The panorama shot below was taken from Alcatraz Island. (Click for larger)

The “Metro” is a large warehouse space divided into three main partitioned areas. The first area has an enclosed space occupying roughly 60% of the width of the space. That enclosed area has a couple of single-office sized rooms (one of which is psychadelic painted with glow-in-the-dark stars) and a bathroom with a working shower in it.

The second partitioned area has a kitchen built in it, complete with counter space, a kitchen sink, a range, a dishwasher, and an “island” counter with electrical power and storage space. At the back of the second partition is another enclosed space with two small office-style rooms, another closed-sized bathroom, and a weird small unfinished alcove-like room (not photographed).

The third partitioned area is open warehouse space, with a small semi-wall dividing it from the two large roll-up garage doors in the back.

My photos do not include the front area’s enclosed rooms because they had dark painted walls and no light whatsoever. My attempts to photograph them did not result in anything of use. I’m also missing some of the “nook and cranny” rooms/spaces for the same reason. I think I captured the majority of the space fairly well though.

I also didn’t photograph the bathrooms in either site.

Photos of the Metro:

Green Industrial:
Green Industral site is a fairly standard office/warehouse combo. The front consists of two foyer rooms with tile floors. From there, there’s a standard single-office sized room, a strange “alcove room” (again!), a conference / presentation room, and then the warehouse. There are two small bathrooms as well, one of which I’m told can be converted to a shower instead at possibly no additional cost.

I photographed one of the two foyers, but not the other. (They’re roughly the same, save for the front door.) I also did not photograph the small alcove room or the bathrooms.

Photos of Green:

And, in no particular order, some answers to the questions I’ve received:

1. This modem uses Bell 103A modulation, in “Originate Mode” only. Unfortunately, that means you probably couldn’t have two Livermore Data Systems Model A modems talk to each other. The “Model C” seems to be the first one that also supported “Answer Mode” modulation.

2. This modem is solid state; it uses transistors (albeit early, metal canister ones.) It doesn’t have vacuum tubes in it. (Whew!) It functions exactly as I received it twenty years ago – I haven’t modified or repaired it in any way. Yes, I am as amazed as you are!

3. The host used in the video, as well as all the accounts, credentials, &etc, were set up in my lab specifically for testing the modem and were taken down the next day. Hence, I didn’t have to worry about obscuring my typing or login credentials, &etc. Thank you to all the concerned people out there who warned me that someone might be able to deduce what I was typing.

4. We didn’t do PPP or SLIP across dial-up modems prior to 9600 baud because the protocol overhead would saturate the line. In my mind, it doesn’t matter at which point in the communications path each layer of the OSI model gets peeled back, the data from the host still made it to the client. Dialing in to terminal servers (or directly into UNIX boxes or mainframes) is how “we did it back then.” I did subsequently get a very relaxed-protocol PPP connection to work through the modem, but it barely functioned. 56-byte pings took between 3000 and 5000 ms. DNS saturated the lines. TCP connections failed (handshake timeout) most of the time due to the latency. A browser simply wouldn’t load a page.

5. Yes, that’s a beer on the table behind the counter. Specifically, it’s a home-brewed clone of Sweetwater 420 IPA. If you like IPAs, Sweetwater makes a darned tasty one.

Thanks for all the comments, feedback, tweets, emails, &etc! I found the modem inspiring, and hoped others would too. More to come! My gmail address is also phreakmonkey

Cheers!
– K.C.
aka phreakmonkey

My pictures are below. You can also check out Kim’s photos on her Picasa Album

A coworker turned me on to this decaying textile mill in the middle of this West-side Atlanta Suburb.  I called up TK and we headed out there and took some photos.  Man, this place is decayed!  The main plant is (was?) two stories, but in many places the water damage from the leaking roof has caused both the roof and second floor to collapse onto the first.

The office section has a couple of rooms that are no longer indoors.   Anyhow, enjoy the photos!

Though it looks like the Kool-Aid Man had gone on a rampage just before I got there!

Here’s my photos from the trip:

Kim’s photos can be found at
http://picasaweb.google.com/nonfucious/NewYorkCityOctober2008