The Ridiculous Journey Of The First Email From Space
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2024
- The first email sent from space is a common story dredged up by lazy publications on a slow news day, the story that in 1991 Astronauts on Atlantis send an email to Earth containing Terminator 2 references. The story usually stops there.
But, you might have noticed I'm a bit of a nerd and I wanted to find out exactly how this occurred, I've built some strange hacks to solve problems, and know that computer networking can frequently devolve into digital matroshka dolls with data inside other data packaged in different ways.
And the first E-Mail sent from space is exactly this kind of thing, with Digital data encoded into audio, encoded into a different kind of digital, wrapped into K Band radio etc and somehow eventually getting to the servers on Earth.
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"We've been trying to contact you about your space shuttle's extended warranty"
“There has been a recall after issues were found with your O-rings”
@@ryanhamstra49*Heavy Breathing*
@@ryanhamstra49 have you checked your carbon-carbon tiles lately? you could be entitled to compensation.
💀💀💀
Don't forget about the prince that left you his fortune.
That the first email didn't consist solely of "Hello, world!" was a massive missed opportunity.
Brilliant !
Agreed
Ha, nice.
"Hello, Earth!", would have been pretty iconic as well
@@mattbradbury1797
Hello, puny, weak humans,
You must kneel before Zod.
Have a nice day,
Zod
6:57 Just your typical CVS receipt. He purchased a single toothbrush.
But with the extended warranty option; that really adds to the scroll!
One of the more “long distance” phone calls I have answered was from the ISS.
Back in 2005, I was working at a Canadian Space Agency project in the high arctic as the camp Engineer. One of my tasks was keeping tabs on the equipment in the comms tent. At the time, we also had two Astronauts in camp working on various projects (Jeff Hoffman and Mario Runco). Anyhow, among the stuff we had in the comms tent was IP phones from various locations, including one from JSC.
The JSC phone rings, and the caller ID shows an internal number. I pick it up and the caller says “Hey, can I talk to Mario?” He was out and about, but I could probably get him on the radio. I reply “Sure, it will take a while to get him. Can I ask who’s calling and what it’s about?” “This is so-and-so on the ISS, and we’ve got a question about the Desitny window.”
To which I replied “Uhh, yeah, I’ll call him on the radio and see what I can do.”
Is your space station running? You better go and catch it.
"I answered a phone call from space" isn't something a lot of people could say about themselves. Great story! What was that destiny window, like a time frame for a certain experiment?
@@AccAkut1987destiny is one of the station modules, it has a window with a manual window shutter
@@AccAkut1987 the Destiny Lab on the ISS has a large optically pure? window in the Nadir (earth facing) side of the lab. The window also has power/data/cooling hookups and was designed so they could fly short duration earth imaging missions. Basically the camera setup would be flown to the station, bolted down to the window and hooked up, and remotely controlled from earth. Mario (the astronaut they were asking for) was the project lead for the window.
You have to say - it is fun to read "project lead for the window"- that is rocket science for you :D@@nonenowherebye
Scott, I am an older Computer Nerd from way back. The actual term for that type of “portable” computer was a “Lugable”.
That’s exactly what my dad called them when he worked at IBM and later Apple. Glad to hear it was a true term of art! 😄
FWIW, the original Mac thru the last Color Classic were quasi-luggable also - you could get an official carrying case that held the keyboard, mouse, and power cable as well as the main system unit, and the Mac had a carrying handle on the top of the case. I still have that original 128K Mac (since upgraded with a 2MB expansion clipped on to the CPU socket) and carrying case.
I did try to use my Compaq Portable II as a “laptop” a few times; detachable keyboard above the CRT. Not comfortable, but possible!
Yep. I remember that term used for Kaypros and Osbornes.
Come here to make or like this comment ❤️
Hey Scott, thanks for the shout-out to GEnie and the Science Fiction Roundtable. I had the privilege to start the SFRT and run it for the first 5 years it was around. I arranged the special deal for the Science Fiction Writers of America that got them all free accounts on GEnie. Were you actually a user, or just knew about it?
Bill Louden was a fun guy, and offered a lot of support to the SFRT (including letting us run ads in F&SF, Analog, etc.) We were the second most popular non-technical roundtable after the Genealogy one, and we hosted chats with a lot of amazing writers and actors (JMS included, as well as a lot of the folks from ST:TNG).
