Podcast episode profile for 50. By the modem light's red glare part 1
ericade.radio knows the chiptune and demoscene! We're the radio station playing all the best tunes from the most prominent, promising or trending artists in the scene. We also know about the artists and songs as well.
🎙 About the podcast
Flashback, tracks from the past
We have covered the demo scene since 2020, and play all the great chip tune music as well. Join us to hear tracked music combined with commentary from the geek-of-all-trades: DJ Daemon. He was once known once a Daemon in the Amigaworld, and brings you stories about Amiga, retrocomputing, C64, demos, the demo scene and all things nerdy in the retro world.
We play tracker music composed on Protracker, Screamtracker, Fasttracker and Impulsetracker. It's music composed on Amiga and the retro-PC. Genres such as Chiptune, Synthwave and Retro electro.
Track Details
🎙 Listen to Episode
50. By the modem light's red glare part 1
Flashback, tracks from the past
🎧 Playlist
- 00:00 LIVE – Time for another episode of Flashback – Tracks from the past
- 00:07 DJ Daemon speaks: In this episode we will teach you to connect to the network. Just set the serial speed to 9600 bps, connect the Data Circuit Terminating Equipment to the Data Terminal and make sure to set your terminal to 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit. It’s all about the Bulletin boards, the scene of the hobbyists, the criminals, the fear inducing headlines and the cyberpunks running through the phone network at 2400 baud.
- 00:39 Style – Ability
- 03:06 DJ Daemon speaks: Before the Internet, we connected over phone lines to each other. Sure, there were USENET and university networks back then. But we, the hobbyists, called each other computer’s and wrote intelligent texts to each other. At least we thought they were, back when we were teens. This meant, everyone could have their own system to let others call them and so we formed a big scene. The person running a system like that was called a Sysop, as in System operator and the system was called a Bulletin board system or BBS. I will call them boards throughout this program to not run out of oxygen. Think about it: you had to pay long distance telephone fees to call some boards and even if they were local, you paid by the minute.
- 04:05 Michiel van den Bos – March Of The Halflings
- 08:09 DJ Daemon speaks: The first electronic bulletin board went up in Chicago in 1978, and we got our first Swedish BBS the next year. It started slowly, as the home computing era had yet not begun and few people had access to modems, computers and even liked the idea of spending money on hourlong calls. But it did happen, if only so slowly.
- 08:42 Beehunter of Jazz – Apoplexy
- 11:00 DJ Daemon speaks: One technology that made the whole BBS-era possible was the modem. Sure, a modem is just something you use to send data over a telephone line. So? When Hayes released the “Smartmodem”, the whole thing took off. This unit was standalone but came with a set of commands to control them and soon all modems used the Hayes command set. Do you remember typing ATDT 7268265 to call that number. Yeah, that’s the most common command. This meant all computers and terminal program that supported it were allowed to play. Hop on in, the water is warm, was the message. Before that, finding the right combination of hardware and software held the whole revolution back.
- 11:00 DJ Daemon speaks.
- 12:04 Traven of Syndrome – Alone In The City
- 17:33 DJ Daemon speaks: This podcast talks retro computing from a Swedish perspective, so here’s Sweden The BBS-scene was sprawling during the 80s. I don’t know so much about it, as I started in the 90s, but Joacim Melin has written a lot about it. On his blog, you can read about how legendary people lite Jan Mickelin were active in the BBS-scene and part of creating the Swedish computer magazine called “Datormagazin”. In the beginning it was all Commodore, but soon expanded to Amiga and later other environments. Most BBSes were small, but some, like Permobas grew large. This board was sponsored by handicap equipment manufacturer Permobil and lasted until 1985 when Permobil cut the deal. The reason was that they felt most users on it were not handicapped.
- 18:38 Alex Menchi – Lightquest Theme
- 22:52 DJ Daemon speaks: In 1988, political activist and filmmaker Maj Wechselmann successfully sued Eskil Block over something he wrote on the Swedish board Kom-systemet. He accused her of being a traitor and a Soviet agent. This later led to the enactment of the “BBS-lagen” law 10 years later, that made “electronic bulletins” fall under the law and made prosecution of slander and defamation easier. This law also applies to the Internet. So, the new technology could be abused, and people were waking up to the dark sides of it.
- 23:38 ArchAngel – Eternal Dreams
- 26:12 DJ Daemon speaks: The 90s were upon us and the boards were being examined by mass media. The headlines warned us about the seedy underbelly of the computer networks even before the Internet was a thing. The terrorist’s or anarchist’s handbook was a braindead text that explained how to make bombs. It was very dangerous to follow as I came with advice such as “If you see bubbles forming, run for it!”. It was sometimes spread among us younglings as it was cool to have a copy, but I made the good choice of not having it on my board. Then there was piracy copied games, but we have talked about that in episode 35 already. Some said you could buy drugs, meet with criminals and then there was the neurotic fear of illegal pornography that made the whole scene look downright evil. But no one I’ve ever spoken to in the scene had seen any evidence of any of that. We all felt annoyed by the press misrepresenting the whole hobby. We were only in it for the discussions and the demos.
