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

I still have my old Diamond SupraExpress 56e modem, which I was using until 2012 iirc when I finally moved onto off dialup onto ADSL. It got me great sub 80-100ms pings on TFC and CS servers and was reliable as hell.

The Dialup days in the UK during the latter stages of the 90's were amazing. Titles like Half Life/TFS/CS were emerging and developing their own fan bases, and Uk ISP's were an absolute clusterduck - all mostly offering 1hr connections. X-Stream were the pioneers in this, with companies like RedHotAnt following. The latter was hilarious as they had a database leak at one point, which led to gamers all swapping login details just to get their 1hr gaming fix. I recall my gaming clan all trying to login at once during evenings. I recall at one point sending my father through the roof as I rang up a sub £500 phonebill with NTL.

Watching the Internet grow up from the mid 90's was quite an experience that I'll never forget. Seeing the pr0n industry (as an example) dabble into video streaming was so interesting as it lead to many streaming sites that most folks take for granted today. It is astonishing to see what has been accomplished since the mid 90's with regards to how we utilise the internets. At the olde age of 40 (something) I often wonder what is around the corner...
 
Monkeynut said:
I remember needing to use Mr Blobby discs and Mp3 discs traded amongst the local computer club.
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Wow, now THAT's some serious nostalgia right there. I hadn't given a thought to the Blobby discs in almost a decade and now I'm right back in there with random discs I'd been given by people - Golden Games, Cappucino disc, and some random MP3 CD's from a time when it would haven forever to download an album :p
 
Yep, I'm 28 and had dial up. The AOL woman voice of "Welcome to AOL, you have.......Email" will haunt me forever I think. Also will never forget my mum shouting up the stairs "get off that computer I want to use the phone" whilst I played C&C RA2 online.
 
I think me and mum used to take advantage of those free sessions you would get on a Sunday afternoon (discs from a magazine I believe). And the obvious draw back of "get off the phone, I want to use the internet".

I definitely remember our first BB package; 0.5Mbps and it was ******* fast - remember downloading an Unreal demo in no time (several hours but compared to days/a week it was light years ahead).

The first song I ever downloaded was Len - Steal My Sunshine, only MP3 I had for a week so drove me slightly mad a few days in :o:p

Mak3R said:
Yep, I'm 28 and had dial up. The AOL woman voice of "Welcome to AOL, you have.......Email" will haunt me forever I think. Also will never forget my mum shouting up the stairs "get off that computer I want to use the phone" whilst I played C&C RA2 online.
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Oh God, AOL!! Those adverts!
 
Narj said:
I don't miss all the headaches trying to resolve IRQ conflicts back then. You just take it for granted that hardware will work these days. :p
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IRQ jumpers were better than early PNP
*shudders*

Although you never forget the fun of trying to get a multio IO card with 30 odd jumpers to work and give you that much desired bi-directional printer port, fast (16650) serial port and second IDE channel.
 
ants83 said:
I'm 34. I remember yahoo chat and all the chat rooms. Crazy days
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I used to go on there from college. I think they charged £1 an hour or something back then. Random chat on ICQ was entertaining - got talking to some cool people back then, some of whom I'm still in touch with now. :eek:

Ahh the good old days of abusing netsplits on IRC with eggdrops ;)
 
Quartz said:
1996, I think. In 2002 I moved to Luton and got 10 Mb cable internet from NTL.
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Think your dates are well off. ADSL definitely wasn't widely available until 2000 as is backed up by several links, including the register: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/08/29/bt_in_miracle_adsl_launch/ Most computers didn't even have USB ports for the stingray modem to be able to work in the mid 90s :D

Also, NTL didn't offer 10Mbit until 2005 :) - https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2332-ntl-releases-official-news-on-10mbps-service
 
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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Shocky-FM said:
Total annihilation was fun on dialup, got quite annoying then anyone needed to make a call.
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Used to play TA, AoE, NHL99 (I think) with mates via dialup. It actually worked pretty damn well. I remember I was really impressed with my Pace 56k modem when I got it. 5kB/sec goodness!
 
Been using QuakeNet/Irc on a daily basis since 1997 iirc to keep in touch with my gaming buddies and we're all still in touch today thanks to it. mIRC ftw!
 
Mak3R said:
"Welcome to AOL, you have.......Email"
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Oh wow, that's a blast from the past.

I remember when we upgraded to 64k, I was the envy of my friends. Seems crazy now that I'm sitting with Gigabit internet in a relatively short time. Still, glad I got to experience the early days of the internet.
 
Kainz said:
Been using QuakeNet/Irc on a daily basis since 1997 iirc to keep in touch with my gaming buddies and we're all still in touch today thanks to it. mIRC ftw!
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Did anyone ever actually pay for mIRC? I feel bad for the guy who wrote it because that must have been one of the most cracked pieces of software going at the time.
 
Narj said:
Used to play TA, AoE, NHL99 (I think) with mates via dialup. It actually worked pretty damn well. I remember I was really impressed with my Pace 56k modem when I got it. 5kB/sec goodness!
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Yeah, it was surprisingly playable from what I remember, terrible by today's standards I'm sure, but I had nothing better to compare it to back then. :)
 
Phemo said:
Think your dates are well off. ADSL definitely wasn't widely available until 2000 as is backed up by several links, including the register: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/08/29/bt_in_miracle_adsl_launch/
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I'm sure I had ADSL before I left my first employer in 98. I had to give back the lovely BT v32bis modems they had loaned me.

Also, NTL didn't offer 10Mbit until 2005 :) - https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2332-ntl-releases-official-news-on-10mbps-service
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Maybe it was 5 Mb. But I did live within a mile of their centre in Luton, so I may have been lucky. And I did kick up a fuss and walk round to complain when kids damaged their cabinet and they were tardy in fixing it.

Of course, it's all so long ago that my memory may well indeed be faulty.
 
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