Just wanted to know if anyone here was signed up, if anyone has personal histories to share, and so forth. Apparently in addition to SSH and webmail they host gopher material. Given gopher is very terminal friendly I would think it would be at least somewhat popular with retro enthusiasts wanting to connect their hardware.
Still poking around with the account i’ve gotten.
Oh wow. I’ve had an SDF account for more than a decade. I always have a terminal open to it.
I really enjoy some of the AnonRadio shows and like going into their COM MODE real time chat thing when the shows are on and chatting with other listeners.
Looks like I signed up at SDF in 2013 - I think I was looking for an email account, rather than the services offered, but I must already have been aware of them. But more recently, in 2017 as it turns out, I started using mastodon, and chose sdf’s server as fitting my kind of theme.
Yup, I use the email too when I want to be a bit more anonymous.
I had been using their Gnu Social feed as well, then it disappeared when they started running Mastodon, and I got on Masto right away.
I just like being on the server and having access to a command line. And when you ARE on SDF, there is only ONE term to use, and that is Cool Retro Term (CRT). See attached image of a COM MODE session.
I’ve been using SDF for occasional shell access for years, mostly to test my Telnet client for DOS. Their one-time ARPA membership is very reasonable.
Fun fact - one of the AT&T 3B2 systems that ran SDF for a while sometimes makes appearances at vintage computer shows. Stephen Jones (the one from the Wiki article on SDF) works at Living Computers:Museum+Labs in Seattle and is also a big fan of the IBM PCjr. (Which is how I became acquainted with him, but that’s a different story.)
