5 ms·

9600baud was revolutionary compared to 2400baud, text would load & scroll faster than you could read it! Some sites has upload/download ratios - you could only

9600baud was revolutionary compared to 2400baud, text would load & scroll faster than you could read it! Some sites has upload/download ratios - you could only download so much many files without uploading files, forcing an exchange rate. There was a selection of download protocols you'd choose from, based on what your client support and the BBS supported: "KERMIT", "XMODEM", "YMODEM", "ZMODEM", and "JMODEM" The better protocols supported batch, multi-file, compression, and resuming interrupted downloads - very important for when your session was interrupted by someone else in the house picking up the phone and trying to dial. We had a second phone line installed for the modem; I learned how telephone wiring worked and re-wired the our phone outlets to use the correct lines.

samstave 5y ago
Dont forget fucking with IRQs and DIP switches and jumpers to get that fancy 300 baud modem up and running so you could dial your best friend for a head-to-head game of Populous on your ever so amazingly awesome new EGA monitor! No more Cyan or Amber for this guy! 16 colors FTW! EDIT: And oh yeah - please insert Game Disk #2
- bink 5y ago
  All this talk of IRQs and DIP switches and no one has mentioned N81 or E71. There was a time when you had to pay attention to the parity before dialing. Also, it looks like 8N1 and 7E1 have become the more common notation now.
  - timbit42 5y ago
    Having lived through the modem era and having run a BBS, I've never seen N81 or E71 before. You must have been running a particular piece of software that made up it's own nomenclature.
    - EvanAnderson 5y ago
      The grandparent is talking about parity, data bits, and stop bits[0]. Different serial communications protocols had different framing needs. If you were dealing with PC-based BBS's, for the most part, you wouldn't have run into anything aside from N81. I didn't see much E71 outside of X.25 networks. [0] https://www3.nd.edu/~lemmon/courses/ee224/web-manual/web-manual/lab12/node2.html https://www3.nd.edu/~lemmon/courses/ee224/web-manual/web-man...
  - StanislavPetrov 5y ago
    Also haven't heard anyone mention that early manual terms required using "ATDT" to dial with a touch tone phone because the default dialing method was rotary back then and there was no GUI.
- jwalton 5y ago
  “Mom, don’t pick up the phone!”
- timbit42 5y ago
  You must have been using DOS or Windows. We Macintosh, Atari ST, and Amiga users had no such IRQ, DIP switch or jumper issues. Also, the Amiga wasn't limited to 16 colors.
  - samstave 5y ago
    Well look at the dead technology on this husk of a 'human'
icedchai 5y ago
9600 baud definitely felt like a quantum leap! I remember upgrading from 2400 to 9600. It was huge.
- FjolsvithAase 5y ago
  And then there was the commoners and the elites: Those who had USR Sportster modems and the superior USR Couriers.
addingnumbers 5y ago
Worth mentioning since it's unimaginable to many kids today, in the BBS days, there was no multitasking. When you kicked off a download that took 40 minutes, you couldn't do anything at all with your computer while it was transferring. (at least for MS-DOS users, who were the vast majority) All you had on your screen was the progress meter, some statistics, and an abort button. One day I came across a drop-in replacement for the zmodem transfer executable called "super zmodem" that let you play ascii Tetris while a transfer was going on and it blew my fricking mind. In total I probably played more Tetris on that download screen than I did with my Nintendo Gameboy that only had three games.
- ruslan 5y ago
  Many Fidonet mailers, like Binkley or T-Mail supported Hydra which was novel multi-streaming bidirectional serial protocol. You could download several files while uploading your outbound mail at the same time. It was very useful for those lucky possessed 28800 baud modems like ZyXEL Elite or US Robotics Courier (mid/late 90th).
- bink 5y ago
  You couldn't do anything unless you had software like Desqview. That was a revolution.
  - timbit42 5y ago
    OS/2 was better. It had pre-emptive multi-tasking like the Amiga, but with memory protection to prevent crashes. A friend ran a DOS BBS so I left him my OS/2 Warp so he could use his computer while the BBS was up.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  Not if you used DESQview [1]. I think everyone serious about BBSing used DESQview to multitask in DOS. Then along came DESQview/X... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
  - 5y ago
mikewarot 5y ago
Nitpick - Baud rate refers to the number of symbols sent by the modem per second, you can't send more than 8000 symbols per second through an analog phone line, as they are sampled at 8 Khz. You can sent multiple bits per symbol, which all modems did. By utilizing a direct digital connection to the phone network, an ISP could send up to 53 kbits/second using all 8 bits of each sample, minus a few for transitions that weren't allowed because of cross talk with other phone lines. Thus, the fastest modems were 8000 baud. PS: Yes, it was amazing to see the text actually flow / smooth scroll up the screen for the first time in my life, way faster than I could read it when it got a US Robotics Courier HST modem.
- Turing_Machine 5y ago
  Ah... memories of technical arguments past. :-) Some clarification for those who might not be familiar: One way to illustrate the difference is to consider communicating with physical signal flags, where there's a limit to how fast you can raise and lower the flags. The baud rate is how fast you can change the flag. The bit rate is how fast the information flows. Say you have only a black flag and a white flag, and you let the black flag be 1 and the white flag 0. In this case, the baud rate and the bit rate are the same, as each flag transition represents 1 bit of information. Now suppose you have also have a red flag and a green flag. You could let white be 00, black be 01, red be 10, and green be 11. The baud rate (rate of running the flags up and down the pole) remains the same, but the bit rate (number of bits encoded by a flag) has doubled. Analog modems used all kinds of tricks to encode more than one bit on each symbol transition. Later models sometimes even had built-in data compression and error correction (e.g. the Telebit modems, which would actually simulate things like ZMODEM and UUCP g protocol to the computers, while using their own compression/correction mechanisms on the physical link).
- ruslan 5y ago
  57600 baud (V.92) to be precise.
  - timbit42 5y ago
    57600 baud is incorrect. It was 57600 bps which was achieved over a 3200 baud connection by utilizing sophisticated signaling and compression. https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO-23.html https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO-23.html

