My first modem was an external High Speed 2400 baud with mnp5 bougth the same day as I visited HP headquarters in Palo Alto. Used it on my 386 and 486 but my first PC (intel based) was an Zenith 148 if I remember correctly. It had a switch to slow the CPU down to the same speed as IBM PC XT.

ZB

I know --- hardware is so cheap now. The system I listed above was reasonably priced when I bought it:

486SX 25MHz
8 MB RAM
80 MB HD
5 1/4" floppy drive
3 1/2" floppy drive
2400 baud modem (internal!)
14" monitor (CRT, of course)

The affordable price of $1,599. (Canadian)

I remember buying a CDROM drive to replace the 5 1/4" drive. It was a 4X speed for $400. But, hey, I got to play Myst finally.

Baraka... thank you for posting the sound of dial up! Awesome. I am pretty sure that was the sound of 14.4 because I seem to recall the "boing boing" sound didn't happen at the lower speed modems. Regardless... I love that sound. It was the sound of the future.

Charlatan, no problem, but give most of the credit to Redlemon for inspiring me to do it.

And, yes, the higher speed modems had that sound. I remember my 56K doing it. It was a much longer connection process than the 2400.

When I bought this in 1984 it normally sold for ~$3500. It was plenty good to explore BBS porn when not working on work stuff.

Ah, that reminds me...the first ever file I downloaded over a modem was a gif of Claudia Schiffer. :thumbsup:

Modem handshakes (also known as 'the dial-up sound') varied based on a lot of factors, to the point where no two were identical. Speed was a major determinant, yes, and older modems did not include that sound that you're talking about.

I have no doubt that there are folks out there who can determine the speed of the modem based on the handshake alone, although I am not one of those folks.

Wow, Martian, BadNick brings up BBS porn and I mention a gif from an early Claudia Schiffer shoot. What do you do? You talk about "modem handshakes."

Seriously. :no:

Dude, you're acting like it's a surprise.

You should know me at least that well by now.

I know, I know...but some things you can just never get used to....

I think my first BBS gif dl was Alyssa Milano ...but it went down and dirty pretty fast from there.

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g2...ilano__14_.jpg

In 1987, at the age of 3 and guided by my dad, I dialed into Prodigy with our V.32 modem for the first time. When I was 9, I used the actual world wide web to view my first website. It's all been downhill from there.

First modem I ever saw used: in a friend's computer lab at the University of Minnesota, probably around 1981, an acoustic coupler. He told me it was to send messages from one computer to another. I wondered why he didn't just pick up the phone and talk to whoever it was he was sending the message to.

First modem I ever personally used: in school, a 2400 baud, attached to an Apple II+, I want to say maybe 1983 or '84.... Sent a "computer message" to a guy at U of M. My best friend then used the modem to "electronically record" a videogame...onto a cassette tape drive!

First modem I ever owned: way later. 1992. Junior year of college. 14.4K fax modem. I thought it was hot shit. At first, I used it to send e-mails, and to play online text-based role-playing games, via the college internet server. Then, about a year and a half later, someone told me about this thing called the "World Wide Web," and how you could get free porn on your computer there.....

that sounds like mine. It was property of the National-Victoria Grey Trust Company (now that dates it doesn't it?). I was their on-call support programmer for the stock transfer system (COBOL - IMS mainframe system with a CICS front end) back in the late '80's and early '90's.

They agreed with my proposal for a desktop (amber display compaq) at home with the modem so that I could log in to resolve production problems from home, rather than taking a pager and driving in to downtown Toronto several times a week, and sometimes several times a night!

I like how most of the stories about being browsing the WWW or BBSes end with "There was porn there".

I know the 2nd website I went to my first time on the WWW was a site with pictures of Pamela Anderson naked.

Television was created as a vehicle for advertising.

The Internet was created as a vehicle for porn.

It's elementary, really.

14.4KBPs. We had in 1995 I believe. Then in maybe 1998 we upgraded to 56k, and then in 2000 we had broadband already. One of my high school friends had a 5 MBps cable broadband connection at his house in 1996. You have NO FUCKING IDEA how jealous all of the computer nerds were at school. He was downloading at like 400 KBps or more and we were downloading at....3 KBps.

My first modem was an external 1200 and my first system was a 8088 with a 20mg HD, 256K RAM and 5 1/4 floppy and a amber monochrome display.

Yeah, I remember when most nerds were booting around with a 56k modem, while the "losers" were still stuck in 28.8 land or worse. However, the occasional alpha-nerd could brag about the dedicated T1 line he had at home. You know, the "Porsche" of Internet connections. It made us all drool.

And here's the same thing, in picture form:
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/9946/zitsmodem.jpg

(I had to pull out the scanner for this one...)

http://www.perfdata.com/PDRimages/Products/5853.jpg

This is the first one I used. 1200 baud. About half the size of a toaster. My mom used it to log in to her work network at IBM. She taught me how to log in.

The first one I purchased was an internal 56k.

Hayes 2400baud. I then bought my 14.4k ($200 of my own money at 9 years old).

My first modem used was the 2400 baud internal in my PS/1 386SX. I eventually upgraded from that computer to a 486DX, which I hammered various upgrades into to make it a 486DX4. That had a 9800 baud fax modem, and I thought I was the shit for being able to send/receive faxes :)

I think that first modem I actually bought was a 14.4 for that computer's end of days period, and then I bought a Pentium 90. Things get fuzzy here...I know I upgraded...I think I went the 28.8 and stopped for a long time, before convincing my wife that we needed to spend the cash on a 56k.

Oh yes, things were rocking at that point!

After that was my Cisco ADSL modem, and then the cable modem.

I was amazed that I could get nude pics of women with my 9800. Yummmmm.