- 27:31 Henripekka Kallio and Matti Brockman – A Taste of Moonshine
- 31:03 DJ Daemon speaks: Anita Bondestam, who was the director of Swedish authority on data- and computer issues, Datainspektionen said something that rubbed us the wrong way. She compared modems and mopeds and noted that you should make sure the kids follow the laws, wear a helmet and so on. This way she indirectly compared illegally modified mopeds with our boards. “Or as we say here in Datainspektionens: if you buy a modem, you get into trouble”. It sounds “better” in Swedish, where it rhymes. Her views on juvenile delinquency as the direct effect of using modems was very bewildering to us.
- 32:06 Morgan – Angel’s Deep Shadow
- 38:25 DJ Daemon speaks: Some other day I will talk more about the 90s and the end of the era. But you know what happened. It was not aliens, it was the Internet. Sorry, mr Tsoukalos.
- 38:40 Andreas Viklund of KFMF – Traxah symphonee
- 41:52 DJ Daemon speaks.
- 42:43 DRAX – Back 2 B4 Tomorrow
- 46:16 DJ Daemon speaks.
- 47:12 Astro boy of Pearl – Eclipse
- 51:31 DJ Daemon speaks.
- 52:08 Bacter vs Saga musix – Whiskey Drops
- 56:13 DJ Daemon speaks.
- 56:35 LIVE – Celebrating over 30 years of tracked music
- 56:41 Boomerang – Child of Light
🎤 Production Notes
I wanted to create a special series about the BBS-scene a long time. And I wanted to tell it from my own memories or from other BBS-sysops in Sweden. This was realized in the autumn of 2021 in a three part miniseries. The first part is about the early days until the early 90s. The second covers the 90s until the sunset era. The third talks about the desert wandering years until today.Colophone:"By the rockets red glare" is a stanza from the National Anthem of the United States of America.
📝 Transcript
Time for another episode of Flashback. Tracks from the past. In this episode we'll teach you to connect to the network. Just set the serial speed to 9600 bps. Connect the data circuit terminating equipment to the data terminal and make sure to set your terminal to 8 bits, no parity and one stop it. It's all about the bulletin boards, the scene of hobbyists, the criminals,the fear-inducing headlines and the cyberpunks running through the phone network at 2400 baud.
style and ability. Before the internet, we connected over phone lines to each other. Sure, there were Usenet and University networks back then. But we, the hobbyists, called each other's computers and wrote intelligent texts to each other. At least we thought they were, back when we were teens. This meant that everyone could have their own system and let others call them, and so we formed a big scene.The person running a system like that was called a Sysop, as in system operator, and the system was called a Bulletin Board System, or BBS. I will call them boards throughout this program in order not to run out of oxygen! Think about it, you had to pay long distance telephone fees to call some boards, and even if they were local, you paid by the minute. Not exactly how the internet works, right?
Michael Fandenbos, March of the Halflings The first electronic bulletin board went up in Chicago 1978 and we got our first Swedish BBS the very next year. It started slowly as the home computing era had not yet begun and few people had access to modems, computers and even liked the idea of spending money on hour long calls.it did happen, if only so slowly.
by B-Hunter of Jazz, classic Amiga 4-channel mod tracker and module. One technology that made the whole BBS era possible was the modem. Sure, a modem is just something to use to send data over the telephone line. So? Well, when Haze released the smart modem, the whole thing just took off.This unit was a standalone thing, but came with a set of commands to control them, and soon all modems used the Haze command set. You know, do you remember ATDT7268265 to call that number? Yeah, that's the most common command. This meant that computers and terminal programs that supported it were allowed to play. Hop on in, the water is warm was the message.Before that, finding the right combination of hardware and software... Well, that held the whole revolution back.
raven of syndrome, alone in the city. This podcast talks retocomputing from a Swedish perspective. So here is Sweden. The BBS scene was sprawling during the 80s. I don't know so much about it as I started in the 90s, but Joakim Melin has written a lot about it. On his blog, you can read about how legendary people like Jan Mikkelin were active in the BBS scene.and also part of creating the Swedish computer magazine called Datormagasin. In the beginning it was all Commodore, but soon expanded to Amiga and later other environments. Most VBSs were small, but some, like Permobas, grew large. This board was sponsored by handicap equipment manufacturer Permobil, and it lasted until 1985,when Paramovil cut the deal. The reason was that they felt most users on it were not handicapped.
In 1988, political activist and filmmaker Maj Wexelman successfully sued Eskild Block over something he wrote on the Swedish board Komsystemet. He accused her of being a traitor and a Soviet agent. This later led to the enactment of the Swedish BBS-lagen. Ten years later,It made electronic bulletins fall under the law and made prosecution of slander and defamation easier. This law also applies to the internet today. So the new technology could be abused and people were waking up to the dark sides of it.
