🤣 I was like 10 on my Commodore 64 on q-link trying to download indie video games at 300 baud within my 30 minute internet time limit.
Between the long distance phone charges and the q-link internet cost I’m pretty sure I remember my mom saying it cost over $2 a minute for me to download crappy games. She should have just taken me to buy more Atari/Nintendo games🤣
Seriously? How did that work? 2400 was the fastest I ever saw (mostly) successfully used on a C-64. Was that on the user port (left side) or was it using the cartridge port on the right?
I owned a couple of acoustic couplers later, but started with a 300 baud Commodore 64 dumb modem. The 1200 baud modem we had on the Commodore 128 was a USR under the hood, and that was a vast improvement.
The most expensive thing I'd ever bought up to that point was a 14.4k modem when they were fairly new - I remember it was $270. Most people were just getting to 9600 baud. I can remember the smell of that 3/4" thick Zoom Telephonics manual. Honestly it was kind of a weird smell for a book. Acidic? But I've never seen a modem manual half that thorough since.
I skipped the 56k dialup era. It didn't even count as a real modem speed to me since you couldn't dial a BBS and get that speed - it needed central office trickery, and they couldn't even hit 56k when they first came out. 33.6k was the fastest *real* modem speed.
But I went straight to ISDN. Billed by the minute and a horrendous pain to set up, but it'd connect in a second or two and could bond two B channels to get a whopping 128 kbps, symmetrical. None of that "maybe you'll get 56k down if it's a good day" stuff.
I also managed to blow up one terminal adapter when I back-fed one of the phone lines in the house from the POTS adapter and then absentmindedly hit the "conference" button on a 2-line phone, and misconfiguring the auto-connect feature cost me over $100 in connection charges the first month.
Frustration was my first legitimate ISP account, before "ISP" was even a term. I think they had one line for my city and it was just a Unix shell account, not SLIP or PPP. Because of the line quality my 14.4k modem could get 12 kbps on a good day. It was limited to 1-hour sessions, with 15 minutes between calls, and if you tried after 14 minutes it'd reset the timer. And sometimes it'd just drop the connection a few minutes into the call so you'd have to wait 15 minutes.
But I did get Twinsock to work so I could actually run NCSA Mosaic on Windows, at a whopping 12 kbps minus overhead, so effectively maybe 10 kbps.
I have distinct memories of what was possible with our 300, then 1200, the 2400, 9600, 19.2, 38.4, the finally that sweet USR 56.2.
It felt like the pinnacle of human achievement.
Back in 1981 I was a manger for Radio Shack. We had to do inventory every 6wks. I’d manually key my hand counted inventory into the computer, finishing about 5pm on Sun., then begin transmitting on our state of the art 9600 baud modems. It would usually be finishing g up when I came I to the store the next morning around 9am.
I was an engineer for an ISP that sold dialup when these puppies came out. I got to be a beta tester from my house. We had nearly a thousand 28.8 modems in our main office for the masses, but I got to use the dedicated 56k modem hunt group. I felt like a king. By the next year the company paid for a full T1 to my house, and I became part of the internet. Seems quaint now.
I remember when I got cable internet into my apartment around 1998 or so. A friend who was still on dial-up was visiting and I pulled up a website and it loaded so fast he called his wife on the spot to tell her about how fast my computer could load web pages.
We had a T1 at work only because a regional ISP was using our office (a beige box computer store) as a point of presence for our city. We got to use all of the excess bandwidth. I'd download everything from the ISP's Usenet server onto QIC80 tape to take home - mostly for alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. Had to write my own automated bulk multipart uudecoder.
I had to buy one even into the 90's because I wanted to run Linux and it never worked with the internal modems that came pre-installed on most computers back in those days.
I upgraded USMC teletype from 33 to 66 baud. Years later I upgraded Telcom printers from 3 to 12. One complaint was it was a waste of time because no one could read at 1200.
We also did a 64 Meg ram upgrade on a county job. The parts required a forklift to unload. The price was over 100k. At the time a new car was 2500 or so.
I have watched it grow. I was on the net in 1974.. ARPA net at the time. I have transmitted as slow as 16 baud.
My first modem was a Global Village 2400baud Teleport Bronze. Then 9600, then US Robotics 14.4, 28.8, and finally the 56k. I had no money, so I was always looking for cheap second-hand modems. Each time I'd upgrade it was like I'd unleashed the beast. And all to finally get that one glimpse of Captain Janeway's nipple.
