|
Charles Oropallo's background growing up was in electronics. Charles was always fascinated by logic devices and computers. One of the fields he was trained in was telecommunications maintenance during his time in the United States Marine Corps in 1969.
In 1977 the Star Trek game on the Radio Shack TRS-80 sold him on it. He purchased one as soon as they were available.
It was never a huge leap that by November of 1977, Charles Oropallo authored and
implemented what, at that time, was referred to as an online Bulletin Board System (BBS). Charles called
it Access-80. The Access-80 BBS operated on his highly modified Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I,
Level II microcomputer. He had added additional memory to it and function keys. It operated from a downstairs room in his home in East Greenbush (Rensselaer County), NY. While Access-80 is long gone, Charles's daughter still lives there.
Charles's Access-80 BBS definitely wasn't the first such system put online. There were already a handful of
such systems online for public use on the entire planet
when he put up Access-80.
Charles Oropallo founded what would ultimately become CharlesWorks in June of 1998. Charles wanted to provide reliable and affordable hosting solutions for small business owners and operators. At
that time, Charles was only providing Internet connectivity
for several personal websites at very low speed.
Over time, Charles's desire to provide reliable (as well
as still being affordable) Internet solutions moved
CharlesWorks® into much more commercially oriented markets.
Charles still helps individuals get personal sites on
the web.
Let the CharlesWorks full time web staff get you out here onto the web with your own web
site today! Visit the CharlesWorks.com website for an affordable solution
coupled with what Charles's team believes is the best customer service in the field.
To get you started, CharlesWorks offers ..com,
.info, .name, .net, .org, and .us domain names with
full privacy for as low as $15.00 per year!
Call CharlesWorks today at 603-924-9867 or email Websites@CharlesWorks.com to see just how easy
it is for Charles's team to help you get started!
|
|
|
|
The original Access-80 on a Radio ShackTRS-80. Photo by Charles Oropallo. |
|
Charles Oropallo
wrote a host program in Z80 assembly
language and a bulletin board system
(BBS) program in BASIC that ran on this
TRS-80 system. The message handling program he
named "email" (and even though he was not the first to use it, Charles still very much wishes he had
registered the term email with the United States
Trademark and Patent office).
The purpose of Charles Oropallo's Access-80 BBS was to provide a personal
messaging and informational sharing on a public system for local computer
enthusiasts.
Access-80 was originally placed
online in East Greenbush (Rensselaer County), New York with
a Radio Shack 300 baud modem and home brewed auto
answering device. As a frame of
reference, today's telephone dial-up can
run as fast as 53,300 baud. At that time, there
were only a handful of such systems
available for anyone with computers and
modems to dial in to.
Shortly after, Access-80 was concurrently
placed online in Schenectady, New York, by a friend of Charles's.
In 1982, Charles Oropallo moved from the Rensselaer,
New York area to Nashua, New Hampshire,
and so did Access-80. Charles's original
Nashua Access-80 setup is shown above.
It was not long before it another Access-80 was
concurrently online in Londonderry by Carl Robertson, another friend of Charles's, as
well as Nashua.
Access-80 remained
online until it was retired in 1987. |
|
CharlesWorks can make your web
presence happen for you! A typical
small business web site is hosted
for only $19.99 per month.
There are other more robust packages
and products offered as well for our
larger clients.
Contact
us at 603-924-9867! |
|
|