Never knew that GEIS was involved in that e-mail! GEIS and GEnie are pretty much a forgotten part of the pre-internet days, it was a pleasant surprise to hear it nearly 40 years later.
That Floppy disk flying though 😂. Fly safe
Undocking maneuver
@@MushookieMan I used to play Elite when I was a kid. The old one, on ZX Spectrum.
Now I am thinking, what did that docking port remind me of.
And it is indeed a floppy disk drive slot.
@@azgaroglyThey call it the "mail slot" in Elite: Dangerous, but I agree that a floppy slot is more appropriate.
My old PowerBook 540c back in the day had its floppy drive eject with such force, if it was on a desk with a smooth surface, the disk would fully eject, and slide a foot or two across the desk. (Possibly off the desk if you were close to the edge.) Most Mac drives would only eject the disk far enough out that you could grab it easily, not full escape velocity.
@AnonymousFreakYT Most PC 3.5" drives I've used would similarly launch the disk. As a kid, it was entertaining enough that I ended up breaking a drive just putting the floppy in and launching it out.
"When you don't have tons of other people clogging the airwaves".
Or when you don't have air, only waves.
Reminds me of stuff we used to do in ham radio. We'd shoot analog TV from a small plane to support Civil Air Patrol and ground-based SAR missions, and since the audio would have been useless anyway, we'd use it for Bell 202 + AX.25 in APRS format so we could send GPS or LORAN-C position data to let the ground station keep track of where we were. Those old AFSK modes are surprisingly robust.
But V.27ter was actually PSK... it was a later standard.
The password for that Mac on STS-43 was ANYSEES. As for your question, Scott, they started using the Thinkpads over the GriDs during the time of the Shuttle/Mir missions. The last Grid flew in April 1998 on STS-90. The first Thinkpad flew on STS-61 in December 1993 (on Windows 3.11) - so there was a great deal of overlap as most missions had multiple laptops of both types. They were also flying a Pansonic Solbourne portable workstation to be used with DTO-667 PILOT. The beloved Mac Portable flew on STS-41, STS-43 and STS-55. After that they went with a darker grey Macintosh Powerbook on several missions.
Thanks for the details! Where did you find them?
Not just “don’t have tons of other people clogging the WiFi airwaves” but also “direct line of sight with zero obstacles of any kind.”
Including water molecules absorbing the microwaves at ~2.4GHz
@@gerrycoll2560 You're saying that if we just get rid of all this damn air I can get wifi down the block from my house? Might be worth looking in to this.
@@johnladuke6475 Also would be great for a better reception to remove all the houses and the earth as well to avoid interference with reflections
@@miallo Let's do it! What's the Earth ever done for us anyway?
1:59 that looks like the terminal the marines used in Aliens!
Edit: holy crap it was haha!
Proving that 80s tech still looks more futuristic than 2020s tech.
Omigosh !! How awesome is that.
Normally I'd advise *against* commenting before watching the whole video, but then this moment wouldn't have happened 😅
The BBC iPlayer app is normally only available to IP addresses within the UK, but there is a Houston based IP that was whitelisted so that Tim Peake could watch the Rugby World Cup on the ISS.
FYI, we called those "luggable"
So, when was the first SMTP message transmitted from space? 🤔
You come up with some of the best obscure and unique things to talk about. Keep them coming.
Glad you mentioned the computers for the "sentry guns" from the "Aliens" movie.
The floppy disk floating away at 2:49 is hilarious 😂
3:20 I like how they had to duck tape it down to keep it from flouting away lol
Dude. It's not duck tape. Not even duct tape. Clearly space tape.
This is a blast from the past. I was a sysop of the IBM PC Roundtable on GEnie from about 1986 to 1991. I knew Bill Louden and attended a few GEnie conferences in Washington DC. The IBM PC Roundtable provided a good side income in those days, though most of our income was from soft porn downloads from the files section. Didn´t ARPANET email exist by the mid 1980s? I´d have to go back to some old archives to make sure.
Even back then siloed messaging services and network effects lock in were problems.
Email really is a special and unique system.
