Remembering What It Was Like On Dial Up

[TheScoundrelRico]

Lol, so over the weekend, I found out that my Comcast modem is so old, that as of Sunday, they no longer provide an internet signal to it. It is an easy fix, called Comcast and ordered the newest modem, just need wait for it to arrive in the mail and install.

In the meantime, I have been connecting via an xfinity hotspot. OMG!!!

Flashback 15 years. So I logged into my account to get a couple of RoT gains on skills I've been training. One is swords, so I ran over to the Trog cave to snag a gain, pick up some loot and get an imbue gain too.

Walked into the cave and my character freezes...Lost Connection!!!

Log back in, go rez...run into the cave to loot. Enter cave...FREEZE!!!

I did this two more times before logging out. Wow, now that was a flashback to my early UO days. It reminded of one of the reasons I started playing a thief as my way to PvP. If I lost the loot I just stole due to a bad connection...so be it. The lag on Buccs Den Atlantic back in the disarm thief days was a total lag fest...but a great time...la

 

[DJAd]

Makes me feel so old now.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

LOL, is Netzero still a thing?...la

 

[Nexus]

LOL, is Netzero still a thing?...la

https://store.netzero.net/

 

[old gypsy]

Memories... and to think how excited we once were to have 56k dial up.

 

[VinnySP]

*Runs to check the Trog's caves*

 

[Zosimus]

Always had cable so have no clue what it was like

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

*Runs to check the Trog's caves*

LOL, too late, happened around 4 PM CDT yesterday, lol. Hopefully when I get home tonight I'll have my shiny new modem waiting at the door ready to be installed so I can log in and rez my ghost sitting at the front of the cave...la

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Always had cable so have no clue what it was like

Back in 2001, I was an internets newbie and poor. I couldn't afford anything more than free dial up. I always marveled at the thieves who had cable back then. They could disarm a weapon and be gone before I had a chance to walk up to the same mark. Back then Buccs Den on Atlantic was hopin' there were always players there messing around on the server lines...la

 

[MalagAste]

I remember my dial-up days. And the ISP kept telling me that the reason I kept losing connection wasn't because they had FAR too many people on one line... but it was because there was "noise" in my phoneline and I needed to have a dedicated line with no noise in it put it.

I did that.... $330 later perfectly quiet line and I was STILL losing connection everytime Joe Blow down the street got on to check his email at 8pm. I'd call again super irate... and get the same stupid excuse.

Finally Cable Internet became available in my area and the old ISP paniced. Because for the last 6 months they kept telling me to try their cable service I'd have far better connection... to which I kept telling them "But you don't offer cable here." and they would argue back with me and say they did... and then about 15 min later I'd get the "oh... I guess we don't." So after I switched they would call me every week about 3 or 4 times and beg me to come back. I told them exactly where to shove off and how far.

Well then because as my friend is so fond of pointing out I live in BFE basically it didn't take long for my Cable to start to have issues. Massive issues. Why? Too many people on my "node". For over a year and a half I was constantly having disconnects, I could barely move I couldn't even deco a house for fear I would unlock something and not be able to lock it back down. I didn't dare get off my beetle if I had stuff in it as I might lose it and never get it back... I spent months and months arguing with the ISP over the problem and through the NUMEROUS service calls and everything learned my 'old problem' was back. The problem... There is only ONE Internet provider in my area. ONE.... so they don't have competition where you gonna go? Use your phone as a hotspot? LOL ..... so they keep putting folk on the internet but never upgrade things because they can just rake in the money without doing a thing. Finally the town I live in started to get seriously FED UP .... I'm guessing people started complaining a LOT. The city sent out a survey about cable and internet and actually was considering start up their own service and looking into how much it would cost. That must have opened up the eyes of the ISP because now they increased their Nodes by 10 fold and are now offering "ultra" high speed internet pretty cheap. I'm guessing it was a scare. But truth be told I actually had been giving them such a hard time about my internet during those 18 months I had them out to my house to "fix" what they knew they couldn't fix over 30 times. I was going to make them come out each and every week until it was better.... costing them money... and I actually had "free" internet for the last year because I told them I'd sue the pants off them if they didn't... And I'd win. I told them they couldn't charge me for internet service they weren't delivering or capable of delivering.... and if they were going to try to charge me for it... I'd sue them. Why? Because I paid for the "high speed" internet which was "Up to" 25 megs. But my argument was that even if they couldn't provide the "up to" if they actually couldn't give me higher internet speed than the guy down the street paying for the normal internet not the "high speed" then what they were doing was selling me a lie. And for that they KNEW they were in trouble. So they quit charging me for my crap internet they had for over a year. Was the longest 18 months ever.

