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

I remember downloading the demo of Wolfenstein 3D off a BBS server back in like 1992, 650KB and took quarter of an hour haha.

Random fact, with ADSL you can download a file from a server on the opposite side of the planet faster than you can copy it off a floppy disk in your machine.
 
MassiveJim said:
I remember trying different 56k modems to try and get the connection speed up from 46.7 to 48 :D
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When 56k first came out there were actually two standards for it (KFlex and X2) if your modem was a different standard to your ISP's then speed would suffer, in the end the V90 spec was brought out merging the two which sorted everything.
 
Most of my everquest days was on a 56.6k V90 modem.

I used to use 2 ISPs. One of them (cant remember the name) was unlimited in the evenings (post 6pm I think) and the other (Lineone if I remember)was unlimited all of the time but it had a 2 hour cut off point. This made raiding and camping MOBs interesting.

I think my download speed was around 4 to 5 kb/s.

The most painful experience I ever had on it was trying to download the Phantom Menace trailer (which was about 20 megs) from an overloaded server on a crap connection. It took me most of the day!.
 
It was seeing Yahoo chat on a friends PC from Special Reserve (remember them) that made me desperate to get Internet. Being able to speak with people all around the world was mind blowing. I eventually got a second hand PC for Christmas because they were so expensive back in 1997 / 98. My brother had just bought a blazing fast 33.6kbps modem and he gave me his old US Robotics 14.4 one. You could run Yahoo chat just fine but there was no way you could play quake on it.
I remember taking whatever Christmas money I had and going out to Currys to buy the Supra Express 56K V90 external modem. That gave a decent boost and served me well. You could download 2 MP3s at once at about 2.2k but you couldn't do anything else.

I can remember one of the first emails I ever got. It was from the friend who's PC I had seen Yahoo Chat on. It was a fake nude of Gloria Hunniford servicing herself.
The days of 56K were not all bad, except for the phone bills, I must have put hours and hours into quake and team fortress classic. There was also some basic 3D chat room back then, but I have forgotten the name of it. There was a hedge maze room, a spaceship, cool stuff.
 
I didn't mind it as that was the speed and usage at the time. I found it made me be out of the house more unlike kids these days, don't get me wrong I love my vivid 350 connection but I can see why it would spoil people these days.
 
I remember my mate showing me this amazing porn application he had found. What he didn't realise is it was a 'dialer' he had downloaded that would dial up to a premium number to connect him to the service. £600 phone bill and a good hiding from his old man put an end to that! But it does remind me of people who who got infected with 'dialer' viruses that would connect to the internet via premium rate numbers without you realising. Glad those aren't a thing anymore!

The worst thing I found about dial up besides the random disconnects and painful speed was the two hour cut off my isp imposed. Many a time it ruined a great game of Red Alert 2, Team Fortress, CS etc.
 
do i win?

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Up until a few years ago I was still relying on dial up when I had ADSL issues. I never really thought it was horrendous at the time but going back to it for a while was a nightmare given how much the internet has changed.

Still it's a shame it's no longer an option as, shockingly, I don't really use a smart phone so broadband issues equate to a blackout.
 
Glanza said:
I didn't mind it as that was the speed and usage at the time. I found it made me be out of the house more unlike kids these days, don't get me wrong I love my vivid 350 connection but I can see why it would spoil people these days.
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I agree a lot with this. These days despite being older and wiser, my whole life is connected to the Internet in some way. It is very hard to not use it when so many things are connected to it. I can definitely imagine that if I was growing up in the world today, I would probably be very dependent on the Internet in understanding the world.

I have thought many times looking back to my childhood growing up in the 90s and early 2000s that I was quite lucky to know the world before the internet's dominance. Today with the easy access and always-on connections, there is definitely a case of information overload. Fortunately I have not evolved into the type of person that walks around in a busy street looking down directly at their phone nearly bumping into people or being run over from crossing a road because they are so engrossed by what they are looking at on their phone, which I do see a lot.
 
AOL 0800 unlimited access made it a little easier to digest but overall I hated dial up, watching parts of europe push ahead with their broadband infrastructure while we lagged behind was infuriating, we should have lead the way with a fibre in the UK.

I remember getting in on the first BT broadband trials @ 512Kbps, I still have the original D-Link modem they sent me, no routers being dished out back then, I will never forget waiting so excitingly for my green light to stop flashing on the modem, and once it did the internet changed forever, that was a golden moment, I certainly do feel privileged to of witnessed and experienced the dawn of the internet and computing in general, I honestly feel people today really missed out, it was such an exciting time.
 
Anyone remember the Microsoft Chat software with the comic/cartoon characters? So naff, but loved it at the time, speaking to random folks.
 
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