I worked for the company that had the computer and scientific equipment maintenance contract for Redstone/Marshall at the time. The grid was chosen specifically for the bubble memory storage (I found it interesting because previously I had worked on some experiments for the shuttle using the same modules). Anyway, there were lots of mail servers around at the time running on Sun workstations that used UUCP to transfer email, but not an organized thing, mainly in the same building or directorate (thicknet and vampire taps are so fun). About the same time I started running my own BBS specifically to be able to easily test the modems that had started proliferating at the time. The kludge to get it to Genie is not surprising.
Did you work for Cybex?
Scott, your next investigation piece: Which was longer? The Space Shuttle printer print outs or CVS Pharmacy receipts.
2:34 that's an IBM PC Convertible, I used to have one of these when I was a kid. Essentially, a PC/XT in a luggable form factor. 4.77 MHz 8088, 512Kb RAM, dual 3.5" floppy drives. Terrible monochrome non-backlit screen, and optional expansion boxes that clipped on the back, such as a printer, external CGA adapter, etc. Kinda wish I kept it, would be a collectible now!
It is kind of funny that I can probably recite fairly accurately the stats on my first computer and first laptop. Those were such monumental purchases!
Amazing Video!! Always impressed how you are able to research all of this and pack it into such a comprehensive video! 👍🙏🇩🇪👽
I worked at a contractor that had a piece of TDRSS. We all pronounced TDRSS 'TURDS'. It was a very large , very expensive government project, and I think there was some obvious pessimism going on about the project at the time (1980)
Scott, Thank you, your posts are always interesting.
Here in MExico bak in 1987, I worked at Apple in Mexico, I was in charge on setting up Appleink connection from Mexico to Cupertino. I wrote communication scripts, used old school modems and X25 protocols. Then vía X25 we connected to Pemex network (using phone lines - Pemex is the Mexican Oil Company). Pemex had a connection to TYMNET, that interfaced also to GEIS. Every step required a communication script. So we were sending email's and accessing Apple's knowledge library back in that time!!. I also did tech support and wrote the comm scripts for Chile, Colombia, Argentina and several other LA countries. Great report Scott !!, made me remember these old times!
sorry, Applelink. my keyboard is slower than my mind-hand interfase...
Mexico and back, are also bad for my hand..
"The email addresses weren't protected in any way" The most apple thing ever :D
30 years of B5
A largely unappreciated show. Still my favorite.
Babylon 5 was indeed a great show. I recently rewatched it in the remastered version and it remains a great story with great characters.
One can only hope that the reimagined B5 sees the light of day so more people learn about it.
It's still the best show I've ever watched.
Thanks for the video Scott - fascinating. I have linked your video on a related comment on LinkedIn as (conventional) aircraft COMMS is still using last century tech and the telecommunications industry, with its modern RF engineering, protocols and systems, is causing havoc in the airline community. Your video highlights the can do attitude and innovation of COMM engineers back in the day - something that is now needed closer to earth's surface. Slainte!
Wait, was this really first?
I remember the HAM Radio amateurs in Honolulu, Hawaii, had a packet radio connection to MIR. When MIR flew over you would hear the packet radio going kerchunk, kerchunk, kerchunk, as it switched between send and receive. They had it interfaced to e-mail. So it was possible to send and receive e-mails to MIR using their gateway.
I was there 1991-1994. I will have to ask them when that gateway was first set up. The local HAMS there talked to the cosmonauts via handi-talkie regularly. MIR usually did not respond to their shortwave receiver because when they were over populated areas too many people would try to talk to them. Hawaii was small enough and isolated enough they didn’t have that problem. They would often chat to people in Hawaii.
The local Hawaii HAM community had set up repeaters and packet radio connections across the state. I climbed Mauna Loa and spoke to my father in Texas from the edge of the North Pit of the summit crater, via a repeater on Haleakala to Honolulu and a phone patch. The Hams in Hawaii already had a lot of practice with packet radio. Adding Mir to their network was relatively straightforward.
I would have thought that the first e-mail (non-commercial) might have been part of the Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment (SAREX). When I was a teenager i was able to log in to a BBS on the Mir Space Station using ham radio (ax.25 packet). This was pretty mature technology by the late 1980s. But I can't find any reference to a packet system using SAREX.
I looked into packet radio from the SAREX missions that preceded STS-43 and couldn't find any references.
@@scottmanley Here's a great read about human spaceflight and HAM/SAREX etc. www.ariss.org/uploads/1/9/6/8/19681527/human_spaceflight_ham_radio---30_years_rev_h.pdf
@@scottmanley In those early days the hamradio experiments on the shuttle were voice and slow-scan TV. Packet radio service appeared later.
