Comcastify: The Onion is now releasing JavaScript code as satire

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

John Connor

Lifer
Nov 30, 2012
22,757
619
121
WE had dial-up and it was terrible with the disconnects. The slowness wasn't that much of a problem, but the damn disconnects were a bitch! Especially when downloading something that would take 5 minutes. Right smack dab in the middle of downloading BAM! disconnect. When I first got my Dell C600 Laptop I got Juno. Then it was People PC and onto AT&T. When I got a new laptop I was impressed with the dial-up speed due to the V.92 modem. We finally got Comcast back in circa 2007 and have had it ever since. But once a month or so the whole damn thing goes down. No better than Dial-up, although the speed is better.

I actually used Dial-up through Comcast voice to get drivers on a very old HP netbook. The netbook had no USB ports or floppy drive. I was lucky Windows 98se installed generic drivers for the PMCIA modem card. I used it strictly for monitoring the router using SNMP, but sadly it died. Now I have a Dell Mini 910.

Comcast can be a bitch. If the service drops I can't even use a free Dial-up provider because our phone is also Comcast voice! I fell bad for the business class customers.
 

John Connor

Lifer
Nov 30, 2012
22,757
619
121
remember playing command and conquer, and Generals eventually, over dial up......as in, you dial up another pots modem with your modem?


I STILL play Command and Conquar Zero Hour and Red Alert. I do have Yuris Revenge too! LOL! :D I can't believe the C&C lobby still exists. I have Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, but only played it maybe for an hour. Sound give it another go around. I like "The Retard Mod" for C&C Zero Hour.

I love my old games. No DRM shit and for the most part they just worked. None of this 6 GB patch crap and Origin. Sim City 4 is currently on the laptop and I have the No CD hack for it. I have never been able to master Sim City without cheating.
 
Last edited:

lxskllr

No Lifer
Nov 30, 2004
60,057
10,547
126
WE had dial-up and it was terrible with the disconnects. The slowness wasn't that much of a problem, but the damn disconnects were a bitch! Especially when downloading something that would take 5 minutes. Right smack dab in the middle of downloading BAM! disconnect. When I first got my Dell C600 Laptop I got Juno. Then it was People PC and onto AT&T. When I got a new laptop I was impressed with the dial-up speed due to the V.92 modem. We finally got Comcast back in circa 2007 and have had it ever since. But once a month or so the whole damn thing goes down. No better than Dial-up, although the speed is better.

I actually used Dial-up through Comcast voice to get drivers on a very old HP netbook. The netbook had no USB ports or floppy drive. I was lucky Windows 98se installed generic drivers for the PMCIA modem card. I used it strictly for monitoring the router using SNMP, but sadly it died. Now I have a Dell Mini 910.

Comcast can be a bitch. If the service drops I can't even use a free Dial-up provider because our phone is also Comcast voice! I fell bad for the business class customers.

I still had dialup fairly late; into 2006. I only got rid of it because Verizon was jerking me around on a repair issue. What pissed me off, was I was getting auto-disconnected after 12 hours, and support disclaimed all knowledge of why that was happening. They were putting it on me, and having me jump through hoops to "troubleshoot" my issue, when I was having no issues. It was fast(for dialup), and stable, but at exactly 12 hours up, I'd get disconnected :^S

That made it a real PITA getting large files. I was limited to ~250mb before I'd lose connection. I don't think I had discovered bittorrent at that point, or maybe the files I wanted weren't on there... Dunno, but bittorrent would have been a godsend.
 

John Connor

Lifer
Nov 30, 2012
22,757
619
121
Yeah, I think the disconnects for me were right on every three hours or so. And for me on the Internet 3 hours would fly by. I actually would take my laptop behind Office Depot and use their free WIFI to download large files and music. LOL! Then I discovered a guy's house near the park that had open WIFI and would sneak into the park at night to download my stuff. That was with a Dell Inspiron 8100. It held up in the cold too! I was out there siphoning Internet when it was about 11 degrees. I was downloading a Linux distro that could crack WIFI passwords. Needless to say, despite my three pages of Linux commands I could never get it to work.
 
