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by numpad0 411 days ago
Bluetooth FTP was widely supported until ~2009. All Nokia phones and many flip phones had it. iPhone did not, AOSP technically did, but carrier phones often had it disabled, and it slowly disappeared.

Windows 11 still supports it, I think macOS too. Pairing is technically optional.
1 comments
ddingus 410 days ago
It does and I managed it recently. It was painful.

I had to pair, or at least I think I did. Was fetching a file. off a flip phone. Doing these things without "file" gets weird quick.

I also seem to recall an awesome Bluetooth control panel applet I used a few times in Windows XP.

At the time I had a pretty spiffy Moto flip phone. It could be the computer keyboard, handle audio play and record and more.

Pretty sure that all came from the phone driver. I do recall also using the computer in reverse the same way when the display was badly damaged. I could make phone calls, dialing with the computer and in general use the phone taped to the back of my laptop screen.

Today, it is simpler, and far less robust.

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numpad0 410 days ago
aw. it hurts my brain to think about those days somehow. An awesome panel must be BlueSoleil. There were Microsoft XP SP2 stack that were stable but featureless, Toshiba stack with (IIRC)SCMS-T DRM support, WIDCOMM stack that show up on search now but I had no experience with - apparently tied to specific dongles, and the IVT BlueSoleil stack with the orange sun floating against dark blue background.

BlueSoleil was by far the most feature complete, and, as far as my interests back then were concerned, required for Wiimote on Windows. It was (not really)available as trialware but interoperability wasn't guaranteed so you would have had to pull dongle lottery until you hit a product with reasonably stable build of BlueSoleil if you had in mind a specific task to do in Bluetooth.

Fun times... things do feel less robust these days. Software was much better tested back then.

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ddingus 409 days ago
Yeah that seems familiar. One night on business travel, I decided to just play with the setup and really thought highly of it all.

Then some years passed, I got a Blackberry Curve, then a Note 4 and by the time I looked back at Bluetooth. I HATED IT. Still do, though I am grudgingly working through basics, phone call, play audio, etc and the whole time looking at my still wire capable hardware thinking "not yet"

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