This toy recreates what calling ORION -- the Ozarks Regional Information Online Network, the Springfield-Greene County Library's free community network (1994–2001) -- was like. It stands on the work of people who saved this history and these sounds.
History & text
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine -- for keeping ORION's web pages (1995–2002). The 1997 Lynx pages are ORION's own pages from those captures. web.archive.org
Springfield-Greene County Library District -- for building ORION, and for local newspaper access through its Newspapers.com partnership.
Springfield News-Leader -- the 1994 main menu comes from its April 17, 1994 launch coverage.
The Ozarks Internet Users' Group -- its 1997 "Five Major Areas of ORION" guide supplied the Lynx Options screen and jump words.
ORION's staff, board, volunteers and users, 1994–2001.
Sounds
Modem connection: "Dial up modem noises" by William Termini, Wikimedia Commons, public domain. commons.wikimedia.org
1994 PC startup: "computerstartup.wav" by guitarguy1985, Freesound, CC0 (fan noise reduced). freesound.org
Measured, not used: the hard-drive and beep sounds were tuned by measuring "Sounds of the 90's - old computer and printer starting up" (DounutCereal, YouTube) and "Old 90's Computer Startup Sounds" (SummerStar Audio, YouTube). No audio from those videos is in this page.
Dial tone, touch tones, busy signal, fan, drive clicks and beeps are synthesized in your browser.
Software & type
Lynx, the text web browser, rendered the archived pages. VT323 font by Peter Hull (SIL Open Font License, via Google Fonts).
What's real and what isn't
Real: the 1994 main menu, the 864-6100 number, the host names, the guest login, time limits, the 1997 web pages, the Lynx Options screen, the IRC rules and many ORION policies. Invented: the "demo" account, mail, newsgroup posts, IRC chatter and users, submenu text in 1994, the BIOS and hard-drive contents. Phone numbers are historical and not dialable. Remember ORION? We'd love to hear your story.