Experiencing the internet with a modem

[Red Squirrel]

You weren't using a good modem then like a good Broadcom if you had to screw around with those settings.

Speaking of which a good modem would cost big bucks back then.

It was an internal US Robotics. I don't know why I even remember that. lol. It also had a rather different dialup sound than most other modems I've heard. I actually managed to find it on youtube once.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I also still remember the fun of when I got my parents setup on broadband for the first time.

I turned on their computer after it was setup and said, "There you go!"

"So how do I get on the internet?"

"You're on it"

"But where's the AOL button?"

"You don't need it. Just click on the internet browser."

"What does that do?"

"It lets you browse the internet."

"But how do I do that through AOL?"

"You don't use AOL anymore for that. Your internet is always on. Just open a browser and use that like you would when you used AOL's web crawler page."

"Ok..." they said while still looking dazed, confused and scratching their heads.

Even after I show them a few times how it works, I would come back every few weeks to check on them and find AOL reinstalled and them surfing through AOL constantly instead of IE or Netscape I had installed on their PC back then. Was frustrating to get them to understand broadband connection and it took a few months.

The best is that back then routers were not really a thing. People were connected directly. With windows 98.

Before I knew hacking was considered more illegal than murder or I even knew the concept of hiding my IP, I used to have a field day port scanning port 139 and accessing people's data and stuff lol - right from my own network, no proxy, nothing. Played around with Sub7 for a while too. Oh man, fun times. Do any of that stuff today and you'll have a full swat team busting through your house within an hour.

 

[master_shake_]

to simulate dial up just unplug the router whenever there is a phone call.

 

[Red Squirrel]

to simulate dial up just unplug the router whenever there is a phone call.

lol you could probably automate that with an arduino or something.

Reminds me of a funny trouble at work. 611 caller saying every time their phone rings, the furnace starts. Whaaaa? Makes no sense. We send a tech. Turns out someone hooked up the phone line to the thermostat wiring. The ring voltage would trip the relay. lol

 

[pete6032]

I wish there was a demo or youtube video I could watch that would show my kids what living with a modem and dial up internet was like. They have never experienced not being connected 24x7 and being able to just go to the laptop/desktop and log in and be online is all they have ever known. I'd like to show them what it was like to have to turn on the pc, make sure no one was using the phone in the house, then click on the dial up icon, try to connect to the modem bank, watch it negotiate the handshake, and then see what being online with a 28.8 to 56k modem was actually like with page load times, image load times, etc.

I think their minds would be blown.

No, they would just find you old and senile. When your parents told you about walking 5 miles to school every day while you took the bus, was your mind blown?

 

[Darwin333]

I'm not even sure what I would do in dos except type "dir" a bunch.

Use a DOS program to dial into a BBS with your 14.4K modem of course!

 

[bbhaag]

I'm not even sure what I would do in dos except type "dir" a bunch.

Your post reminds me of a funny story regarding my two sons ages 14 and 9. A little over a year ago I bought an old 486 Digital PC off ebay just play around with and reminisce about my childhood. Anyway, I was really excited about it and the kids were feeding off my excitement much like dads and sons do. I got it all hooked up and it booted right away and started to test ram, load the splash screen with hardware info, and finally load drivers in good old DOS fashion. Just like we all remember.
Well it finally got to the prompt with the C:> and the blinking underscore and my oldest looks at me and says "Ok now what? What's it do?" I told hims that's it. Now you have to type in the commands to make it work. He just rolled his eyes at me and walked away. Hasn't shown an interest in it do this day.

My nine year old on the other hand has actually learned a handful of commands and is quit good at using cd\ to get to the directories he needs to play the games I have loaded. He is particularly fond of Simcity and Duke Nukem.

I guess the story is hard to put into words but the look on their faces when it was just a blinking cursor was priceless. It was almost like they expected it do something cool and magical and all it did was blink at them.

 

[Imp]

Reminds me of a funny trouble at work. 611 caller saying every time their phone rings, the furnace starts. Whaaaa? Makes no sense. We send a tech. Turns out someone hooked up the phone line to the thermostat wiring. The ring voltage would trip the relay. lol

Guess the tech mixed up the furnace with the detonator...

 

[Linflas]

Your post reminds me of a funny story regarding my two sons ages 14 and 9. A little over a year ago I bought an old 486 Digital PC off ebay just play around with and reminisce about my childhood. Anyway, I was really excited about it and the kids were feeding off my excitement much like dads and sons do. I got it all hooked up and it booted right away and started to test ram, load the splash screen with hardware info, and finally load drivers in good old DOS fashion. Just like we all remember.
Well it finally got to the prompt with the C:> and the blinking underscore and my oldest looks at me and says "Ok now what? What's it do?" I told hims that's it. Now you have to type in the commands to make it work. He just rolled his eyes at me and walked away. Hasn't shown an interest in it do this day.

My nine year old on the other hand has actually learned a handful of commands and is quit good at using cd\ to get to the directories he needs to play the games I have loaded. He is particularly fond of Simcity and Duke Nukem.

I guess the story is hard to put into words but the look on their faces when it was just a blinking cursor was priceless. It was almost like they expected it do something cool and magical and all it did was blink at them.

Sounds like me the first time I saw a PC. I was working production control for GTE Telenet on IBM 3093 mainframes. At the time I was on swing shift so I worked 4-midnight. I came in one night and there was a new IBM PC sitting on the secretaries desk so I turned it on and it complained about not having a boot disk so I quickly figured out the 5 1/4 floppies in the case next to it were what I needed so I stuck one in and after all the whirring and clicking there I was sitting at the a:> prompt. Messed around for a bit and figured out cd and dir and that was about it. I shut if off and went back to my real on the road to extinction terminal on the 3093. Next time I worked on one was a couple years later when I had to use a Compaq luggable with a huge 10 MB hard drive.

 

[vi edit]

I've seen a gif once online and scared to go searching for it now. It was basically a pixelated image that slowly got less pixelated and started to do the old dial up "draw down the screen" thing as it downloaded the image. You start to see that it's a naked woman only for the image to go to the old school "red x" image not working thing from the old IE days.

Can't find it now...but that was perfect.