@darius Every piece of BBS software I used in the 90s supported this as one of the data transfer options alongside XMODEM/ZMODEM/etc and I always stared baffled trying to figure out what it was. To make matters more confusing the program would often accompany it by an icon of Kermit the Frog

@darius one of my favourite kermit references is in the movie Hackers, where there is a closeup of a character typing while hacking and they clearly type "kermit" :)

@darius

<gezer>Z-modem forever!</gezer>

@darius I seem to recall that not only was it efficient, but that it sometimes worked when other methods wouldn't due to noisy connections. But it's been a while...

@darius I really hope they used rainbow connectors

@darius love this detail:

> The correctness of the Kermit protocol has been verified with formal methods.

good times

@darius Kermit was cool. Though because I frequented BBSes with sane modem settings, Z-modem was cooler.

@darius [reads the hilarious backronym] ah you mean the KL10 Error-Free Reciprocal Microprocessor Interchange over TTY lines

@darius Kermit is still relevant! You may not have Internet but if you can open a terminal to a host, you can transfer files to it.

@darius Well THAT fired off some long-sleeping neurons. Used to use Kermit daily for moving stuff between various PC's, Mini and micro computers. Damn I'm old 😂.

@darius We used it in undergrad because we didn't have Ethernet in the dorms yet, just serial concentrators.

That said, I always preferred Zmodem. Great for resuming interrupted transfers.

@darius particularly it ran on everything; I used to use it to send files from turbodos (CP/M clone, ish) to MIT Multics and TOPS-20 systems

@darius *sighs, bookmarks for special interest reading later*

@darius oh crap, I'm old.

@darius I hate that I'm old enough to have known what that was.

@darius it's weird to me that anyone would discover this common thing that nobody used in bbs modem comms but was always available.

Way cool.

@darius Note that there were several popular protocols, then, for data transfer over dial-up lines. But Kermit definitely had a devoted following.

@darius Ah the days of Kermit, Z-modem, y-modem transfers.

@darius my first internet access was through my mom’s grad-student account at Eastern Kentucky University, where the IT budget was not large. in 1994-95, we couldn’t browse the Web yet, but we could use Kermit to talk to their VAX for email, telnet, and gophering stuff.