 

[Yadd of Legends]

Makes me feel so old now.

Haha, that' so funny that somebody had to post a Youtube video on that - but ain't it the truth

 

[kelmo]

NetZero actually sent me a letter and fired me as a customer. I was not their type of client. I got cable after that.

 

[old gypsy]

NetZero actually sent me a letter and fired me as a customer. I was not their type of client. I got cable after that.

Did it have something to do with the number of hours you were online? Just curious.

 

[The Zog historian]

Always had cable so have no clue what it was like

Dial-up, a terminal program that automatically spit out AT commands on startup to get the modem just right, grumbling that an ISP was otherwise good but whose mail and newsgroups readers offered only VT52 instead of at least VT100, finding an ISP that offered bash shells, finding one that had g++ open to regular users.

I still have my Microcom modem whose MNP10 was pretty cool for the day, though I never tried the cellular support. It was pretty efficient. With Zmodem I could get as high as 1400 bytes per second on good phone lines.

 

[kelmo]

Yes Gypsy. That was it exactly.

 

[Troop_Gil]

It used to take me longer to connect with dial up than to actually do anything on the internet.

 

[old gypsy]

Yes Gypsy. That was it exactly.

I had a hunch that was it. Years ago, when I still had dial up, my youngest daughter and I were both using it extensively. My usage was questioned and I actually had to talk to someone via phone to convince them nothing irregular was going on.

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

Lol, yep. Had free dial up NetZero back in 1998-1999, and the phone/cable lines around my neighborhood were from the 1970s so i couldn't get any speed above 26.4k connection. Free NetZero would kick you off every 30 mins too to let more people in the queu online. Was always fun getting kicked, then spending about 5 mins reconnecting just to find that i died and my body is already bones and probably dry looted.

 

[SugarMMM]

Ahh yeah the good ole days of dial up internet and playing UO!

Back in the day I had my own phone line for my computer and I think I only connected at 44k. But then I saw an ad in an old magazine called Computer Shopper for something called a Shotgun modem. I bought it and was soo excited to use it but I could only use it at night when my parents were asleep because i'd use their phone line as the 2nd one. My connection at night was under 90k which was better.

I still look back to the late 90's I had an in-game neighbor on Sonoma that would kill me all the time and I finally got a second to talk to him how he was soo fast! Turns out he was on a T1 while I was on my silly Shotgun modem. He was a great neighbor..... miss you Magma!

About a year of having the Shotgun modem I got a nasty letter from my ISP that they were dropping me because they don't need customers like me that take advantage of the unlimited plan I was on. Haha.

 

[Ludes]

Soon as you can I'd suggest buying your own modem.. the ones Comcast send you have some weird stuff installed I noticed...

 

[silent]

I was hooked up back then, had an ISDN connection into my place of work with a T1 to myself after hours.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Soon as you can I'd suggest buying your own modem.. the ones Comcast send you have some weird stuff installed I noticed...

No issues so far. Not really seeing much of a difference since installing it last night...la

 

[The Zog historian]

Soon as you can I'd suggest buying your own modem.. the ones Comcast send you have some weird stuff installed I noticed...

Their newer modems double as wifi hotspots for other Comcast customers, using your home connection and electricity (the latter is admittedly minimal but it's the principle of the matter). Supposedly you can opt out, but some have found that doesn't work. The one we rented from Comcast was an older one, and if we hadn't replaced it with one of our own, we'd have eventually been given a hotspot one. The final straw for people should have been this year's price hike. DOCSIS 3.0 modems can sometimes be found for as low as $30, major-brand regularly from $60 to $90.