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Post by PaulsLaugh on Aug 27, 2023 12:59:36 GMT
Dial up Modems and DOS ![[hairraise]](http://storage.proboards.com/6870873/images/BNwjBofuU0mbfrsNOxJb.gif) The WordPerfect Template.   |
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Post by Catman on Aug 27, 2023 13:58:08 GMT
In Iowa, a lot of people still use homing pigeons to carry their internet packets.
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Post by Teleadm on Oct 6, 2023 17:11:41 GMT
LOL! yes those screech and scroll sounds it made while connecting via modems.
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Post by Hnefahogg on Oct 6, 2023 19:06:41 GMT
LOL! yes those screech and scroll sounds it made while connecting via modems. |
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Post by Wildmanwizard on Oct 22, 2023 23:38:19 GMT
In these days when you can get a smartphone for 100 dollars or less and a SIM card for 10 bucks that hook you up to the Internet, people don't remember or are too young to know that there used to be a time when a computer cost so much that they put many, if not most, in debt. A lot of folks couldn't even afford their own computer and had to lease one through their jobs. Our first cost 3,500 dollars. Okay, there were less fancy ones for 1,000 (and computers were evolving at a rate where they were old the next year). The Internet was expensive, too; you were charged at an hourly rate instead of paying a monthly subscription. What could you do if you didn't have the money? You could for instance go to the library. But that wasn't a fitting option if you wanted to go on the NSFW websites. And the Internet was largely about that back then, to an even higher degree than today. Then Sega in 1999 released their Dreamcast console retailing for 199 dollars at launch coming bundled with a 56K modem. You could buy a disc with a web browser and a mouse and keyboard to get on the Internet. I own a console and just recently realised that I own an old dial-up modem. It doesn't make the classic dial-up sound, though. It turns out only the fancier ones did that.  Was there a monthly fee? |
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Post by PaulsLaugh on Oct 23, 2023 5:32:22 GMT
I had a dial-up for a while in the early 1990s, but it got to be too expensive. I went offline until I could plug directly into the internet, but it was so slow, I had to have my telephone lines upgraded. I've been clicking ever since.
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Post by Hnefahogg on Oct 23, 2023 6:58:20 GMT
As I understand it with dial-up in the USA, it was common or the norm to have capped plans with like 20 or 50 hours a month that timed the user out when all the hours were used. In Europe, you would instead pay per minute you were connected online and there was no cap other than a very expensive phone bill. So it could get very costly for an internet addict in those days. The US system was obviously much better. I've read that there also exist in the USA capped DSL and cable plans. I've never heard of that here. Only mobile internet (4G/5G) is capped. I had a dial-up for a while in the early 1990s, but it got to be too expensive. I went offline until I could plug directly into the internet, but it was so slow, I had to have my telephone lines upgraded. I've been clicking ever since. Dial-up was always slow. There were browsers back in the day that could save the cache and mitigate it on sites you often visited, but it was always slow to download files etc. |
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Post by slowcomingwarbird on Jul 13, 2024 20:51:09 GMT
Phone phreaking...
It used to be that old laptop computers had a built in dial up modem and you could buy an adapter
from Radio Shack that had a phone plug on one end and alligator clips on the other.
It was easy enough to get into the access panel in the alleyway in an apartment complex
to hook up to some random person's phone line as long as you were sure they weren't home.
As long as you remembered not to touch the yellow wire with black stripes or the blue wire with white stripes.
That the red wire and the green wire were the only safe wires to touch.
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Post by Hnefahogg on Jul 13, 2024 21:16:13 GMT
Phone phreaking... It used to be that old laptop computers had a built in dial up modem and you could buy an adapter from Radio Shack that had a phone plug on one end and alligator clips on the other. It was easy enough to get into the access panel in the alleyway in an apartment complex to hook up to some random person's phone line as long as you were sure they weren't home. As long as you remembered not to touch the yellow wire with black stripes or the blue wire with white stripes. That the red wire and the green wire were the only safe wires to touch. Blue boxing was what cyber criminals were all about before the advent of broadband. phreaking.fandom.com/wiki/Blue_box |
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Post by lunda2222 on Aug 31, 2024 1:16:39 GMT
Dial up Modems and DOS I quite liked DOS, better than the Blue Screen of Death (windows 95).
Windows didn't get good until Windows 2000 (except 3.2) in my opinion. I didn't have internet back then.
Still you had to get with the times.
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Post by Hnefahogg on Sept 3, 2024 17:41:47 GMT
Dial up Modems and DOS I quite liked DOS, better than the Blue Screen of Death (windows 95). Windows didn't get good until Windows 2000 (except 3.2) in my opinion. I didn't have internet back then.
Still you had to get with the times.
Windows 9x was DOS with a UI. Well, ME removed the full DOS compatibility. Windows 3.1 crashed even more than Windows 9x. It had a bug or inherent flaw that made it possible to run out of the first megabyte of the RAM and then you were screwed. It was a much discussed problem on developer forums on Compuserve that predated the internet before the latter took over. The worst thing about Windows 9x apart from the crashing was that programs could interfere with and disturb each other. If you were burning a CD and forgot to close the chat and someone wrote to you, the disc was ruined. |
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