I Remember When.....

[knate5000]

I remember when:

 

I had a 9600 baud modem and actually surfed the internet!

 

14.4 was fast

 

28.8 was FAST

 

56K was unheard of!!!

 

Do you remember the good ol' times?

[TCH-Rick]

My first modem was 300 baud. I had a couple of phone bills for over $100 from surfing BBSes around the country. Saved my money to spend $200 on a 1200 baud modem.

[nortk]

300 baud...where you could read the text faster than you could transfer the text.

 

I used my Commodore 128 and a 1200 baud modem to run a BBS. Anyone here ever use Quantum Link? It was an AOL-like national service for Commodore users.

[jayson]

AHHHHH, a BBS, I use to run one, still got the old system, Ashlandia BBS, running fidonet...those were the days.

[TCH-Bruce]

I also started with a 300 baud modem but I had a Commodore 64.

 

I also ran a BBS but much later, it was a PowerBBS board.

[stevevan]

I remember using a 1200 baud acoustic modem while stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines on the Arpanet. Got material for a college term paper from the University of England and the prof thought I had faked it! I had to bring him into my work and show him before he passed me!

[jayson]

Mine was first a DLX7.0 then I wemt an easier one, jetbbs

[makaveli]

i had it easy, 56k was my entrance to the net, bet hey, even that seems slow now!

i cant believe the internet used to look like "teletext" a uk data service on Tv (we have digital now it looks better) but thheres the old analouge teletext

[youneverknow]

I had a VIC 20

Before the floppy drive was released in 1982, games and programs were available only on cassette tapes and cartridges.

A slow 300 baud with cassette storage hooked up to a regular TV wow what a system!!

youneverknow

[TCH-Thomas]

I remember when there was no internet (atleast not in Sweden). Today I wonder how I managed without it.

 

I also remember the very first modem I used, a 14.4.

[TCH-Bruce]

I had the VIC 20 and quickly upgraded to the C64 and then an Executive C64, the one that had the 5-inch color screen. Never got a 128 and jumped to PCs shortly after.

[jayson]

My first computer, was a c64, that you had to hook upto a TV, and the save feature was a tape cassette. you had to start the tape at the right moment or it would not recored, and the modem was a plug in unit that was a 300 baud one. I could type and walk away and come back 10 minutes later and hope that the other person was done typing...I use to go to Top City BBS, and chats were loooooooonnnnnnnng....

[knate5000]

Did they really have 'modems' like in Wargames, where you had to place the phone's handset on a box......

[TCH-Don]

Yes they did, well that was the coupler that went to the modem,

we had some at work.

 

I stared with a TRS-80 with tape cassette

then an Apple I, converted it to a II

Then a PC XT with dual floppys, wow.

[makaveli]

Yep an "acoustic coupler" modem

 

When i was little i used to read about them, even at a young age i was into technology, one of my first "big words" was Hydraulic which i could say and spell at about 6

Edited September 5, 2006 by makaveli

[stevevan]

Did they really have 'modems' like in Wargames, where you had to place the phone's handset on a box......

yep...that's what I was using! Great picture...brings back a few memories! (Also grows a few more gray hairs! )

[makaveli]

i also remember on dialup if you fancied a surf and someone was on the phone, you could hear them shout (allbeit digitized a little) through the modem, thank god for fibre optics, broadband is great.

but think, this was a few years ago all the coupler modem stuff, what will the net be like in 15 more years

 

to think my cell/mobile has 28k internet on it....

Edited September 5, 2006 by makaveli

[Deverill]

My first was a 300 baud direct modem from Radio Shack. Used it to connect to the computers at the University of Louisville and would send a chat message to a 1st year Cobol user "Please verify your password - /te myusername password" and they would. We had a link to the University of Kentucky and a thing called "forum" which was a precursor to the modern chatroom programs.

 

Of course, all this was before there was an Internet proper.

 

Yes, there were acoustic couplers, but you couldn't war-dial with them like in the movie Wargames. To end one call and make another you had to physically hang up the phone and dial again.... unless someone did a hardware hack on the phone itself. The coupler certainly didn't touch-tone dial. I didn't hear of wardialing until much later.

 

Wikipedia:"War dialing or wardialing was the act of using a modem to dial every telephone number in a local area to find out where computers are available, then attempting to access them by guessing passwords."