The Search for Life at 300 Baud

by N1xis10t

In 2600 Magazine 38:3, a letter to the editor was featured in which a person named "HC" asked if anyone remembered a publication entitled Life at 300 Baud.

The editors said that they didn't find anything when searching for it online.

My interest was piqued after reading this exchange, and I set off to conduct my own search for this elusive publication.  It took several searches with several different search engines and variations in keywords, but I did end up finding two published items that may be what HC was remembering.

One is a full fledged magazine bearing the name of 300 Baud, and one is simply a magazine column, but it bears the full correct name of "Life at 300 Baud."

When I was looking for this publication, the first thing I did was run a simple search ("Life at 300 Baud") though my go-to search engine (DuckDuckGo).

Almost immediately, I found a web article that was discussing a magazine called 300 Baud.  I then checked the Internet Archive to see if this magazine was available, and much to my delight, I found the entire limited run.  I continued the search by putting my first search term in quotes to look for an exact match in DuckDuckGo, and also ran a search with the meta-search-engine Dogpile.

With these two searches, I found an obscure reference to an article in a column called "Life at 300 Baud," and also an interview with an investigative journalist who appeared to have written this article.  Interesting.

Next, I looked at Google Books, and found a couple more references to "Life at 300 Baud" articles.  Armed with some of the information from the interview, I decided to look for the magazine containing this column.  It looked like it was a magazine called ProFiles that was written for users of Kaypro computers.

I searched DuckDuckGo for "Kaypro users magazine profiles" (without the quotes), and found this magazine on the Internet Archive.  Sure enough, the "Life at 300 Baud" column is featured in many of the issues.  I did run more searches, but ultimately didn't find anything more.  With all the searching out of the way, I could now study these magazines closer.

The first publication that I found, 300 Baud, was a periodical about retro-computing that ran for three issues, starting in January 2010.  It had a good article selection about all sorts of cool stuff, from using the Internet with old computers to soldering without burning your fingers.

All three issues are available for free at this location on the Internet Archive: archive.org/details/300baudzine

The second publication that I found is more likely to be the one we are looking for.

"Life at 300 Baud" was a regular column in a 1980s computer journal called ProFiles: A Magazine for Kaypro Users.  "Life at 300 Baud" was written by the investigative journalist Brock Meeks, and can be found in most issues of the magazine, beginning with Volume 2, Number 3.

It makes for fun reading, with many of the articles exploring different facets of the old Internet, and providing interesting insights into different kinds of bulletin board systems.

A nice digital archive of the ProFiles magazine is available at: archive.org/details/kayproprofiles

I was intrigued by HC's missing publication, and when I dug a little deeper into the more musty corners of the Internet, I did manage to find a thing or two.  I do hope that one of these publications turns out to be what HC was looking for.  Even if this isn't the case, it sure was fun to conduct an in depth search like this, and I am happy to have found some interesting new reading material.

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