the server which port on the client to connect to for data. The server connects to destination port on the client using port 20 as the source port.
In passive mode the client connects to the server on port 21 and issues the PASV command. The server chooses a random port for data and responds back to the client with a PORT command indicating this port. The client then connects to this destination port on the server using a random high port as the source port.
(my brother was an aminet maintainer at nic.funet.fi in the 90s :)
What other protocol does that?
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early network engineers were often rude and insulting. It was common to be berated about "vi or emacs" or other dense topic. Communication between engineers was often verbal commands or mild insults like this one.
Indeed; try suggesting any circuit-switched solution with Vint Cerf in the room and see what happens!
Archie, X.500, ftp, gopher, telnet, irc, mailing lists, USENET, WAIS, WWW (remember to use WWW clients), a caching WWW server for Funet members, Alex ("Global filesystem for all anonymous ftp sites with caching (experimental)")
You could telnet into the system with username info and use command-line clients for some of these services if you didn't have access at your home university.
I vaguely remember using an email-based service to access web pages: you sent the URL to an address and got a reply with the page contents rendered as text. That probably wasn't Funet but something else.
ftp.hornet.org for early demoscene downloads.
of course never forget ftp.simtel.net. My shareware apps I releases in the 90’s are still there somewhere :)
Unfortunately also university servers retire, and with them we lose the digital history they contain. Shout out to funet.fi and archive.org for taking good care of old files!
Btw there is also a (just as old) free domain hosting service: http://iki.fi
Better to be beholden to non-profit that has driven the same mission for long enough time.
Imagine an IT expert waking up from a coma they had been in since 1991 and seeing this.