How fast was your first modem? Boost if you feel the nostalgia?
Units omitted because nomenclature has shifted over time and IFKYK.
Poll
Voting ended 4 July at 14:07.
How fast was your first modem? Boost if you feel the nostalgia? Units omitted because nomenclature has shifted over time and IFKYK. Anonymous poll
Poll
300
632
12.6%
1200
446
8.9%
2400
661
13.2%
9600
324
6.5%
14.4
866
17.3%
28.8
460
9.2%
33.6
275
5.5%
56k
1,040
20.7%
128 or 1.544 or something else fancy
71
1.4%
I have only ever known broadband!
5,017 people voted. 242
4.8%
Voting ended 4 July at 14:07. 317 comments
12
@sabi for the most part: #HSCSD @ 115,2 kBit/s (mostly due to throttling on #3G networks which peaked at 7,2MBit/s... But the absolute first was 64kBit/s #ISDN... @kkarhan more people than I thought had ISDN! I’ve only personally known one person who had an ISDN connection and it wasn’t his first. I did know the admin for my local ISP who at one point had four 33.6 modems in some sort of bonded configuration which was pretty rad but obviously not his first modem either. @sabi local telco offered 20hrs p.m. of ISDN with free channel bonding for ~ €15 p.m. back then... @sabi 300bps is super simple and just 4x the tty speed of 75bps... 2400bps is the limit that works on shitty phone booths with acoustic couplers... @kkarhan @drwho @sabi @BNetzA 2400 was the first "big step", below that just too easy to out-type or out-read. It's also the fastest I could get working over satellite phone relay from the arctic (2-4s latency), quite robust to bad lines or the like. Past that, everything of course became a bit quicker, but from 1200 -> 2400 on the BBS's for me felt like dial-up -> DSL. @sabi I voted 300 as that was the first modem I owned myself, but the first one I used was a super cool 1200/75 that a friend had. 😎 @sabi @nikatjef interesting! I wasn’t aware of many sub-300 baud modems in consumer use. I thought those were primarily in expensive commercial and military applications. @sabi @sabi we had an audio-coupled 300 baud, but that was my mom’s. My first computer had a 2400bps, so that’s what I voted for. @everyplace nothing like your first computer that was really yours and wasn’t the family computer! @drwho that’s not easy to do! Did they eventually find out or did you tell them? The first modem I paid for with my own money was a 2400, but I've used 1200 kit for work. God, maybe even that 1200/75 filth. I mean, I think the first one I could remember was 14 4. possibly had one, slower, before that. @engelke way more people with 110 than I expected! I thought 110 was pretty much limited to commercial and mil applications but apparently not! @isagalaev I’m curious how many people with later, faster modems like 33.6 had internal vs external modems ..... Why is the curve taking on the Cisco Logo? I mean, yes, Cisco took that image for a reason, but still. @Mendie_Taoma responses have been shifting a lot based on who has been boosting. Early lead went to “fancy” options as Europeans with ISDN answered, then 300 took the lead, then 56k shot up, now 14.4 is rebounding @Mendie_Taoma I would say T1 was definitely fancy. The first ISP in my hometown started with a T1 @sabi first I used was a 300 baud VICMODEM that I borrowed from a friend for a couple months and I was immediately hooked on BBSes. The first modem I owned was a 1200 baud Commodore 1670 that I bought used at a computer swap meet, which I used with a C64 for a couple years and then with a 128D for another couple years, until I got an Amiga, when I finally upgraded to 9600. @sabi trading pirated games was just an excuse to visit a bunch of boards, I almost never played them. @sabi first was 110 baud on an ASR 33 teletype. we were so excited when we got the 300 baud modem! @sabi but so much hate for 110 back in the day! it wasn't all over how slow it was, but that it would so often drop the call halfway through downloading a big file to the papertape punch. @sabi @sabi @sabi First, let me explain to you a landline phone device circa 1986... 😎 @jab01701mid @sabi I bought MacSlip directly from the publisher—by which I mean I walked in their door and handed them money in exchange for a floppy. @sabi It was like a VPN, except on a serial terminal rather than a layer on a modern LAN... @sabi 56k but over a radio "landline", whatever the hell that thing was called. Losses so bad it took five attempts to just connect. I still somehow managed to accumulate an MP3 library! @virtulis my parents moved from a rural town to an even more rural town and for the longest time they couldn’t get a reliable connection over 21.9k and they couldn’t connect at all when it rained @phredmoyer I’m mostly curious about advertised speed but compression hardware is interesting. Was this separate, dedicated hardware? @sabi First I owned was 2400, but first I used was the old phone in rubber cupped cradle with fake woodgrain 300baud one. @sabi I am not very tech, so don't recall what my first modem at home was, but it ran through my phone line and it was well before the web--before hard drives on PC, for that matter. But