Maryland Public Libraries got a jump on bridging what became known as "the digital divide" back in 1994 when they
introduced toll-free dial-up for Maryland residents. Just as you need special purpose software today to dial into the Internet
and a web browser see what's out there, back in the early to mid '90s you needed three types of special purpose software
to accomplish that era's equivalent. First you needed a dialer, second you needed a terminal emulator and third you needed
a browser that you could use through your terminal emulator. This section
describes how you can still dial into the Internet toll-free in Maryland, and view the Internet via a VT100 emulator.
Once you get dialed in, the Sailor Project will provide you with a web
browser called Lynx which can be viewed through your VT100
emulator. Click here to be taken to our Lynx Help pages.
For those of you to whom the terms VT100, terminal emulator and Lynx are new, be advised we are talking about text-based
access to the Internet. No photos, colors or sounds will be "displayed." This isn't for everyone, but many people
apparently prefer text-only at times according to our statistics. So, give it a try. It's sort of like the
difference between B&W and Color TV.
NOTICE:
Effective July 1, 2006 Sailor VT100
dial-up service, which supports the
Sailor Guest Account, featuring the Lynx browser for web access,
will be discontinued. At
that time Sailor Dial-Up services will be outsourced to a private
company. Private dial-up service providers do not provide "text mode"
VT100 terminal server access to the Internet. As a result of the
outsourcing, the
VT100 terminal based Sailor Guest Account and the Sailor Lynx browser
will no
longer be available.
Here's a list of our help pages for VT100 access.