Zweiblumen

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

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Sodomy non sapiens. : I'm buggered if I know

Baraka_Guru

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.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Charlatan

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.

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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Baraka_Guru

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.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

BadNick

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.

Baraka_Guru

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

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Martian

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.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Baraka_Guru

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.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Martian

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

You should know me at least that well by now.

__________________
I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept
I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept
I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head
I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said

- Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

Baraka_Guru

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

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

BadNick

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

MSD

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.

levite

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.....

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Leto

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!

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You said you didn't give a fuck about hockey
And I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr

http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Leto_Atreides_I

LordEden

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.

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Vice-President of the CinnamonGirl Fan Club - The Meat of the Zombiesquirrel and CinnamonGirl Sandwich

Baraka_Guru

Television was created as a vehicle for advertising.

The Internet was created as a vehicle for porn.

It's elementary, really.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

LordEden

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Vice-President of the CinnamonGirl Fan Club - The Meat of the Zombiesquirrel and CinnamonGirl Sandwich

Lasereth

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.

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"A Darwinian attacks his theory, seeking to find flaws. An ID believer defends his theory, seeking to conceal flaws." -Roger Ebert

Tully Mars

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.

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I used to drink to drown my sorrows, but the damned things have learned how to swim- Frida Kahlo

Vice President Starkizzer Fan Club

Baraka_Guru

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.

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Redlemon

And here's the same thing, in picture form:


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

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Poppinjay

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.

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I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

JamesB

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

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-- apt-get install spare_time --

MoonDog

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.

Wyodiver33

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

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I like stuff.