Caveat Lector wrote:
And in the past, many DX clubs set up DX spotting repeaters on 2M -- some
with 200 members
Also 2M simplex
And prior to that folks gave a one ringer landline call to their DX buddies
as u sed.
An before the clusters, avid DXers subscribed to DX newsletters to "spot"
the DX
Ala The West Coast DX Bulletin by Hugh Cassidy WA6AUD
Or now a days The Daily DX.

Any difference between these and today's Packet Cluster other than wide
distribution ?????

No, but that's a big difference.

The newsletters are useful but they don't tell you specifically who's on
what frequency *now*. If your source of DX news is The Daily DX, you
still need to be able to copy to know whether the station on 21024
really is FT5XO as predicted in the news bulletin.

On cluster, you can rely on someone else's copying ability.

(true, you'll occasionally get screwed that way!)
--
Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View (Nashville), TN EM66
http://www.w9wi.com