Of course hams had packet radio satellites before that, and were sending e-mail over them, but that is unrelated to the shuttle.
Wait, there was a BBS on Mir? Details!
@@0202pmurT Yes, there was!
At some time there was a radio with a TNC that had a mini-BBS.
When you google for "mir space station bbs" you find a couple of ancient webpages that refer to it.
"functionally equivalent to e-mail" is an interesting bit of hedging and raises another question: when was the first 'anatomically modern' (to borrow a term from anthropology) e-mail sent from space? That is, used TCP/IP, went to an SMTP server that sent with DNS/MX records for routing, etc. (Using 'anatomically modern' because email has obviously evolved even if the protocols are the same and most modern mail servers would probably reject those old emails for security reasons these days even if the protocol is technically backwards compatible.)
We used the joke that the Mac Portable was only useful as a counterweight when carrying an imagewriter.
I remember using FIDONet taking a week to send an email across town during this era lol
Hello Scott
13:53 glad to hear the Baud rate mentioned....it was important...once upon a time..
Cordialement,
If you understand the distinction between baud and BPS, you might be older than the internet.
@@HuntingTarg The first time around, he had it right, at 1200 symbols per second (baud) and 2400bps. But at that timestamp, he just called it a "2400 baud" modem like most people (mis)call it.
That orange screen is a plasma display.
Really ?
That explains why it was thin compared to CRT.
@@ralanham76 I cannot tell for sure, since the footage provided does not state the orange screen laptop model name/number. Still, it looks similar to what I saw on another YT channel: "Adrian's Digital Basement" about fixing a Samsung S5200 laptop with a plasma display and similar form factor.
Concur. The US Navy NNPTC gave them a trial run at a prototype testing facility in NY (that has since been shut down). They were simple and robust, and actually predate LCD graphic display technology - NNPTC was reluctant to transition away from electromechanical gagues because they were concerned about display malfunctions causing 'operator error' incidents. They were approved and mainstreamed into reactor control rooms about the year 2000.
That seems so strange to have to go through a modem analog signal with all that data bandwidth through TDRSS.
Scott, you have a way of making my day more interesting. 👍 Also the game Zaxxon should be brought back.
That laptop is lightweight in comparison to the Compaq computer I used when I was on call. It weighed 30 Lbs, and looked like a portable sewing machine. It was nicknamed Statans Sewing machine in fact. Good times :)
Ahh, I remember GEnie fondly.
I was lucky enough to be communicating via my state university's CDC Cyber network to all the colleges in the system in realtime chat as early as 1982. Those were the days!
Awesome little tidbits of space history it's fun when you go down these rabbit holes really enjoy these videos.
Around 1983 we had a GEIS account at work. We used it to mail (from Europe) to a US based client we had.
It indeed was expensive. Shortly thereafter we got a UUCP connection.
The GRiD Compass computer was the devil's own gift to sadists. My development group in Torrance, Ca (MAGIEC) had a set of five. No more than three were on the floor usable at any one time. They broke with surprising ease. And the OS on the machine had more bugs than a mangy dog. That was an incredible vacuum for Apple to step into. (We finally got source to the OS. Fixed enough bugs that we got the prototype network control software for DSCS satellites working well enough to show it's advantages over the prior methods.)
{o.o}
had to smile at the B5 reference. still love that show
Thanks so much for creating and sharing this informative and timely video. Great job. Keep it up. 😺
This is such a great story. Thank you Scott.
That's why I've been subbed for longer than I can remember. Epic talk, Scott :)
Wow this brings back a lot of memories of my Portable Mac and Applelink
This is so weird... all this talk about first e-mails in the mid-90s. We were emailing and messaging at NOSC on arpanet and milnet in the early 80s.
Indeed. nasa.gov was of course connected to ARPANET and could exchange e-mail with ease over UUCP from at least 1985. The batched nature of UUCP would make it a lot easier to implement, you didn't need to use TCP/IP and SMTP.
My favorite Shuttle video link was the Shoemaker-Levy 9 NASA broadcast - this included live streams from the Shuttle, NASA Mission Control and JPL, with sections including a live "whiteboard". I watched it at my University in Sweden (via MCAST) back in 1994. It wasn't the first MCAST live stream from the Shuttle but the SL9 broadcast was a BIG deal in the University world (worldwide), there was probably more viewers at peak than all the previous streams combined by at least an order of magnitude!
