3 ms·

I remember warez being the sole driver of my modem upgrade path from 9600 to 14,400 to 28,800, finally to very unstable 33,600 bps, then to trying to convince m

I remember warez being the sole driver of my modem upgrade path from 9600 to 14,400 to 28,800, finally to very unstable 33,600 bps, then to trying to convince my parents to order a second phone line for... uh... modem... stuff... And then, suddenly it was off to undergrad where, lo and behold there were these two weird looking "RJ45 jacks" in each dorm room, and I soon realized I'd never have to worry about modem speed again...

havaloc 7d ago
Being of that age, hearing about and then using ethernet in the dorms was sort of like discovering Oz after living in Kansas. I had so many questions! How did they manage all that traffic? It was like having a firehose after using an eye dropper all your life.
- leptons 7d ago
  I remember going from modem to internet and feeling like it was a "multitasking communication line" compared to the single-point connection the modem was capable of. With the internet I could contact many different servers at the same time. It was like having a thousand modems. My head exploded.
  - chadgpt5 7d ago
    Sometimes I'm sad I missed the "connect to one thing at a time" era of networking. Email and news over UUCP with delivery measured in days.
gct 7d ago
Ahhh mIRC, jolt cola and an EDU connection at 3AM...
- sbseitz 7d ago
  The real OGs did not use mIRC.
  - spydum 7d ago
    BitchX from a shell with a vanity hostname was a hard flex for sure
  - firesteelrain 7d ago
    I had access to an invite only forum I don’t remember the name of but got access to it by word of mouth. It had Xbox games, movies, everything. No torrent, direct download. This was 2003-2004 timeframe. I eventually stopped using it but it was the best
- pluc 7d ago
  I remember being contracted to build an XDCC search engine that would connect to IRC servers, get XDCC lists from bots and then put that list up on the web to make everything searchable in one place... it was my first "we don't host anything" defense and people did not know what to do with me
shevy-java 7d ago
Indeed. I remember that back on my old win-days. I switched to linux in 2004 or so. All those old use cases kind of vanished or changed. Perhaps the subset of software is more limited on linux, since Microsoft also builds - and exploits - a platform for commercial success, but I see more and more linux-specific applications too, typically using qt5 or qt6. Which is interesting considering linux does not have a huge share here. I guess there does exist some market value here. I just can not really see myself using or needing "warez" on linux - the use cases are sooooo different now. For multimedia there are very few use cases not covered by ffmpeg and mpv. The only thing I'd like is something like avisynth, but more like a domain specific language that is even shorter. I remember back in early 2004 or late 2003 I was still writing avisynth scripts to modify video data on windows. Linux pipes never really went into an object-oriented approach and view onto data.
- stevekemp 7d ago
  > I just can not really see myself using or needing "warez" on linux I remember switching to Linux around 94 and at the time one of the things that annoyed me was that there was very little commercial software to patch registration checks out of! There were a couple of image-viewers, and similar things, but I fell out of the habit of decompiling random binaries, and stopped keeping up with the newere techqniques for a good few years. My reversing skills came back, later, but swithching to Linux where everything was "free" and source was mostly available really did change a lot of my computer-related hobbies.
  - chadgpt5 7d ago
    Porting windows stuff to Linux would've been useful
jibal 7d ago
You omitted 300, 1200, and 2400, youngster. And the joys of xmodem, ymodem, and zmodem.
- darkwater 7d ago
  Aaah, that's why it was called zmodem!
  - jibal 7d ago
    Yup: https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~rootd/catdoc/guide/TheGuide_226.html https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~rootd/catdoc/guide/TheGuide_226.ht...
- j4k3 7d ago
  I always was testing the different transfer protocols, always appreciating sysops who installed rather obscure protocols like jmodem, MPT110, zmodem-mobyturbo and god now I can't remember some of the weirder ones. ymodem-G had a soft spot because well it was gangstah lol.

havaloc 7d ago

Being of that age, hearing about and then using ethernet in the dorms was sort of like discovering Oz after living in Kansas. I had so many questions! How did they manage all that traffic? It was like having a firehose after using an eye dropper all your life.

leptons 7d ago
I remember going from modem to internet and feeling like it was a "multitasking communication line" compared to the single-point connection the modem was capable of. With the internet I could contact many different servers at the same time. It was like having a thousand modems. My head exploded.
- chadgpt5 7d ago
  Sometimes I'm sad I missed the "connect to one thing at a time" era of networking. Email and news over UUCP with delivery measured in days.

gct 7d ago

Ahhh mIRC, jolt cola and an EDU connection at 3AM...

sbseitz 7d ago
The real OGs did not use mIRC.
- spydum 7d ago
  BitchX from a shell with a vanity hostname was a hard flex for sure
- firesteelrain 7d ago
  I had access to an invite only forum I don’t remember the name of but got access to it by word of mouth. It had Xbox games, movies, everything. No torrent, direct download. This was 2003-2004 timeframe. I eventually stopped using it but it was the best
pluc 7d ago
I remember being contracted to build an XDCC search engine that would connect to IRC servers, get XDCC lists from bots and then put that list up on the web to make everything searchable in one place... it was my first "we don't host anything" defense and people did not know what to do with me

shevy-java 7d ago

Indeed. I remember that back on my old win-days. I switched to linux in 2004 or so. All those old use cases kind of vanished or changed. Perhaps the subset of software is more limited on linux, since Microsoft also builds - and exploits - a platform for commercial success, but I see more and more linux-specific applications too, typically using qt5 or qt6. Which is interesting considering linux does not have a huge share here. I guess there does exist some market value here. I just can not really see myself using or needing "warez" on linux - the use cases are sooooo different now. For multimedia there are very few use cases not covered by ffmpeg and mpv. The only thing I'd like is something like avisynth, but more like a domain specific language that is even shorter. I remember back in early 2004 or late 2003 I was still writing avisynth scripts to modify video data on windows. Linux pipes never really went into an object-oriented approach and view onto data.

stevekemp 7d ago
> I just can not really see myself using or needing "warez" on linux I remember switching to Linux around 94 and at the time one of the things that annoyed me was that there was very little commercial software to patch registration checks out of! There were a couple of image-viewers, and similar things, but I fell out of the habit of decompiling random binaries, and stopped keeping up with the newere techqniques for a good few years. My reversing skills came back, later, but swithching to Linux where everything was "free" and source was mostly available really did change a lot of my computer-related hobbies.
- chadgpt5 7d ago
  Porting windows stuff to Linux would've been useful

jibal 7d ago

You omitted 300, 1200, and 2400, youngster. And the joys of xmodem, ymodem, and zmodem.

darkwater 7d ago
Aaah, that's why it was called zmodem!
- jibal 7d ago
  Yup: https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~rootd/catdoc/guide/TheGuide_226.html https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~rootd/catdoc/guide/TheGuide_226.ht...
j4k3 7d ago
I always was testing the different transfer protocols, always appreciating sysops who installed rather obscure protocols like jmodem, MPT110, zmodem-mobyturbo and god now I can't remember some of the weirder ones. ymodem-G had a soft spot because well it was gangstah lol.