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How I dodged getting a virus downloading on the shared library computers and bringing those floppies home I'll never know. We only had 8 hours a month of dial

by cube00 3y ago

How I dodged getting a virus downloading on the shared library computers and bringing those floppies home I'll never know. We only had 8 hours a month of dial up so I still had to frequent the library to get my fix. We also had to carefully consider when we would dial in because that was 25 cents a pop for the phone call. Hours spent writing and read mail and newsgroups offline and one "send and receive" when you were online to save those precious hours.

mnahkies 3y ago
We were fortunate enough to have unlimited hours, but living remotely enough to not get broadband until ~2010. Fond memories of downloading Linux Isos and the like from 10pm-7am over the course of weeks/months trying not to tie up the phone line too much. Getting access to a university's connection was a revelation and many a CDs were burnt of random stuff whilst being amazed that a month long endeavour could be done in minutes
- cube00 3y ago
  I did high school work experience at a university and they were kind enough to give me a Red Hat Linux CD to install at home along with a full printed manual for it. There began the awaking to a whole new world beyond DOS and Windows that I never would have had on dial up.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  At some point, Bell Canada had a $5/month service called "Internet Call Display", so you had an app that popped up on your computer when there was an incoming call and who it was. You could also set it to auto-disconnect for any in-coming call. With that, I started logging many hundreds of hours a month on dialup...
stevekemp 3y ago
I remember similar things in the UK, having to pay both a monthly subscription price and a per-minute fee to access the internet. When I got a broadband connection in the mid nineties it was a double win - no longer did I have to pay by the minute, and when I was online I could still make and receive phone-calls from my landline. (I sometimes feel nostalgic when watching films in which early dialup was featured, hearing the sound of the modem negotiating it's almost immediately obvious what their baud rate was set to 28.8k or the 56k!)

by cube00 3y ago

mnahkies 3y ago

We were fortunate enough to have unlimited hours, but living remotely enough to not get broadband until ~2010. Fond memories of downloading Linux Isos and the like from 10pm-7am over the course of weeks/months trying not to tie up the phone line too much. Getting access to a university's connection was a revelation and many a CDs were burnt of random stuff whilst being amazed that a month long endeavour could be done in minutes

cube00 3y ago
I did high school work experience at a university and they were kind enough to give me a Red Hat Linux CD to install at home along with a full printed manual for it. There began the awaking to a whole new world beyond DOS and Windows that I never would have had on dial up.
Scoundreller 3y ago
At some point, Bell Canada had a $5/month service called "Internet Call Display", so you had an app that popped up on your computer when there was an incoming call and who it was. You could also set it to auto-disconnect for any in-coming call. With that, I started logging many hundreds of hours a month on dialup...

stevekemp 3y ago

I remember similar things in the UK, having to pay both a monthly subscription price and a per-minute fee to access the internet. When I got a broadband connection in the mid nineties it was a double win - no longer did I have to pay by the minute, and when I was online I could still make and receive phone-calls from my landline. (I sometimes feel nostalgic when watching films in which early dialup was featured, hearing the sound of the modem negotiating it's almost immediately obvious what their baud rate was set to 28.8k or the 56k!)