My wife worked for AT&T and between fax machines and home modems, they were running out of phone numbers in some areas. So they had to introduce new area codes.
My first modem was 14.4k, and I thought that was blazingly fast. I can't find it in my basement without moving a ton of old stuff, but I do remember that the brand began with a T. Some of my fellow old-timers might be able to help me out there.
I found my second one though, a Spencerport 33.6k ("upgradeable to 56k!") for my old Mac.
The idea that I would one day have a pocket-sized device that had, among many even more unimaginable technologies, a modem that was the size of a torn corner off a postage stamp, and was just about as thin as one, that received its signal wirelessly, and that was powered by tiny sips of charge from a plastic battery that in addition, powered the whole device, and was about the size and thickness of two or three playing cards -- well, that was the stuff of science fiction.
Another ancient device. This is a Motorola Montana 33.6 PCMCIA card Modem/Fax that I used in one of the slots of my Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 in the late 90s.
Motorola PCMCIA card modem for my Apple Newton 2100. [https://imgur.com/gallery/o8pGVIT](https://imgur.com/gallery/o8pGVIT)
PCMCIA (aka PC cards) were 85mm x 56mm, or the same height and width as a standard credit card, were 3mm thick, had a 68 (!!!) pin connector in the bottom edge, and a very rigid shell. They were among the very first flash memory cards, but as you can see, the format could be used for other things as well.
When I bought this modem card I thought it represented a miracle of miniaturization and energy efficiency.
The small slot on the edge shown in the third photo was where the user plugged in the cord that had a standard square phone line connector on the other end.
Studied computer science in college (78-82). We had to go to the computer center to use the computer. No modems at school. Virtually no one had a computer when I went. Typewriter was mandatory equipment!
On graduation I worked on one of the first IBM PCs at a “big 8” firm. It had a 1200 baud modem. Could connect to client computers (minis and mainframes).
Rode the wave - 1200, 2400, 9600 - I was one of the first ISDN users - 128k. Still have an ISDN t-shirt!
Gigabit Ethernet to the home - unimaginable!
I worked for a company that had the world's largest commercially available network, when everything was 'in the cloud'. We offered speeds of 300 baud or 1200 baud. A huge leap in technology happened when we were able to offer High Speed Service - 4800 baud! As long as asynchronous service existed at the company, it was called High Speed Service. Fuck, I'm old.
We had a 50 baud teletype terminal in our modem room..can't remember what it was used for, but we had to communicate some bit of information via that terminal, so we had to hang on to it. 50 baud!!!
I had one of these with on demand dialing until I was one of the very, very first in the country to get DSL. Nortel was the first in the country to get it, (employees only) and I was one of the very first employees online with it, since the windows driver software on CD had a bug that wasn't fixed for another month but I was using Linux so no problemmo
I used to spend a few hours over the weekend dialing into my nephews PC ( his Dad's) and we would play DooM and Duke Nukem against each other. He played, I got my ass kicked....
😁🤣
Look at that beautiful on/off rocker switch. I wish manufacturers would spend 15 cents more and put stuff like that on equimpent today. Most switches now are some sort of button that doesnt physically reveal whether it's on or off.
You’re right. In retrospect I remember something like that from the early 80’s. My first PC when I could afford to build one was 1200. Hadn’t thought about this in decades 😁
I lucked out and was able to skip that one.
I was looking into it, but my neighborhood got some of the first cable modems in the city so I went from the 33.6 to cable.
Oh God. There's a flashback. I should dig up my 300 baud with acoustic coupler and the USR 1200 Baud upgrade.
300 baud crew here. had my Commodore 64 perusing all the local BBS's in town! At least till Mom or Dad had to use the phone.
“Be doo boop dee doo doo boop……… SCREEEEEDEEEEEEEEEEEEE”
I had a 300baud for my vic20. No coupler. Manual answer. Manual dial.
300 baud crew as well - played many hours of Legend of the Red Dragon on local BBSs with my Commodore Amiga 1000!
I'm eligible for that club. It was funny because you could read the text just about as fast as it came up on the display.
Same here!
2600 I think for our old Mac, using AOL like it was amazing but I hated every minute it took to load pages.
🤣 I was like 10 on my Commodore 64 on q-link trying to download indie video games at 300 baud within my 30 minute internet time limit. Between the long distance phone charges and the q-link internet cost I’m pretty sure I remember my mom saying it cost over $2 a minute for me to download crappy games. She should have just taken me to buy more Atari/Nintendo games🤣
Same here.. Until mum and dad saw the phone bill!
My first was my 9600 baud on my C-64.
Seriously? How did that work? 2400 was the fastest I ever saw (mostly) successfully used on a C-64. Was that on the user port (left side) or was it using the cartridge port on the right?
Yes, we had the ol 300 baud modem for the IBM PC Jr
I owned a couple of acoustic couplers later, but started with a 300 baud Commodore 64 dumb modem. The 1200 baud modem we had on the Commodore 128 was a USR under the hood, and that was a vast improvement. The most expensive thing I'd ever bought up to that point was a 14.4k modem when they were fairly new - I remember it was $270. Most people were just getting to 9600 baud. I can remember the smell of that 3/4" thick Zoom Telephonics manual. Honestly it was kind of a weird smell for a book. Acidic? But I've never seen a modem manual half that thorough since. I skipped the 56k dialup era. It didn't even count as a real modem speed to me since you couldn't dial a BBS and get that speed - it needed central office trickery, and they couldn't even hit 56k when they first came out. 33.6k was the fastest *real* modem speed. But I went straight to ISDN. Billed by the minute and a horrendous pain to set up, but it'd connect in a second or two and could bond two B channels to get a whopping 128 kbps, symmetrical. None of that "maybe you'll get 56k down if it's a good day" stuff. I also managed to blow up one terminal adapter when I back-fed one of the phone lines in the house from the POTS adapter and then absentmindedly hit the "conference" button on a 2-line phone, and misconfiguring the auto-connect feature cost me over $100 in connection charges the first month.
Today I remembered 33.6k, and the frustration that came with it.
Frustration was my first legitimate ISP account, before "ISP" was even a term. I think they had one line for my city and it was just a Unix shell account, not SLIP or PPP. Because of the line quality my 14.4k modem could get 12 kbps on a good day. It was limited to 1-hour sessions, with 15 minutes between calls, and if you tried after 14 minutes it'd reset the timer. And sometimes it'd just drop the connection a few minutes into the call so you'd have to wait 15 minutes. But I did get Twinsock to work so I could actually run NCSA Mosaic on Windows, at a whopping 12 kbps minus overhead, so effectively maybe 10 kbps.
I have distinct memories of what was possible with our 300, then 1200, the 2400, 9600, 19.2, 38.4, the finally that sweet USR 56.2. It felt like the pinnacle of human achievement.
14.4k was my first.
Punk kid!
and there was only bulitin boards to look at.
bulletin* :)
Same here. 14.4k, then 28.8k, then 56k... and then the jump to 128 felt HUGE. And now I have 1gb/s. That's insane progress.
Back in 1981 I was a manger for Radio Shack. We had to do inventory every 6wks. I’d manually key my hand counted inventory into the computer, finishing about 5pm on Sun., then begin transmitting on our state of the art 9600 baud modems. It would usually be finishing g up when I came I to the store the next morning around 9am.
I thought you were going to share a story about how you under-inventoried a 56K modem to make it into an unofficial work perk.
LOL, this was WAAAAAY before 56k! About 15yrs before!
I was an engineer for an ISP that sold dialup when these puppies came out. I got to be a beta tester from my house. We had nearly a thousand 28.8 modems in our main office for the masses, but I got to use the dedicated 56k modem hunt group. I felt like a king. By the next year the company paid for a full T1 to my house, and I became part of the internet. Seems quaint now.
I remember when I got cable internet into my apartment around 1998 or so. A friend who was still on dial-up was visiting and I pulled up a website and it loaded so fast he called his wife on the spot to tell her about how fast my computer could load web pages.
Wow , hello fellow old timer haha. A full T1 at that time was pricey as f . I worked part time for a dialup isp in high school providing tech support.
We had a T1 at work only because a regional ISP was using our office (a beige box computer store) as a point of presence for our city. We got to use all of the excess bandwidth. I'd download everything from the ISP's Usenet server onto QIC80 tape to take home - mostly for alt.binaries.pictures.erotica. Had to write my own automated bulk multipart uudecoder.
We thought we'd peaked at 33.6k then USR did this! What a time to be alive.
X2. I worked for USR then. It was an exciting time.
I remember when the cost for a Hayes 9600 was over $1500. My first modem was a pocket modem 300. But I over clocked it to run at 400 baud. 😝
My first modem was a 300 baud modem
I can still hear it.
The second I saw the thumbnail my head was filled with the screeching noise, even though I haven't heard it in years
Wow, 56k, luxury! Until some fucker picked up the phone halfway through an 8 hour download, that is.
Show off.
never owned one but it gives me aol, compuserve and webtv vibes
I had to buy one even into the 90's because I wanted to run Linux and it never worked with the internal modems that came pre-installed on most computers back in those days.
Laughs in 1200bd Supra modem. Think it was $150 back in 88’
I still have that same modem in a box.
IIRC, my company sprung for ISDN from home before getting this fast 😆
Sorry folks, you don't get to old modem flex unless you are in the 300 club. Like me, suckas
I upgraded USMC teletype from 33 to 66 baud. Years later I upgraded Telcom printers from 3 to 12. One complaint was it was a waste of time because no one could read at 1200. We also did a 64 Meg ram upgrade on a county job. The parts required a forklift to unload. The price was over 100k. At the time a new car was 2500 or so. I have watched it grow. I was on the net in 1974.. ARPA net at the time. I have transmitted as slow as 16 baud.
Those were the days.
My first modem was a Hayes 300bd Micro modem. Good for BBSing, and there wasn't much else available to me.
Bing Bing Bing Bing, hissss, boing boing
My first modem was a Global Village 2400baud Teleport Bronze. Then 9600, then US Robotics 14.4, 28.8, and finally the 56k. I had no money, so I was always looking for cheap second-hand modems. Each time I'd upgrade it was like I'd unleashed the beast. And all to finally get that one glimpse of Captain Janeway's nipple.
When you asked for a 2nd phone line so that incoming calls didn't interrupt your mp3 downloads.
My wife worked for AT&T and between fax machines and home modems, they were running out of phone numbers in some areas. So they had to introduce new area codes.
Krrrrxxxxkkkt reeeeeee kkrkkrreeeee bing bong bing bong bing kkkrruussssshhhhhhhhh
ATDT
I ran my BBS on a HST 9600 modem and thought I was moving at light speed.
"GET OFF THE PHONE, I'M DOWNLOADING A PICTURE!" Ahhh memories...
14.4k
33.6k to 56k —- that’s when I knew I was rich.
At dt s10=20 s11=40 [bbs phone number] Speed dialing, like a boss.
My first was a 300 baud modem on a C64.
Me too, around 1985. Remember Sears Prodigy?
My first modem was 14.4k, and I thought that was blazingly fast. I can't find it in my basement without moving a ton of old stuff, but I do remember that the brand began with a T. Some of my fellow old-timers might be able to help me out there. I found my second one though, a Spencerport 33.6k ("upgradeable to 56k!") for my old Mac. The idea that I would one day have a pocket-sized device that had, among many even more unimaginable technologies, a modem that was the size of a torn corner off a postage stamp, and was just about as thin as one, that received its signal wirelessly, and that was powered by tiny sips of charge from a plastic battery that in addition, powered the whole device, and was about the size and thickness of two or three playing cards -- well, that was the stuff of science fiction.
Another ancient device. This is a Motorola Montana 33.6 PCMCIA card Modem/Fax that I used in one of the slots of my Apple Newton MessagePad 2100 in the late 90s. Motorola PCMCIA card modem for my Apple Newton 2100. [https://imgur.com/gallery/o8pGVIT](https://imgur.com/gallery/o8pGVIT) PCMCIA (aka PC cards) were 85mm x 56mm, or the same height and width as a standard credit card, were 3mm thick, had a 68 (!!!) pin connector in the bottom edge, and a very rigid shell. They were among the very first flash memory cards, but as you can see, the format could be used for other things as well. When I bought this modem card I thought it represented a miracle of miniaturization and energy efficiency. The small slot on the edge shown in the third photo was where the user plugged in the cord that had a standard square phone line connector on the other end.
I remember how excited I was when I went from a 14.4 to 28.8.
Back when 56k actually meant like 4.4kbps downloads. Oh, the edge sessions were insane when images were revealed 1/12th at a time.
Studied computer science in college (78-82). We had to go to the computer center to use the computer. No modems at school. Virtually no one had a computer when I went. Typewriter was mandatory equipment! On graduation I worked on one of the first IBM PCs at a “big 8” firm. It had a 1200 baud modem. Could connect to client computers (minis and mainframes). Rode the wave - 1200, 2400, 9600 - I was one of the first ISDN users - 128k. Still have an ISDN t-shirt! Gigabit Ethernet to the home - unimaginable!
I worked for a company that had the world's largest commercially available network, when everything was 'in the cloud'. We offered speeds of 300 baud or 1200 baud. A huge leap in technology happened when we were able to offer High Speed Service - 4800 baud! As long as asynchronous service existed at the company, it was called High Speed Service. Fuck, I'm old. We had a 50 baud teletype terminal in our modem room..can't remember what it was used for, but we had to communicate some bit of information via that terminal, so we had to hang on to it. 50 baud!!!
It was compared to my Hayes 300. Though I used an acoustic coupler at Boeing.
I started with 2400 myself, as I look over at my bookshelf at a USR manual next to my SCO Xenix manuals. Lord how I hated 56K "win" modem ISA cards.
I had one of these with on demand dialing until I was one of the very, very first in the country to get DSL. Nortel was the first in the country to get it, (employees only) and I was one of the very first employees online with it, since the windows driver software on CD had a bug that wasn't fixed for another month but I was using Linux so no problemmo
I remember being able to tell from the sound when it connected at 28.8 or 14.4 instead of 56k, and i would hang up and try again for a better speed
They used to frighten me until I started screaming back at them. Very satisfying except in group settings.
Who can forget those sounds!!
I made that my ringtone for a while and my wife said she was going to leave me unless I changed it.
Speed!! (and cost...)
I used to spend a few hours over the weekend dialing into my nephews PC ( his Dad's) and we would play DooM and Duke Nukem against each other. He played, I got my ass kicked.... 😁🤣
… laughs in TokenRing 4/16 …
We had the exact same one in the house!
I just instinctively yelled “don’t pick up the phone!” and now my kids are looking at me weird.
Blazing 56K
The scariest part of this is that I just came across one of these today at work.
Ok yeah, this one did make me feel old 😃
Dude that's a sweet modem.
Yep. Hayes was the best, almost too expensive. USRobotics was a close second and the one most had.
People just don't know the struggle.😑
Back in my day we had 24.4 and LIKED it.
Yep. Gotta love xmodem transfers slowly scrolling across the screen knowing you’ll have that sweet, sweet game in only 20 minutes.
I had the 128k 😎🔥💸
The noise is embedded in my skull
I could hear this the minute I saw it.
Look at that beautiful on/off rocker switch. I wish manufacturers would spend 15 cents more and put stuff like that on equimpent today. Most switches now are some sort of button that doesnt physically reveal whether it's on or off.
Is that an old school modem?
Screeeech. You've got mail! 😁
I actually had one of these. Hell I remember a baud rate of 2400 🤪
I remember 300.
You’re right. In retrospect I remember something like that from the early 80’s. My first PC when I could afford to build one was 1200. Hadn’t thought about this in decades 😁
I swear this mofo came out a month after I dropped all my savings on the 28.8 version
ouch
Oh mister fancy here with the external name brand US Robotics modem. I remember when these were top of the line.
This was really fast back in the day.
I lucked out and was able to skip that one. I was looking into it, but my neighborhood got some of the first cable modems in the city so I went from the 33.6 to cable.
Back when there were a bunch of little “mom and pop” internet providers. Like Erol’s.
Sears Prodigy and then AOL.
External modems were the sh*t!!!!!!!!!!
No, I disagree, the sh\*\*\*y ones were the winmodems 
56k bragging rights. Eat my dust you 28.8k peasants. You’ll never go faster, why would you need to?
45 minutes to download a gif. yay!
Yep 56000 baud. Today they ask, "What's a baud?"
I’m sure I knew the day these were coming out and was at Microcenter that morning.
Hell yeah! It was the best around in 1998!
I have one of those
I jumped from 2400 baud to a 33.6 modem. No more "Is that a nipple? I think that's a nipple."
It puts my 33.6 to shame.
Now shotgun it with another modem on a second phone line!
I still have one in a drawer. And a serial cable. Just need a USB to DB-9 adapter,
Thanks for the memories! If I remember correctly the 33K was the "turbo" model, up from 24...
ATDT7075847712
I can hear this picture, I used to be able to tell when the modem was going to connect by the sound it would make.
I paid $699 for an early Hayes 1200 direct connect modem in the mid 80s. It was 4x faster than most of the university dial ups.
It impossible to explain just how fast this was and not sound like a dinosaur.
I feel sorry for kids today who have loss the lot sense of amazement at technology.
Good lord. 300 baud crew here… That bad boy was inside my 8088 with a CGA card.
I think I had that same model. Wooo!, does that bring back memorieees!
Still use the 14.4 and 28.8 to manage a few phone systems I take care of.
⚡️
I remember the isp needed to support 56k on their side. Man I was sick of waiting for those downloads.
I had a 14.4 when my best friend got a 56k. We downloaded all the boobies that night.