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-- Adapted & revised from the former website. - Internet history in Germany --
What was ISH?
(before a cable company used it as a name...)
The domains ish.de and ish.com are now used by the company of the same name operating in the cable network. Due to all sorts of old documents and links, I receive queries about this from time to time. However, as my mail server no longer accepts forwarded emails from these domains, here is a brief history.
After I had consolidated my computer contact in 1982 with the first courses and programmable pocket calculators from Sharp, a Sinclair ZX81 (self-soldered) and Texas Instruments TI/99A4, I operated “remote data transmission” = RDT for the first time in 1986. At that time I used a Commodore C128 and an acoustic coupler. The C128 was a real bargain at the time, costing around DM 1600. In addition to compatibility with the C64 and the more powerful 80-character C128, the advantage here was a floppy disk drive from which CP/M(a powerful professional operating system at the time) could be started.
This was used to operate an “on-demand” mailbox system as early as 1987. In other words, the system, with which emails (with other users of this mailbox), files (via ASCII) and messages on black boards could be exchanged, was switched online by verbal agreement. Now a name was needed. At the same time, costs for hardware, software, telephone charges, etc., which are no longer comprehensible today, were incurred to a not inconsiderable extent.
How did the name ISH come about?
Based on various American mailbox systems (BBS - Black Board System), which often referred to themselves as “information systems”, I was looking for an abbreviation that would do justice to the English usage and the German, who would rather know what it was about (service = a service, even if free of charge). The creation after some time in discussion with friends was “Info(rmations) Service Huelsmann”. This name was used for activities for many years from then on.
What is meant by “we”? Even though I personally owned the hardware and used the domains etc., at the time such projects could only be completed as a team. In this respect, the term “we” refers to the team.
In 1989, the system was already operational on an IBM-compatible Schneider PC (512KB RAM, with 20MB Seagate hard disk - prices were astronomical) as MagicBox (a German mailbox system, which later became MagicNET based on the software (commercial) Alphabox).
I became an Internet user in 1990. At that time, the usual services consisted of Internet news, email, UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy, file transfer) and sometimes IRC (Internet Relay Chat). Under a subdomain of the Subnetz e.V., I now operated the ISH on the Internet as a member, as a first step to gain experience myself. My email address at the time was root@ish.sub.org.
In 1991, we decided to make ISH accessible to interested parties not only as a mailbox in Magicnet, but also as a Usenet system. We applied for our own domains:
- ish.de , as we were a German system. This domain was applied for at the University of Dortmund, which performed this task before the creation of its own NIC.DE (registry).
- ish.com , for technical reasons, as there was still a dial-up connection to UUNET in New York at the time and we wanted to implement routing independently of ish.de. Even then, the network was not always without technical problems, as this old document on the connection of the domain ish.com shows. nic.ddn.mil was the international registry operated by the US military, which was later merged into Internic(www.internic.net). The DNS entries are also still available as old emails.
Ish.sub.org continued to operate for a transitional period, as evidenced by a business card from this time. This was common practice at the time, as “user meetings” were still held frequently.
At that time, there was a technically very high-quality Internet server in the house. An 80386 DX20 with 8MB Ram and 220MB hard disk (5.25″, double height, approx. 12.5KG, Siemens, SCSI - Hello Dietmar!), 8 later 16 serial ports, to which up to 4 modems were connected, and a few terminals. The operating system was XENIX (a UNIX derivative), which allowed effective multiuser/multitasking even before Windows. Here, too, the prices (for the Siemens Megastore hard disk alone) were astronomical.
The whole thing was housed in a “large tower case”, which in the previous generation triggered associations with a coal stove. Do such things still exist today?
It was very interesting that the largest standard power supply unit was already installed, but the Megafile required too much power. So it needed a two-stage start-up process - similar to a circular saw at 400V.
- on: Voltage collapses for motherboard, but hard disk starts up. 5 seconds.
- off: 1 second and immediately again
- on: now the hard disk was still running and all components were happy
In the early days of the discussion about the IN e.V., the computer was connected by links to unido and Wieske's crew. The weekly link to uunet.uu.net also existed for a while. All in all, interesting telephone costs were incurred.
The system with its gateway between mailbox networks and Usenet was already well established in 1991 and the domain ISH.* or the name of the MagicNET mailbox ISH could be found in various lists, e.g. here in Gator, in a link list ofGerman systems it can still be seen that other systems were connected to ISH. The MAP entries of the time (quasi system description and routing information in one) are still documented. Other names of my direct links from back then can be found today in Xing - such as Andreas Bäß, a later Denic CTO. We still offered our services free of charge, as a hobby, to people interested in the Internet - as can be seen in one of J. Richert's formerly popular lists. We are still talking about news, email and UUCP. There was no talk of Gopher or even the WWW at that time!
When the Internet became more popular and the question of a structure for private users arose, I was a member of IN e.V. very early on in 1992. The domain ish.de was managed as part of IN e.V. from this point onwards, while ish.com lay dormant. Evidence is an old pre-founding protocol.
I then sold the domain at the end of the general Internet frenzy in 2002 to an advertising agency that had proactively made me an offer.
If you would like to take a look at the old pages: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.ish.de