I generally used the T3 line at school. @Camille sounds like it was on the low end of this range, maybe 300 to 1200 baud @sabi Sounds about right. I know for a 10K doc I would set it to download onto a floppy, then go have a cup of tea, @angelastella way more 110 and 300 baud than I expected! Lots of early adopters! This is a great network for people who are into retrocomputing, history or mere nostalgia. @sabi I’m an outlier, because even though I first started using the internet in 1993, I’ve never had dialup, only broadband. @mckra1g did you have broadband to the home in 1993 or was that through school/work or other organizations? @sabi The first one I personally owned was probably 14.4, but in my first job in IT one of my duties was overseeing a university's dwindling stock of 300-baud modems, mostly used by faculty to check their email. @sabi 300/75 with a rubber-cup acoustic coupler with a GPO 706 rotary dial telephone. I feel zero nostalgia. @sabi Looking forward to seeing the final results! It seems every time speed quadruples, there’s a boost in votes (yet the next speed in the order is less). I wonder, if the trend holds, what drove it? Cost? Market? Services? Fun and interesting poll! 🙂 @sabi I have no clue, I was to young to remember anything besides PPP and the noises @sabi Kind of ok, things were mostly text only, and I read at least four times as fast as I typed ... @sabi USRobotics Sportser Voice 33.6k Sold it to a client at some point so they could use it to access online bank (which ignored certificate expiry when used with direct dial), then got it back once the bank removed dial-in and only supported Internet connection. @sabi @sabi 300 was the second one. The first one was 110 baud, connected to a teletype in the High School's 'Computer Room'. It was a loud, slow way to do computing, but it was still awesome. @sabi my first was 2400, it came with my Packard Bell 486. now, my first that WORKED? that's a different question, and that one was a 14.4 @sabi 300 but not cradle. By the time I could afford one I got a fancy direct-connect one @sabi I voted for the first one I ever bought (Avatex 1200baud direct connect) but the first one I used was a 300baud acoustic coupler at school. And I have an old 75/110 coupler I scavenged off an old TTY. @sabi My parents only got broadband in 2005 (Adelphia cable modem). Before then we had AOL 56K dialup.
@sabi But quickly 14k4, 33k6, 56k, en ISDN TA before broadband. @sabi 300 baud with my Commodore 64. It came with a trial subscription to a commercial service called QLink, which (IIRC) was a predecessor to GEnie or one of the later generation commercial things. we had an "acoustic coupler" at home but that was something my dad connected way back when and did all the manual switch flipping on the back of the thing. 1200 was the first real modem modem @sabi IIRC, my first was a Bell 101 modem, featuring a blazing 110 baud. It was on a Teletype ASR 33, and used to talk to a GE-435 time sharing system, circa 1971. @sabi In my second job out of college (circa 1997), I used my then-ancient 1200 baud modem to connect to a newspaper editorial mainframe whose modem could *only* connect at 300 baud. I had to lifeboat off a few dozen in-process stories so that we could load them onto our new writing-and-pagination system. @sabi Ok so here's the thing My parents had dialup up until about 2009 or so, when they got a cellular modem, which was their sole form of internet until about 2014. It was _worse_ than the dial up was, and more expensive, but we were moving a lot However _I_ didn't get internet until 2014 when they got free ethernet, and didn't need the cell modem anymore. It would only work in one room of the house, before 8 AM, and would still only load text most of the time I got LAN a year later, luckily @sabi I don't remember and made a guess instead of looking up availability in the year I got it. I DO remember the absolutely massive phone bill I got the first month due to the bonkers per minute charge on my dorm room phone line. 😂 Had to institute a self-imposed monthly modem time cap! @sabi Although I am in the impossibly small group of people that have only ever known broadband for “real internet” but have used modems for small private/point-to-point networks, so I guess I could've voted for my “first modem” still… (28.8 kbit/s for the record) @sabi First one I actually remember was definitely 56.6K, though of course it only ever connected at 48.8 (or 33.6 on a bad day) because phone lines are a thing. I think I may have used worse on my grandmother's or father's systems when very very young, but not sure. I will never, so long as I shall live, ever forget what the dialing/connection tones sounded like, lol. @sabi @sabi first modem was a hybrid modem/soundcard. Depending on boot time config, you could have 14.4k internet and working sound, or 28.8k internet and no sound |
I debated whether I should include the "something else fancy" option but one of you selected that. If you happen to see this comment, would you mind telling me what kind of connection that was?