Last edited:

brianmanahan

Lifer
Sep 2, 2006
24,625
6,011
136
remember playing command and conquer, and Generals eventually, over dial up......as in, you dial up another pots modem with your modem?

i remember playing age of empires with my cousin. his phone had call waiting so if he got a call, he would get booted :(
 

Ichinisan

Lifer
Oct 9, 2002
28,298
1,235
136
i remember playing age of empires with my cousin. his phone had call waiting so if he got a call, he would get booted :(

Why wouldn't he configure his dialup connection with the prefix to disable call waiting?

Pretty much any dial-up software or new connection wizard mentioned the call-waiting-disable prefix and had a place to enable it.
 

brianmanahan

Lifer
Sep 2, 2006
24,625
6,011
136
Why wouldn't he configure his dialup connection with the prefix to disable call waiting?

Pretty much any dial-up software or new connection wizard mentioned the call-waiting-disable prefix and had a place to enable it.

his mom said he had to keep it on, in case they got any calls x_x

and she didnt want to pay for callwave, lol
 

waggy

No Lifer
Dec 14, 2000
68,143
10
81
I remember getting my first 14.4 modem to connect at full speed. i think i had a chubby when that happened.

Then getting a 33.6! holly shit!

playing Everquest on it sucked..

I ended up getting a "data" line so that i could still get phone calls


and looking at porn? hell you would finish before the picture loaded LOL
 

Zodiark1593

Platinum Member
Oct 21, 2012
2,230
4
81
That's kind of late to be on dialup still. I had cable back in 1999, before iTunes event exisisted.
I was 15 at the time, so I didn't exactly have much say in what internet we got. We had dial up all the way to 2006. :|
 

brianmanahan

Lifer
Sep 2, 2006
24,625
6,011
136
Why so long to upgrade?

rural area, so there were no other options besides ridiculously expensive satellite internet with terrible lag and a couple hundred MB per day cap o_O. no cable TV period, and no DSL. finally someone put in some long-range (several miles to tower) wireless. its expensive too, but its the best available.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,584
13,805
126
www.anyf.ca
WE had dial-up and it was terrible with the disconnects. The slowness wasn't that much of a problem, but the damn disconnects were a bitch! Especially when downloading something that would take 5 minutes. Right smack dab in the middle of downloading BAM! disconnect. When I first got my Dell C600 Laptop I got Juno. Then it was People PC and onto AT&T. When I got a new laptop I was impressed with the dial-up speed due to the V.92 modem. We finally got Comcast back in circa 2007 and have had it ever since. But once a month or so the whole damn thing goes down. No better than Dial-up, although the speed is better.

I actually used Dial-up through Comcast voice to get drivers on a very old HP netbook. The netbook had no USB ports or floppy drive. I was lucky Windows 98se installed generic drivers for the PMCIA modem card. I used it strictly for monitoring the router using SNMP, but sadly it died. Now I have a Dell Mini 910.

Comcast can be a bitch. If the service drops I can't even use a free Dial-up provider because our phone is also Comcast voice! I fell bad for the business class customers.

I remember that too, was annoying! The dreaded "chord.wav" sound followed by a download failed error message. You knew it was coming when you could hear the relay in the modem click, realizing you just got disconnected. There was a setting, think it was flow control, if you disable it it would stop all these disconnects. There was also an idle timer that was good to disable as sometimes for whatever reason it would think it's idle and disconnect you.

But yep, pain in the ass!
 

John Connor

Lifer
Nov 30, 2012
22,757
619
121
I used to mess with the settings and use TCP Optimizer to make my connection as fast as possible and it worked especially using compression.
 

DCal430

Diamond Member
Feb 12, 2011
6,020
9
81
rural area, so there were no other options besides ridiculously expensive satellite internet with terrible lag and a couple hundred MB per day cap o_O. no cable TV period, and no DSL. finally someone put in some long-range (several miles to tower) wireless. its expensive too, but its the best available.

Are you still limited to wireless broadband?
 

Dannar26

Senior member
Mar 13, 2012
754
142
106
I remember my buddies trying to dial in directly to my computer so we could play Baldur's Gate 2. Ended up hitting the house phone instead. The ringing woke up my mother who was always a light sleeper. She was like an enraged bear emerging from hibernation...
 

DCal430

Diamond Member
Feb 12, 2011
6,020
9
81
I remember downing all kinds of pirated software on AOL, damn that AOL chatrooms were full of good stuff, and it all by email attachments, each file was only a few megs, but you you could have dozens of them. Remember downloading Windows 98, Warcraft 2, and star craft.