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

I remember we had an external 56k modem but it never got the 56k speed because it wasn’t v3 or whatever, it was always 33k.

Using x stream isp software that was 0800 on weekends so free, if you could actually connect that is. Other than that it was 1p a min after 6pm weekdays or 5p a min before 6pm good old days :)

The first song I ever downloaded was wake up by rage against the machine and I remember it taking about 50mins , even so I was amazed when I could listen to it after downloading. Then transferred via printer port to a 64mb Samsung yepp MP3 player. Wow how tech has moved on in less than 20yrs
 
I got in just as 14k was moving to 28k and then 33k with an upgraded firmware if you were on the right provider with a following wind.

Luck for me i'd just moved out and had my own phone line so could devote all the time I needed to obtain that download. I remember being blow away by my first game of Doom against a friend over the phone blew my mind, we were totally addicted for weeks with may hilarious matches on maps he was creating.
 
First got online in 1998. My evenings consisted of getting the 20m telephone extension reel out, winding it out down the stairs from my bedroom and into the living room where the phone socket was located. No-one could then use the phone all night of course lol.

Apart from one thing which I don't need to mention, I cant remember what else I used it for back then.

Used to buy boxed games (!) and would get various demos from magazine cover discs.

Oh yeah and that little bleepy tune you get when your modem connects lol.
 
Many milestones I enjoyed:
1 - Being the first of my friends to "get the internet".
2 - "Upgrading" to 56k - OMG it was amazing
3 - Wireplay dialup @ 1ppm and getting an amazing ping, much better than wanadoo, or whatever we were using.
4 - Being the first of my friends and the first in my TFC clan to get "Broadband" - A cable modem with a speed of 512k which gave me a ping of 80 when everyone else was still 200+ and getting flamed for being a "LPB". Thinking how fast it was and how amazing that speed could be achieved.

It was a simpler time. One I enjoyed more than now, because the internet became so toxic in the years following. Better when it was just us geeks....
 
My first experience of dialup was in 1997, when I was 16. I remember "accidentally" downloading some dialler software which, whilst furnishing me with a wealth of pornography, also connected to a phone number in Ghana, resulting in a £200+ phone bill. Needless to say, I lost my internet privileges after that and had to rely on discarded Fiesta magazines to quash my teenage frustrations. So yeah, dialup..
 
I was there and at the time it wasn't a horrible experience, it was cutting edge. People would come round the house to see the the Internet. Also when moving hose a couple of times I used an old pci modem to get a dial up connection while waiting for the broadband to be installed, most recently about 2007 I think.

Happy days ;)
 
mistersprinkles said:
I remember my Grade 9 French teacher in high school gloating about his new ISDN line.
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Ah, there was always that one teacher who was up on technology. Reminds me of one of my A-level Physics teachers, who used to love telling us all about his wireless home network. I found it quite interesting, but the general consensus was that it seemed a bit unnecessary, we couldn't really see the point of it. We just saw him as a bit of a bachelor who liked his gadgets, and probably had a bit too much time on his hands.

Around the same time (2003), on a trip to Boston I was amazed to see a Starbucks outlet with WiFi. Once again, the states just seemed so far ahead. Starbucks here didn't get it until 2009, and six years is an eon in technology terms.
 
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 never really thought of it that way but you make an incredibly valid point.
 
I used to get home from school or football training, load up the PC and grab a shower/bath while the modem was dialling into AOL. Will never miss the sound of dial up!

Played a lot of UO back then, and when I finally got NTL/Telewest is was like best thing since sliced bread!
 
I do remember the horrific tones of dial up, although i never really got into the internet before broadband was a thing so i missed a lot of the dial up download foibles.

Mate of mine is still on a 64k "broadband" connection, which has a wonderful habit of just dropping out if it's windy, or raining, or cold
 
I remember buying my first 56kbps modem and being really pleased at having the latest tech. I'd had to work to save up for it. I remember being super-****** that a laptop I had bought had a "WinModem" rather than an actual modem, meaning I couldn't use it with GNU/Linux. I remember pulling out the phone lead from the wall socket to put the modem lead in when I wanted to use the Internet. I remember telling friends they wouldn't be able to call me for a few hours that evening because I would be on the Internet. I remember I-beams glittering off the Tanhauser Gate. All these moments will be lost.
 
Malevolence said:
I can remember 14.4 here and before that 1200 modems were being used when I was working at Michelin
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On a tangent here but my parents left me in Stoke when I was 16 (1974) and moved back to Nigeria while I did my Michelin Apprenticeship.
If I wanted to ask them a question it would take 4 weeks for a reply, two weeks letter out, two weeks return.
However, once I had to ask a question that I needed an urgent answer to so I begged the Michelin to use their phone that dialled direct to the Port Harcourt Michelin where I was able to talk to my Dad live.
 
Fusion said:
Dial-up WAS horrendous. The transmission network was completely unsuited to the needs of the internet. I remember reading an interesting article about how Thatcher in 89/90 (I believe) had the opportunity to develop a country-wide fibre network, financed by the state, on the advice of BT. By the sounds of it, it would have propelled us to the top of the connectivity table, or very close to it, and given us a major headstart on other countries.

Seeing heavy state investment and "lack of competition" as anathema however, she decided against it, and we played catch up for a long time. As anyone remembers in the dial up days, we were some way behind the states and places like Sweden, with their Mbit+ connections.

Private initiative can be wonderful, but sometimes the state has to take the initiative and lead confidently. Electric vehicles and charging is another area where we're in danger of dropping behind, because we just don't think long term and don't like stumping up the cash.
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Sometimes...

It hasn't really benefited Sweden massively though. The UK waited until market forces made it more economically viable and our economy has certainly not suffered relative to the rest of Europe.
 
I think I've been through the full spectrum of dial up speeds, starting with my first job in 1986 where we used an acoustic coupler @1200bps (like the picture above) up to my current BT Ultrafast bb @ 300Mb/s

I used to battle for years using kermit to transfer clients data files and bug fixes over a 9600 modem which was frequently impractical, hence why I drove 40-50,000 miles a year. The arrival of 19200 modems, PC anywhere and the zip format, changed everything for me and resulted in my business millage tumbling to "barely" 20K a year.
 
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