samstave 5y ago

Dont forget fucking with IRQs and DIP switches and jumpers to get that fancy 300 baud modem up and running so you could dial your best friend for a head-to-head game of Populous on your ever so amazingly awesome new EGA monitor! No more Cyan or Amber for this guy! 16 colors FTW! EDIT: And oh yeah - please insert Game Disk #2

bink 5y ago
All this talk of IRQs and DIP switches and no one has mentioned N81 or E71. There was a time when you had to pay attention to the parity before dialing. Also, it looks like 8N1 and 7E1 have become the more common notation now.
- timbit42 5y ago
  Having lived through the modem era and having run a BBS, I've never seen N81 or E71 before. You must have been running a particular piece of software that made up it's own nomenclature.
  - EvanAnderson 5y ago
    The grandparent is talking about parity, data bits, and stop bits[0]. Different serial communications protocols had different framing needs. If you were dealing with PC-based BBS's, for the most part, you wouldn't have run into anything aside from N81. I didn't see much E71 outside of X.25 networks. [0] https://www3.nd.edu/~lemmon/courses/ee224/web-manual/web-manual/lab12/node2.html https://www3.nd.edu/~lemmon/courses/ee224/web-manual/web-man...
- StanislavPetrov 5y ago
  Also haven't heard anyone mention that early manual terms required using "ATDT" to dial with a touch tone phone because the default dialing method was rotary back then and there was no GUI.
jwalton 5y ago
“Mom, don’t pick up the phone!”
timbit42 5y ago
You must have been using DOS or Windows. We Macintosh, Atari ST, and Amiga users had no such IRQ, DIP switch or jumper issues. Also, the Amiga wasn't limited to 16 colors.
- samstave 5y ago
  Well look at the dead technology on this husk of a 'human'

icedchai 5y ago

9600 baud definitely felt like a quantum leap! I remember upgrading from 2400 to 9600. It was huge.

FjolsvithAase 5y ago
And then there was the commoners and the elites: Those who had USR Sportster modems and the superior USR Couriers.

addingnumbers 5y ago

Worth mentioning since it's unimaginable to many kids today, in the BBS days, there was no multitasking. When you kicked off a download that took 40 minutes, you couldn't do anything at all with your computer while it was transferring. (at least for MS-DOS users, who were the vast majority) All you had on your screen was the progress meter, some statistics, and an abort button. One day I came across a drop-in replacement for the zmodem transfer executable called "super zmodem" that let you play ascii Tetris while a transfer was going on and it blew my fricking mind. In total I probably played more Tetris on that download screen than I did with my Nintendo Gameboy that only had three games.

ruslan 5y ago
Many Fidonet mailers, like Binkley or T-Mail supported Hydra which was novel multi-streaming bidirectional serial protocol. You could download several files while uploading your outbound mail at the same time. It was very useful for those lucky possessed 28800 baud modems like ZyXEL Elite or US Robotics Courier (mid/late 90th).
bink 5y ago
You couldn't do anything unless you had software like Desqview. That was a revolution.
- timbit42 5y ago
  OS/2 was better. It had pre-emptive multi-tasking like the Amiga, but with memory protection to prevent crashes. A friend ran a DOS BBS so I left him my OS/2 Warp so he could use his computer while the BBS was up.
ryandrake 5y ago
Not if you used DESQview [1]. I think everyone serious about BBSing used DESQview to multitask in DOS. Then along came DESQview/X... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview
- 5y ago

mikewarot 5y ago

Nitpick - Baud rate refers to the number of symbols sent by the modem per second, you can't send more than 8000 symbols per second through an analog phone line, as they are sampled at 8 Khz. You can sent multiple bits per symbol, which all modems did. By utilizing a direct digital connection to the phone network, an ISP could send up to 53 kbits/second using all 8 bits of each sample, minus a few for transitions that weren't allowed because of cross talk with other phone lines. Thus, the fastest modems were 8000 baud. PS: Yes, it was amazing to see the text actually flow / smooth scroll up the screen for the first time in my life, way faster than I could read it when it got a US Robotics Courier HST modem.

Turing_Machine 5y ago
Ah... memories of technical arguments past. :-) Some clarification for those who might not be familiar: One way to illustrate the difference is to consider communicating with physical signal flags, where there's a limit to how fast you can raise and lower the flags. The baud rate is how fast you can change the flag. The bit rate is how fast the information flows. Say you have only a black flag and a white flag, and you let the black flag be 1 and the white flag 0. In this case, the baud rate and the bit rate are the same, as each flag transition represents 1 bit of information. Now suppose you have also have a red flag and a green flag. You could let white be 00, black be 01, red be 10, and green be 11. The baud rate (rate of running the flags up and down the pole) remains the same, but the bit rate (number of bits encoded by a flag) has doubled. Analog modems used all kinds of tricks to encode more than one bit on each symbol transition. Later models sometimes even had built-in data compression and error correction (e.g. the Telebit modems, which would actually simulate things like ZMODEM and UUCP g protocol to the computers, while using their own compression/correction mechanisms on the physical link).
ruslan 5y ago
57600 baud (V.92) to be precise.
- timbit42 5y ago
  57600 baud is incorrect. It was 57600 bps which was achieved over a 3200 baud connection by utilizing sophisticated signaling and compression. https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO-23.html https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO-23.html