In 1980 and 1981, I participated in an unauthorized online discussion forum sneakily hosted on the Indiana University Wrubel Computing Center mainframes. The forum, and the application, was called “Note,” and was written in 1977 or 1978 by then eighth-grade graduate Greg Travis.

In 2003, the younger brother of a fellow participant unearthed some hard-copy printouts of forum activity dating to August 1980 and posted the transcripts, along with commentary from Note creator Greg Travis, to Something Awful.

Fellow Note veteran Eric Sinclair passed the link along to me, and I have been corresponding with Greg, Eric, and others from Note over the past week or so. Greg did not keep his code – written in assembly language, natch – and wishes it was still around.