The earliest on-screen URL

I've heard that Basys was notoriously insecure, nothing was encrypted and it was very easy if you so wished to take a snoop of a terminal and see all the traffic in and out if it.

It could have been worse. A similar system was in use in the TVS newsroom in Southampton around 1990 alongside typewriters. Yes, typewriters.

I did ask a question about whether the news computers could send and receive messages with the news computers in Maidstone and the answer was yes they were connected using a private circuit but no mention was made of email to send or receive data from outside of TVS. Any idea if Meridian inherited the same system in 1993? There was also a modem number that news gatherers could use to drop off text based information whilst out and about. Dial-up services were more common than email with newspapers until the second half of the 1990s.

Most terminals were connected over RS-232 direct serial connections to terminal concentrators that then connected to the (mini?)computer that ran ENPS"]BASYS - though in later days an Ethernet option was also possible (I'm guessing using something like Telnet).

I don't think encryption was that common on serial connections in those days - a physical point-to-point physical connection was deemed reasonably secure. Obviously you could sit something across both TX and RX lines of the RS-232 ports and eavesdrop - but you'd need physical access. (And then it would be possible to capture a login and password)

Most regions had modems on their BASYS installs - so if you knew the phone number you could dial in and login with your normal login to update scripts, look at running orders etc. I had a Psion Series 5 and modem and was able to access BASYS very effectively with that (a neat little pocket way of accessing the newsroom)

Any earliest instances for:

CBBC
CITV
Saturday morning children's TV
Crimewatch
Anything on C4
Any schools programmes

I remember those long RS-232 connections. There's still a few around today mostly in industrial settings.

Back in the 1990s I designed and built several RS-232 transmission boosters that used two power transistors and were mounted on a PCB on the reverse side of a wallplate with a D connector on it. They worked a treat.

Here's a very early Childrens BBC website.



The programme websites were little more than a logo at the top with a load of text saying what was coming up on the show.

If you go back a page you can see a picture of an early email address for the big breakfast.

Even earlier, there were some experiments when radio stations broadcast a data download - usually a computer game or something similar.

Go back to page 5 of this thread Tony