Modems, wArEz, and ANSI art: Remembering BBS life at 2400bps

Discussion in 'hardware' started by ronjor, Jan 22, 2014.

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  1. ronjor

    ronjor Global Moderator

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  2. Bill_Bright

    Bill_Bright Registered Member

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    Clearly, the author is just a pup!

    2400 "baud" (bps) was a speed demon. I was happy when I could afford to upgrade to 1200 baud!

    I started out with a "Commodore 1650" modem for my old Commodore 64. It ran at a blazingly fast 300 baud (compared to the 110 baud "VIC Modem" created for the VIC 20).
     
  3. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    To read good information and stories about classic computing, modems, and gaming.. One needs to sign up and read the vintage computing forums.
     
  4. noone_particular

    noone_particular Registered Member

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    I ran dialup for a long, long time, fortunately at better speeds than those. Normal was around 28K. Once in a while I could get 45K. Assuming that you didn't lose the connection and it wasn't interrupted by a phone call, the ISP had a one hour time limit on the connection. I remember waiting until the middle of the night to get connections with better speeds and fewer interruptions just to have a better chance of getting a file in before the connection expired. Download managers were lifesavers. I remember downloading Knoppix with a download manager on dialup. Every evening I'd resume the download and pause it the next morning. It took a full week.
     
  5. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    I had a 56k modem, but due to a bad phone line, I only got half that speed. My modem was smart enough not to drop out when a phone call came in. But I was disconnected from my ISP after 4 hours, so 6 times a day my modem would redial my IPS's number to reconnect.

    At one stage I switched to an ISP which how no limits on connection time, but the connection speed was so exceptionally slow that I had to switch back to another ISP to a usable internet connection.
     
  6. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    Mmm.. real wAReZ started in the early Apple II days when 300 baud was very good. And 1200 baud was ultra-elite. This 2400 & 9600 crap depicted in the article is about 12 years too late.
     
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