Archangel Eternal Dreams The 90s were upon us and the boards were being examined by mass media. The headlines warned us about the seedy underbelly of the computer networks even before internet was a thing. The Terrorists or Anarchist Handbook was a braindead text that explained how to make bombs among other things. It was very dangerous to follow itas it came with advice such as if you see bubbles forming, run for it! It was sometimes spread among us junglings as it was cool to have a copy, but I made the good choice of not having it on my board. Then there were the piracy copied games, but we have talked about that in episode 35 already.Some said you could buy drugs, meet with criminals and then there were the neurotic fear of illegal pornography that made the whole scene look downright evil. But no one I ever spoken to on the whole scene have seen evidence of any of that. We felt annoyed by the press misrepresenting the whole hobby. We were only in it for the discussions and the demos.
Andri Pekka Kallio and Matti Brockman A Taste of Moonshine Seems a very sweet and nice title until you think about what moonshine actually means. we have Anita Bondestam She was the director of Swedish Authority on Data and Computer Issues, Datainspektionen. And she says something that rubbed us the wrong way. She compared modems and mopeds and...She noted that you should make sure that kids follow laws, wear a helmet and so on. This way she indirectly compared illegally modified mopeds with our boards. Or as we say it here in Datainspektionen, if you buy a modem, you get into trouble. Well, ok, it sounds better in Swedish where it rhymes.Her views on juvenile delinquency as the direct effect of using modems is something that was very bewildering to us.
how or why it began but everyChaos, feel its devastation.Only a small handful of our ancestors survived to start rebuilding the isolated outposts we now maintain in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. The year is now 2306. A small member of hope is all we have to pray to in this accursed darkness. He is a single man, an actual survivor of the war, an immortal.He wanders the blasted land ridden by planets and the horrific evils unleashed so long ago.
The TravelerErik Zalitis
Morgan, angels deep shadow. Some other day I will talk more about the 90s and the end of the era. But you know what happened? It was not aliens, it was internet. Sorry Mr. Tousakalis.
Andreas Viklund of KFMF tracks a symphony. We have something good coming up right now. We are working on a big database about all artists that we play. It's in a beta state but actually available on our webpage. If you go to erikade.radioOr if you go to the YouTube and Twitch channels you can see information about artists when they were last played and also cool stuff like the statistics of played songs and in the future you can actually get a card. Well, you click on a link and then you get more information about everything. Today we have a function that you can click on the link and see the artists data on Demo Zoo and the poet andtheir homepages or Bandcamp.
The wrecks back to before tomorrow Some bad news I'm afraid. Yeah, there has to be that as well There's a demo party running today in Finland called Jumalauta 21 It's on location and also on the web by you can watch the twitch channel basically We have been unable to reach them and they have not responded when we have tried to so I don't know if we're gonna havethe possibility to make an episode about it, but I will see if I can get some help from them, if not, well, there are other demo parties out there. And we will also start making portraits of artists on this podcast in the future. We have Tech Man today and also Awesome, plus Dr. Awesome and Alistair Brimble, but there are many artists that really, really deserves to be heard and spoken about.
Astro Boy of Pearl Eclipse. We are getting closer to episode 52. This is episode 50 by the way, because it will run more or less, well, close to one year since the station started on the 13th of September 2020. That horrible year it was. We started broadcasting and we've been doing that since. I don't know, we're gonna make some cool thing about it.But anyway, this is DJ Demon here thanking you for listening to this podcast. Flashback tracks from the past.
The Ericade Radio Network, celebrating over 30 years of tracked music.
Play History
- 🕘 2026-06-08 17:00:06
- 🕘 2026-06-03 10:00:02
- 🕘 2026-05-29 10:00:06
About the artist Flashback View all tracks ›
"Flashback, tracks from the past" is the current name of the podcast. Now with tracked music from nearly all platforms (including Amiga, Atari, PC). We also speak about the retro past, present the artists, talk about old games and review demo parties.
🎧 29,167 plays on ericade.radio
🎙 The people behind the podcast
He got his Commodore 64 in 1989 and his first Amiga in 1990. A huge fan of tracker music and have had a long standing dream to create a radio show playing that kind of music. In 2020, that dream came true and in december Amiga Flashback started as a podcast. It was later renamed Flashback, tracks from the past and here we are.
He is also an orga for Swedish demo party Edison and a total retro nerd.
He was actually a listener from the time of the first ericade-station in the 00s. He came back as a listener in 2020, when the station restarted. Later he voluntered to build the new website of the station and also joined as a cohost of the podcast. He runs his own site called the Retro spirit.
Fellow retro geek and creator of great music on his daw.
He describes himself like this: "Pure 8-bit chiptunes! All Tekmann music are solely made on Gameboy units modded to perfection... No computer producing just pure chiptune bliss ;)".
A true retro geek and sysop from the 90s. He lives with his family in Sweden and enjoys sharing his passion for retro computing and music. He is sysop for Swedish BBS "This old cabin".
Created a report about Impulsetracker for us in 2022. Also voiced our messages for christmas 2022 in co-operation with the Retro spirit.
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The home of retro computing and retro gaming music. Streaming 24/7 with shows and podcasts about retro computing, retro gaming, demo scene and all things nerdy in the retro world.