I visted PCC on August 6th, 1973 when I was a Palo Alto High School Student, and used one of PCC'sASR-33 teletypes and dialer to conduct a *live on-line chat* with fellow PAUSD Student Sysop Greg Dolkas via a dial-up. This might qualify PCC as one of the very first "on-line chat cafes"! I saved that teletype printout, and have posted its image at http://www.bambi.net/bob/hp2000.jpg. PCC was incredibly cool. They had a PDP-8/e, a PDP-8/L, and 4 ASR-33's at the time. Public access for real people. And who could forget the Dragon! I went on to become one of the original members of the Homebrew Computer Club, meeting in Gordon French's garage, and built a working 12-bit computer out of about 100 TTL SSI/MSI chips. For the whole story please see my "Memoir of a Homebrew Computer Club Member" web page at http://www.bambi.net/bob/homebrew.html
Bob Lash |
