Category Internet

End Of The Line For Demon Internet ‘Tenner A Month?’

Retrocosm 4 Comments

Back in 2010 I wrote about Demon Internet and their revolutionary ‘tenner a month’ Internet service.  Frighteningly another five years have subsequently passed and it would seem that finally the end of the legacy service may be nigh.

Since that original post the Demon Internet brand has in 2012 come under the ownership of the Vodafone Group.

This month, existing account holders have begun to receive e-mails and letters from Vodafone advising them that yet again there will be a change of ownership with possible cost implications and a suggestion that after two years all services may cease to exist.  You can read some reaction from users in the Demon Service Google Group.

A quick Google Search suggests that are still a surprising amount of ‘free’ Demon websites running, though many of them have seemingly changed little in the last 15 years or so though many through a mixture of longevity and content have been awarded strong page rank by Google.  I myself maintain a site with intentionally retro styling as a home page for my dial up BBS, Nostromo.

I trust should this change of service result in the ignominious death of many legacy websites that the Internet Archive will have grabbed snapshots of them over the years.  You can for instance view the various incarnations of my site over the years.  Here’s how it looked back in April 1997 when I was a fresher faced player of iD’s Quake.

The communications received from Vodafone advise that existing services are being passed to a company called intY LTD ‘an expert in cloud-based applications, products and services’ and in partnership with Namesco.  There are full details here.

This in turn links through to a ‘FAQ‘ the following part of which concerns me, ‘Namesco will be migrating email addresses and websites that sit under the demon.co.uk domain. You’ll be able to continue to use these for around two more years.’

This to me suggests that existing customers are looking at a two year shelf life for the their .demon.co.uk domains and e-mail addresses.  What happens then I’m not sure.  Having maintained my account for what is now 22 years I shall be very disappointed if there is no way of holding on to the fixed IP address that is included and the .demon.co.uk domain extension.

It would seem that another important part of Internet history is shortly to be dismantled and disregarded in this increasingly transient digital age.

Here’s a PDF of the e-mail received from Vodafone:-

Important Notice: Transfer of Demon Web Hosting and Domain products to intY Limited

 

@Retrochallenge 2012 – Under Construction

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An illness in the family has rather curtailed my retro activities this year.  Any grand projects are unlikely to reach fruition, however I’m still tinkering with odds and sods.

I finally got around to Telnet enabling my Nostromo BBS, which was previously dial-up only.  Trouble is I may now therefore actually get some visitors and that in turns means I ought to add some content.

I hadn’t realised, but my Broadband supplier at work, Demon, actually furnishes me with a static IP address so the process was very simple.  I had previously assumed it was a dynamically allocated address.  I also still have my original ‘tenner a month’ dial-up account with Demon, purely to retain the associated e-mail address.  Next year will mark twenty years since I first signed up for this account and it occurred to me it would appropriate to create a suitably retro-style website on the included web space.

So you can now visit the hand coded Nostromo BBS Website replete with snazzy background, marquee, page counter and other early 90’s Internet goodies.  Twenty years, I can’t believe it!

@retrochallenge – Changing Direction?

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Samsung PenMaster

I’ve managed to free up 7-8 MB of space on the PenMaster’s internal HDD without breaking anything.  This has allowed me to successfully install Internet Explorer 3.02.  Well I say successfully, although the package has installed, I was under the impression that it contained a TCP/IP stack and dialer software but this doesn’t appear to be the case.  I had a look around and found Trumpet Winsock which I remember using with the Amiga 1200 when I first connected to the Internet back in I believe 1991.  Funnily enough, the ISP I was using then, Demon Internet, are still hosting the file on their FTP server here.

I shall attempt to install this and see where it leads.  If I’m honest I’m not feeling the retro lurve for the Samsung, whether it’s because it’s not quite old enough or possibly because it hasn’t actually provided much of a challenge in terms of getting it working I’m not sure, most likely a combination of both.

I may therefore change direction and look at something else from my growing pile of gear.  I have a non-working IBM 5140 convertible which I may try to resurrect, it’s quite a unique machine on a number of levels so it would certainly be interesting to have it working.

Also it’s looking as though I’m going to have less free time this month than I’d hoped so fingers crossed I can get something else done.