Are you old enough to relate? The horrors of dial-up

Rroff said:
Can't say I've ever cherished a downloaded file - it was just a tedious necessity.



In hind sight that is probably an understatement - having mbit speed internet around a decade earlier would have driven hardware demand and other technology that would have given the country a serious edge and a lucrative long term as other countries bought or licensed from us, etc.
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Yup. Misinformed leaders, or apathetic, or just didn't care. I don't think anybody could have foreseen what the internet would become or the fact that everyone in the developed world would be touched by it. Country wide fibre in the late 80s would really have put the UK on top...

asim18 said:
Umm no. Just no.

Nothing horrific about dial up. Speed was relative to need. The huge advantage of early internet was that the proportion of intelligent people vs completely retarded people was about 100:1. Nowadays you have 1 intelligent internet user for every 1000 complete idiots. The internet is complete crap these days.

Back then the internet had a sort of entry test, in that users would have had an actual interest in it. Nowadays people are granted automatic access in fact people are forced to be online.

The real horror is the internet of today. 95 to 2002 was the golden age of the internet.
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I've drifted between being the 1 and the 1000 depending on mood and time of day. Still, a very valid point and in many ways that WAS the golden age although the internet today has so much more to offer. Just a lot of retards on it.
 
Haha not quite old enough for acoustic couplers but 56k was glorious when it came along. :) The BT ADSL stingray was the thing that really wowed me. No more teams of 5 friends downloading several disks each...
 
I too remember the unlimited internet with a disconnect every 2 hours... nothing worse than being 3 floors deep in a dungeon in UO and forgetting your time was up! By the time you managed to get back on, find a healer and get back to your (now decayed) corpse, most of your stuff was gone...
 
I don't think it was a horror - It was the latest technology - admittedly in this day and age it's seems stone age but we have to start somewhere - what will the youngsters in 30-40 years time be thinking of today's tech - Duh!!! -- glad we don't have to put those long oblong things against our ears just to talk to someone :) Having it implanted in my brain has made it so much easier along with the heads up display in my eyeball. - Also who would have thought that having a charger inserted in your bottom and every time you pass wind you get 4 hours charge. - Must have been dreadful for Mom and dad :rolleyes:
 
Here's the article I mentioned:

http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784

Incredible how foward thinking the top people at BT were at that time. They realised as early as 1974 that a copper wire network would be inadequate for the future.

Details how by 1990 BT had already built factories for producing parts for the fibre roll out, which were then broken up and sold to Fujitsu and HP. South Korea, HK and Japan lept ahead.

It's actually infuriating how short sighted the whole decision was. All because of dogma.
 
I recall connecting to BBS at 2400 baud rate back in the late 80s. Eventually getting to the dizzying heights of 14.4 > 28.8 > 33.6 and then 56k connecting to IRC, ftp, alt.binaries throughout the 90s. I was also fortunate enough to be on BTs ADSL home trial roll-out in 2000, which was hooked up to an freebsd box. That was a challenge getting the OS to recognise Alcatel's green stingray ADSL modem! However, 512kbps down and 56kbps up; it was astounding!
 
Dial up internet was just annoying ... using dial up when called out at 2am for work was hell, especially when you needed a vendor patch which you needed to download separately and then re-upload it once you'd downloaded it ...
 
I can remember going from 28.8 to 56k. What a great day! Seems like an age ago.. Also managed to convince mum to get a second line as I was constantly tying up her phone line. Great times.
I remember the 2 hour limit too. Trying to finish online games of AoE in under that time with my friend who turtles as hard as I do.
 
I experienced dial up in the late 90's. Yes it was slow but we had nothing really to compare it to at the time and was happy just to get on the web. Early 2000's got frustrating at uni with NTL and ADSL's slower speeds, so hello fiber :D
 
I remember my Grade 9 French teacher in high school gloating about his new ISDN line. I hated French but loved technology and we sort of bonded over the subject. He had a dual CPU Pentium machine and an ISDN line and I envied him.

I still remember the conversation.

"What's ISDN like?"
"It's like changing channels on a TV. It's so fast"
"Wow"

IIRC we were friends on ICQ, which predated MSN messenger and Skype, and sucked.

Mr. Shipton. The kids called him Mr ****pen. Clever. But mean.
 
Born in 89. Think we got out first pc when i was in year 5 or 6 soi was about 9. I remember logging to AOL and the womans voice talking to you. AOL chat rooms were good fun. The strange dial up noises. Only bring aloud on it after 9 because my dad generally took business calls up until then.
 
I remember I also remember using get right I think it was called which allowed downloads to be resumed if connection was lost which on dual up was often
 
Bidding on eBay at the last moment was a gamble on 56k sometimes it just froze. On line gaming like counter strike was interesting with 200ms pings which dropped to about 100ms with a bit of modem settings tweaking. The worst thing was downloading files took hours and if it cut out you had to start again. The 5p a minute peak and 1p a minute off peak meant you had to be careful.
 
Huntyz said:
Yeah I remember the days of dial up and i wish i could remove them from my memory as none of those memories are good :D

I used to wrap the modem in a towel so my parents couldn't hear i was going online as it was like 4p a min back in the day.

I remember trying to download a 20MB update for RainbowSix which took around 2 hours but internet explorer would keep failing the download so it took me about 5 hours to get it.

Downloading pictures was horrible and movies was a nono unless you left it downloading for several nights in a row.

In the end i went from 56k to 2Mbit and it blew my mind :D
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I had forgotten about the horror of failed downloads. No picking it up midway through, straight back to the beginning for you my friend.

I started out on a 56k modem, I kind of miss the routine required to get on the web back in the day. Don't get me wrong if I had to do it everyday after living with modern tech id go mad.

Our second pc (commodores etc aside) was out first internet ready one. Started out with AOL with its funky browser. Back in the day unlimited internet was incredibly expensive so dad got a package with 200 minutes a month free. After the first £400 phone bill he reconsidered :D.
 
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