MCAST was/is a really nifty concept too, utilizing multicast distribution to "flood" out the video to (at least) most of the western technical universities -- the Internet still wasn't fast enough to handle lots of streams even at Universities so it was critically important each stream was only ever transmitted once over any given link, and the data got sent down any downstream link that was "subscribing" to that specific stream (MCAST was running on the core Cisco routers).
Lets just say there was a LOT of people missing from the early lectures the next day - it was a technical University after all. But I was told even the non-technical University in the same city had lots of people watching it, which mostly hadn't been the case for any of the earlier Shuttle MCAST streams.
The standard advertising in space. get your company's product to be visibly used. I think the Apollo cameras used on the moon spawned a great advertising campaign as well.
George RR Martin was also on GEnie. He was trying to sell a time travel idea called Doorways. Networks went with Sliders instead. I loved JMS' posts about Babylon 5. Good Disney fan group on there as well. I was lucky enough to be able to connect through work on a high speed 9.6 modem. MS-DOS on a Wang APC.
So cool - I love the "hardware meets software meets protocol" hacking solutions approaches such as this.
Given that Apple laptop weighed just shy of a metric ton, it would be funny to calculate the cost to send that thing up in the shuttle.
A whole video on pre internet (or current day non internet) network services would be cool, but there are probably other channels better targeted for that.
The Mac Portable was actually something of an "anti-laptop." Even those who could withstand its mass in their laps found that the Mac's CG was well to the rear of the device, encouraging the whole thing to flip right out of your lap. However, there was an incident where a user accidentally ran over their Mac Portable with a Jeep CJ and the unit still booted, only suffering a crack in the case. Perhaps a little too robust...
Space-nerdy and IT-nerdy at the same time?!? This is pretty awesome/creative engineering to make that convoluted system work. Very cool.
Also learned some IT history that I hadn’t known about.
Thanks for the video!
Thanks for this great snapshot of the early email on NASA. Thanks for all the digging you did to find the details. Let's hope we hear from other people who know other "secret" details.
very cool to understand how the tech side of the older tech worked
I think this may be my new favorite Scott Manley video
Looks like your everyday microservice architecture.
You might want to dig into the ham radio experiments in the 1980s. Some of our Pittsburgh L5 members were present in a lab at CMU, where I worked and watched a slow scan TV image sent over ham radio from the shuttle as it passed over.
I’m frustrated that I’m old enough to remember watching all of this evolve.
Very interesting and amusing Scott. A bit more technical detail on how their tcp/ip connections are routed these days would be of interest, but perhaps that isn't available.
OMG somebody else still remembers that JMS announced B5 on GENIE!! 😜
I do too! I remember on GEnie when it went from “The Show that Can’t be Named” to Babylon 5.
not only that, but lengthy story discussions, and JMS describing his triply encrypted script vaullt
Lugable seems to be the normal term in retro computer circles.
This is so good. Thank you!
I think it would be really interesting to make a more in depth video about the current ISS internet connection.
I've had the question of how it's all connected for a long time and I've never been able to find a good answer
Google it. You'll have your answer is a second.
Awesome episode! Thanks!
Oh, Scott! The Mac portable was a vast improvement over the original luggable, the Osborne One. :)
2:15 He even knows that is was on the Extended version of Aliens only. That's fandom.
What do you mean that Mac wasn't portable? It weighed 0 pounds!
I bet it weighed a lot during launch though!
That old mac "laptop" was more of a "luggable" as I found while working and travelling for Apple.
The story of all the conversions the data stream had to go through reminds me of my college days in the early 2000s. My roommates and I found that it was easier to send files to each other using AIM (sending it out through a series of external servers) than it was to keep shared folders over a LAN working together for more than a few minutes.
people would plap full typewriters on their laps lmao
so about that last part with the 600 meters..... that will change soon :D
great video :)
Great graphics, with easter eggs for the oldies!
Space computer networking is something I find very interesting and poorly documented. I found a document about the first ISS network. It consisted of about 5 ThinkPads running Windows NT with one being the "server" and the other the clients. For communication they used a wireless mesh network based on Proxim RangeLAN.
