Extinction

[JakeL]

Have you ever had the pleasure of using dial-up internet?

Dial-up like on the phone? Never heard of that. My parents have a rotary phone, that's fun to play with.

Couple years ago I was coaching 12u baseball. I said something about a typewriter, only 1 kid know what that was.

[Jeff]

Dial-up like on the phone?

lol yes.
Using a 56k modem if you were lucky early on and only getting speeds like 48,800kps.
Before that 28,800 modems were your best bet.

[SuperHoneyBadger]

Have you ever had the pleasure of using dial-up internet?

In 2005 my Dad changed to dial-up for the summer as a major punishment for my brother and I doing poorly in school IIRC. It was awful.

It was the only option out at the cottage, so we were familiar. But at home we'd had rock solid internet since I was a wee lad of 4 using the computer, so ~1994. