My first modem was a ....

http://bbslist.textfiles.com/609/oldschool.html

@jpw:

http://bbslist.textfiles.com/609/oldschool.html

Jason Scott is quite the guy… I was about to plug his BBS Documentary, then noticed you already linked to one of his sites.

http://bbsdocumentary.com/

I can't imagine how he managed to get so much filmed when the times I've seen him in person, he always has some story to tell. I've sat and listened to him go on about his old band and a number of other things for probably 3 hours while the waiters kept giving us weird looks because we had a lot to talk about and didn't see any reason we had to leave. Don't get me wrong, it's all really interesting and really funny stories, but I can't imagine how everyone he interviewed managed to get in what they wanted to say.

300 baud modem that didn't even auto-dial! You had to dial the number with a normal phone, wait for the screeches, flick the switch and put down the phone.

I was AMAZED at how fast things were when we upgraded to 2400. I could even bear to turn ANSI on!

This was in 1989. Even then it seemed slow. My friend met his first girlfriend on a local BBS though, pretty impressive for 1989 when there were only 3 females on the 'net.

When I went to college in 1990 I impressed my friend by telling him that our "modems" (ie ethernet cards) on campus operated at the equivalent of over 1 million baud.

@caker:

My first modem was a ….
My first modem wasn't even Hayes compatible. I think it was a PACE produce and used commands such as "DSN" (Dial Stored Number). Hmm. That was in 1990, and they were hand-me-downs from my company, who had replaced them with Hayes 1200 baud modems.

I think the high speed version was 1200/1200, and the normal version was 300/300.

My cousin used to have a 1200/75 acoustic coupler before that :-)

My first not-owned modem was a 2400 baud, hayes compat back in 1991 and i couldnt get it to work on 2400 on our lines so I mainly was using 300 at first … loved to send text just a bit faster than if i was to type it by hand :). It did it's job … anyone remembers Fidonet? i remember getting up early before going to school and fetch my messages (was only a fidonaut then) and replied up to the second it began to be too late to reach school :)

After that, I got my first external 9600 USR Sportster (quite a toy!!) and started my own BBS and becaue a fidonet point … I remember hiding the modem between the clothes, shut the wardrobe's doors to be able to sleep; hated those damn clicks :P. Poor BBS lasted only 1 year or so .. Internet took over :)

When I was about 8 my mother was taking classes at a university, and I would use her account to mess around with unix in the labs while she was in class. What I remember–

/usr/games/gsh

set TERM=adm3a

fortune

Eventually at home we got a 300 baud coupler thing that the regular phone head set squeezed in to. A borrowed ADM-3A plugged in to that. At some point I think we acquired a Wyse. Oh and one time I accidentally rendered her account unusable by changing her .login file, I remember that vividly. Oh and I used vi to do my writing homework. At 300 baud, you really appreciate the efficiency of vi commands. My how things have changed.

Well… aparently Jason Scott didn't like my praise and plug to his documentary in this thread, and decided to bring in up in a channel we both frequent. I figured since he wanted to make it public how he felt about my comment since he announced this in a public channel without once bringing it up with me privately, I felt everyone here should know how Jason likes it when people praise him (btw, SketchCow == Jason Scott):

> Tierra, was it you who posted the thing about me in a web forum about not being quiet?

SketchCow, ?

A tierra did, how many tierras could there be.

what forums?

http://www.linode.com/forums/archive/o_ … _…..html">http://www.linode.com/forums/archive/ot/t1204/myfirstmodemwasa_…..html

yup it was him

Was wondering.

I said "quite" not "quiet"

and yeah, that's me

I can't imagine how he managed to get so much filmed when the times I've seen him in person, he always has some story to tell. I've sat and listened to him go on about his old band and a number of other things for probably 3 hours while the waiters kept giving us weird looks because we had a lot to talk about and didn't see any reason we had to leave. Don't get me wrong, it's all really interesting and really funny stories, but I can't imagine how everyone

yeah, that was me

ooh, that hurt.

Short answer: It's called appropriate time and place

Sue him for defamation!

That's what you get for plugin' him.

I don't see how what I said was bad though

Oh…it was

Believe me.

• optikal shrugs

Let's phrase it this way.

The gist of the message can be read as "How did Jason actually film anyone talking, he never shuts up and how could the subjects get a word in edgewise."

And the answer is, of course, "Jason knew there was a time and place for talking, and during interviews he had travelled hundreds or thousands of miles to conduct, was not one of them."

but no one said that… it wasn't like I was supporting someone's comment that you "never let the interviewee get a word in edgewise"… but if that's the way you feel, I'll be careful to stop and think about how you would take what I would say in the future…

heh.

" Don't get me wrong, it's all really interesting and really funny stories, but I can't imagine how everyone he interviewed managed to get in what they wanted to say."

How the **** else am I supposed to take that?

It's not a matter of "I didn't know how you would take that."

What it came down to was "I didn't know Jason would ever find that and read it."

or, a matter of, 'it's his ****ing opinion, and if you're insecure enough to take it personally… '

I personally felt the need to express the fact that you are a very interesting person with a lot of good stories to tell… which I viewed to be the main point of what I was saying, and ending it with a little humor… jesus christ.. **** if I say another word about you again… I don't see anyone in the thread afterwards saying anything as if they took it that way… I think your the only one who did

OK, first of all, dataw0lf, you're a speed bump.

Your taking this way too far SketchCow

i honestly dont see how you are taken such offense by it.. just take it with a wiff and move on.. he obviously didnt intended to directly offend you, and as dataw0lf said.. its his opinion

a speed bump eh? haha.

i like speed bumps

Yeah, a speed bump.

You know.

A thing that lies in the road and does **** all.

I do **** alot, but not 'all'.

Except slow down people trying to go somewhere.

You know. A waste. A useless lump of flesh. A killfile tester.

wow.. you obviously dont even know dataw0lf

haha, I could take this on a 'flaming' level, but I won't.

lol

However, taking something personal that somebody says on the internet about you expresses enough.

Wow.

He sure takes it personally, doesn't he? :/

Good grief.

Back to topic, my first modem was an actual hayes-compatible 1200. Used it primarily to connect to Trex (beaucoup extra points if you can guess my userid there, and no, it's not taupehat). I'll never forget when I first saw an internal modem - that thing was cooler than a digital wristwatch!

Couple of fun things back then… first of all, call wasting. If you were there, you'll recall that trex1 was almost always full up, and trex2 was usually full as well. But call waiting had just hit the scene (this was 1990, remember?), and I don't even know if there was a way to disable it at first. The savvy trex user quickly learned the phone numbers of all the members who had call waiting. The trick was to setup your AT command (if you didn't already have it scripted), and then ring the hapless victim's phone twice before hanging up and quickly hitting Return to execute the dialup. Since error correction basically didn't exist, the call waiting beeps would cause a disconnect, and you had an open line :roll:

The other "fun" thing that probably wasn't much fun was people using acoustic couplers… and listening to their music too loud. A conversation with such a person on typically looked like something like this:

batman: Yeah, we're gonna meet up at dennys for coffee, el camino.  Come with us!
dipstick: ssssssssssssssjjjjjs;;;;ssssssssssssssjjjjjs;;;;
astaire: Can't.  Homework.
dipstick: ssssssssssssssjjjjjs;;;;
random: Turn the shit down!  You're giving line noise again!
dipstick: Huh?ssssssssssssssjjjjjs;;;;ssssssssssssssjjjjjs;;;;ssssssssssssssjjjjjs;;;;
astaire: is that what thatt is?
dipstick: ssssssssssssssjjjjjs;;;;ssssssssssssssjjjjjs;;;;
(dipstick: modem dropped)

Ahh, the good old days. And if I got some of the syntax or feel of it wrong, forgive me. It's been fifteen years and a lot of brain damage since I was last on trex. But that was the gist.

It's so nice to see how IRC has come along since then. Oh wait, it hasn'-!- taupehat [~heh@taupehat.com] has quit [Connection reset by peer]

I wondered what the "interweb" was, never having

heard the term before. Now I know:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=interweb

Ouch to anyone selecting this choice on the poll.

@Ciaran:

Wow.

He sure takes it personally, doesn't he? :/

Yeah, geez, I took the original post as praise (perhaps back-handed praise)… I didn't read negativity into it. It's a shame he reacted that way. I've done that before though. Sometimes we geeks aren't as socially adept as we'd like. :-/

I started with a 14.4 man. I guess that isn't that old compared to some of you other old timers eh? ;)

Where is the checkbox for 110 baud?

First was a 2400, but we never used it. Later bought a 14.4, which I really consider the first one we really used a lot. Later got a 33.6 but it never connected more then 28.8.

I then remember the whole 56k mess. The X2 vs Kflex56 or what every they were called.

I remember when my small town finally got DSL it was a godsend to not have a second phone line and the modem on auto-redial. Later moved and got on Cable as it is the best broadband in town. What is weird is this all happened in the last 10 years.

My kids have no idea what a nightmare Dial-up was. We have 2 Wireless access points in the house and every room has about 3 Ethernet jacks so they just have internet everywhere. In the bedrooms, on the xbox, on the laptop in the kitchen or the bathroom. What is it going to be like in another 10 years… I wonder.

Hook up with your old BBS buddies here:

http://www.bbsmates.com

I found a few and even talked to one of them :-) Pretty cool stuff if you're taking a stroll down memory lane.

Nothing like connecting to AOL+the internet on a 2400 baud modem (at 12-13 years old, for me) and downloading, uh, pictures.

;)

BBS's on a Total Telecommunications 64 300 baud modem for the C-64. Good times…

I didn't get to vote. Is the vote time limited or what? Anyway my first modem was one that I found in a dumpster. It had a heating problem which I guess was the reason someone had thrown it away. So I could only use it for about 30-60 minutes before it overheated. But I solved that by simply putting a bag of ice cubes on its heat pipes. It was 1200 baud but I soon bought a Supra modem I think it was called, at 2400 bps. I had that one for years until I upgraded to a 14400 US Robotics I think it was called. The feeling of that speed increase was one of my childhoods happiest moments. I didn't have a lot of friends.

Today I have a 12/9 Mbps VDSL line and think it feels slow. I guess I will never get satisfied. I always fantasize about higher speeds.

28.8k. We used it with two phone lines to play warcraft against each other. ZUG ZUG

Bump

Sorry, couldn't resist this old thread; My First Modem was a Maplin Electronics kitset 300 baud modem.

There a nice picture here, except mine didn't have the kitset case, just a simple aluminium box, so it looked a lot less pretty than this example.

That got upgraded to a 1200/75 baud Miracle WS2000.

By then I had a heavy online habbit, primarily on CIX, which was like a UK version of BIX. It had the ability to download messages to your PC for reading off line, using a Off Line Reader, and I figured out that by stumping up a fortune for a faster then state of the art modem, 600 quid maybe for a Hayes 12200, and buying an OLR, I'd save money off the phone bill, and pay back the cost inside two years. I think I took out a loan for that modem…

Communication seemed a lot more exciting back then…

A 300 baud acoustic coupler he used to connect his terminal to the UC campus where he worked.

It was cool - you dial the phone number (rotary phone) and put the hand piece into the coupler.

I don't see his exact model - but this is what they looked like:

http://images.google.com/images?q=acoustic%20coupler

My first modem was a 1200/300 baud modem; a friend of mine and I used to wardial to try and find interesting BBS. Never got anywhere too interesting, except for one system that identified itself as a the remote gateway for the local Army Research Lab ;)

My first was a 300 baud hooked up to a TRS-80 Model 1. I had built an Altair but never got it to do much. I sure wish I still had it!

I spent a lot of time on Compuserve using the TRS Model IV and Model 100. I still have a couple of Model 100s BTW, the original laptop!

I still have an old Intel 9600 modem in the closet. It must weigh three pounds. It was built like a tank.

Those were the days. I sure enjoyed visiting the BBS link in an earlier post.

Jeff

@Asiadeep:

I started with a 14.4 man.

+1

My first modem was a hayes compatible 1200 bps 'kinda external' for a Commodore 64. It plugged into the back of the C64 into one of it's proprietary 'slots'. The one thing I remember about that (besides it being only 40 column) as that the modem defaulted to auto answer (ats0=1 I think) after a power reset. So if we had a brown-out while I wasn't home, if the phoneline was still plugged into the modem, it would screech in anyones ear that called. My mom didn't like that much. My init string was of course ATS0=0.

I briefly had a regular external 2400 bps modem for my 8088. 80 columns wide baby, ya..

After that, I upgraded to a 14.4 USR sportster Internal for my PC. I think it was a 386 of some kind. Then I got a 486 that would run Doom. So I had to figure out the AT commands to disable error correction, flow control, etc on my modem, and all my friends modems. The USR was ATZ&K0&S0&M0 If I remember right. All my friends modems were non USR's, so were different.

An then there was forcing two modems to connect to each other when directly connected through a phone cord. Disable dial tone detection on one (forgot the command), then do "ATD", and on the other, simply ATA. Worked when I didn't have the stuff around to do a regular serial nul-modem connection.

Ahh, those were the days.

@titan_rw:

Disable dial tone detection on one (forgot the command)
ATX0 ?

My first modem was some kind of sound card with 300 baud capabilities. Somehow my dad hacked it up to 1200, I think.

Then a 2400 with MNP5, I forget the brand.

Then a Boca Research 2400 with v.42bis. Wow it was fast! Had it forever because 9600 modems were expensive and I was just a student.

Then I worked for an ISP and they gave me a v.Everything HST Courier they didn't need for some reason. I have it in a box somewhere, maybe I can sell it to wannabe Mark Zuckerberg.

Mine was a 14.4k modem. I'm surprised that's not in the poll, it was a lot more common than some of the other speeds listed like 19.2k

@Guspaz:

Mine was a 14.4k modem. I'm surprised that's not in the poll, it was a lot more common than some of the other speeds listed like 19.2k

I heard somewhere 9600 is really as far as we got.

Everything above 9600 is marketing magic and really awesome compression of the basic 9600 modem technology.

If that makes any sense.

good old 14.4 was mine. didnt use it for much on 3.11 for workgroups if i recall. I was still pretty young :D

@ferodynamics:

@Guspaz:

Mine was a 14.4k modem. I'm surprised that's not in the poll, it was a lot more common than some of the other speeds listed like 19.2k

I heard somewhere 9600 is really as far as we got.

Everything above 9600 is marketing magic and really awesome compression of the basic 9600 modem technology.

If that makes any sense.

No. It doesn't.

1200/75 was my first modem, connected to a 48K ZX Spectrum.

~~http://a2.twimg.com/profile_images/4959 … bigger.jpg">http://a2.twimg.com/profileimages/495975578/zxspectrum48k1_bigger.jpg" />

A Prism VTX 5000 modem. It had no dialling capabilities, so I had to place the call first, and switch it on when I heard the tone. I late modified it to have a pulse dialler.

![](" />~~

@opello:

BBS's on a Total Telecommunications 64 300 baud modem for the C-64. Good times…

I had the Commodore 300 baud modem. I forget its number, but it was a long beige box that plugged into the RS-232 on the back.

And I used it to call BBSes. From there, graduated to a 1200 baud, then went to IBM with a 28.8k then 14.4k on BBSes and PPP.

@aag:

Where is the checkbox for 110 baud?

Here, here!

Of course, the first actual digital communication device that I used was an old RTTY machine through a HAL interface to a radio - at …. something around 60 (it actually had a decimal in it, and I can' recall what it was, might have been 67.6 or something strange like that)

Seeing all those 300 baud responses I don't feel so old now. Atari 300 BTW.