12:30 Unnecessary to point out that Clinton was sitting, we can see it. 😂
Back in the days this wasn't called a "portable" but a "transportable". 😀
Now I’m just envisioning a couple of Ubiquiti U6 Pro’s 3M taped to the outside of the space station…. Gotta love POE!!
Gezus. All those points of failure!!?!?
nice - didn't realize it was that technically challenging and bodged together like that. Had a 2400baud card modem in our Apple IIe back in the day...
GRiD laptops were both nerd sexy and bleeding edge in their day. I remember practically aching, I wanted one so bad. And then I got invited along for the ride when someone said, let’s stop in at Fremont-on the day the first PowerBooks rolled off the line. I never looked back. (Well, I couldn’t have if I wanted to, as GRiD was mostly commercially defunct as GRiD by then.)
Grid was purchased by AST who then sold it to Tandy.
I knew you were a good dude! Babylon 5 was epic!
However the way you say modem is driving me batty.
To think that it would be faster to simply dictate the email to their 'operator'... But as a proof of concept it was fantastic! I also 'digitized modem's audio' once, trying to connect an old ICL OPD (with a built-in 300/1200 modem) to a BBS using a GSM gateway ;-)
Seems like yesterday, thanks Scott!
Wow, I'm so amazed you also love Babylon 5 😎🙏🇩🇪
Always wondered how they were able to run such graphics at this time?! 😱
In the early seasons they used a NewTek Video Toaster running on an Amiga 2000. In fact, when the Babylon 5 pilot was in production the Amiga groups on GEnie we’re taking about it constantly.
If you want a taste of what early CGI was like, watch "The Last Starfighter" (1984). The CG sequences were done by the same group that worked on "Tron". For comparison, Babylon 5 sequences had more texturing, less polygons than "Toy Story."
I remember using a Data General/One (One of the first Laptops that wasn't a lugable) back in 1987 whilst on Work Experience from School taught myself to program in DBase III+ (which got me my first job in IT)
The only steps missing would've been if someone had to print the mail, fax it to another office where someone had to read it via telephone to someone else who would write it down and scan it.
I also wonder: If the servers expected duplex, what about the software on the "laptop"? Didn't it cry because there was no server response? Looking at FTP and other protocols there was always some kind of handshake and auth before. So did they simulate that too somehow on the shuttle? Or was the software used not the original Apple one?
Now I'm curious what the SSID is for the ISS.
1:25 The early "portable" computers were called "luggables" by the computer press. If you've ever seen an Osbourne-1 (size of a small sewing machine case) or the Kaypro machines (both early 1980s devices) you will know why. That Mac laptop was a lightweight in comparison.
Great video. The trials and tribulation of getting computers to talk to one another.
The best technical accomplishment story ever!
The fact that in 1998 they were able to communicate with users (including the president) on internet does not necessarily mean they were on internet as well.
Back in those days there were several competing mail networks (GEIS was only one of them, there was UUCP, BITNET and more) and to connect them together there were several sites that could gateway mail from one network to another, usually using the "sendmail" mail server that supported lots of protocols.
1998? Hotmail was 1996 not sure where you get your information from but the internet was kinda mostly establishing by 97 bbs services in the early 1980s but bbs was turning into modern internet by early 95 and originally networks where digital messages were established was mid/late 60s
@@NSPlayer Hotmail was an internet mail service, not the kind of mail service listed above. Those were mail services that predated internet. There was also FidoNet in the BBS world, it was not a professional service but one run by hobbyists.
What I mean was that there were interconnections between those different mail services and mail on the internet. Hotmail was just a user interface on internet mail.
Errr maybe 1988, but by 1998 it was all SMTP all the time. I barely encountered anything otherwise by then.
In 1988 ESnet was running 1.5Mbp/s using T1 by 1994 they were upgraded to T3 and 45Mbp/s, SPRINT fiber in 1996 brought 622Mbp/s. So the shuttles 50Mbp/s was crazy fast for the 80s into mid 90s
The Apple IIC actually had a handle built into it, so while it also was not "portable" in any modern sense of the word, I would still give it credit for being the first "luggable" Apple computer.
My parents were furious when I discovered online gaming via 56K dial-up modem playing Command and Conquer with my friend down the street. I didn't receive allowance for the longest time because of the effects on the phone-bill.