Hacker News: pheller

New comment by pheller in "Claude Opus 4.8"

pheller — Thu, 28 May 2026 22:17:11 +0000

I'm getting this near constantly even after toggling to a different model and compacting. Ugh indeed.

New comment by pheller in "Dialtone – AOL 3.0 Server"

pheller — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 18:08:54 +0000

Also all the Prodigy Reloaded implementation is open sourced here : https://github.com/ProdigyReloaded/delivery-system

The reverse engineered client side programs from the various prodigy caches will be shared I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

New comment by pheller in "Dialtone – AOL 3.0 Server"

pheller — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 09:56:20 +0000

See https://www.prodigyreloaded.com - getting closer to public alpha.

New comment by pheller in "Commodore 64 Ultimate"

pheller — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 19:36:35 +0000

That display with a custom C= 1702 bezel would be great, though perhaps 15-17" for a better aesthetic match to the C= 64 chassis.

New comment by pheller in "Commodore 64 Ultimate"

pheller — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 19:32:11 +0000

You can always print up one of the remastered C64 Users / Programmers Reference Guides on Lulu. See here: https://pickledlight.blogspot.com/p/commodore-64-guides.html

It's my hope they brought the individual who did this work in to help make the minimum changes necessary to accurately document the differences. These recreations are really quite nice.

New comment by pheller in "Tell HN: John Friel my father, internet pioneer and creator of QModem, has died"

pheller — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:31:54 +0000

I too was one of the Many who used Qmodem back in the day, and still do now on vintage stuff like bwann mentioned.

I had opportunity to work with John on a small consulting thing when I started and ISP back in the mid 90s, and I recall him being an incredibly bright and affable guy.

My deepest condolences to the family.

New comment by pheller in "Ward Christensen (of BBS and XMODEM fame) has died"

pheller — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 15:59:56 +0000

At the ONE BBSCON 1994 keynote and conference opening, there was an exercise where all sysops stood, and those running a BBS for less than a year sat down, then less than 2, and so on - until only Ward Christensen was left standing. I recall briefly meeting him, that he was humble, yet very proud of what BBSes had become. May he rest in peace.

New comment by pheller in "BBS: The Documentary (2005)"

pheller — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 07:07:19 +0000

Working on that… see tbbs.org and the link to the discord…

New comment by pheller in "What we can learn from vintage computing"

pheller — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 02:21:43 +0000

I hope the Computer History Museum will consider an interactive exhibit of early online services someday when the Prodigy, AOL, CompuServe, and other service recreations are more complete.

New comment by pheller in "Rescuing the Compuserve Collection"

pheller — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 19:12:52 +0000

It should work with the very oldest Mac client, which I'll test just as soon as I find a 68k emulator with serial/modem emulation.

New comment by pheller in "Rescuing the Compuserve Collection"

pheller — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 03:21:15 +0000

See the links on the reply above - I hope to have an accessible Prodigy service by late this Summer!

New comment by pheller in "Rescuing the Compuserve Collection"

pheller — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 03:19:10 +0000

I’ve spent about 3 years looking for it as part of the Prodigy Preservation Project, and I have found a substantial amount of archived corporate email and documentation surrounding the development of the service. Not even close to the volume they have here, though!

If you’re interested to read about it, I have been working on reverse engineering Prodigy. More detail at the following two links…

https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/2921/rev...

https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/3064/rev...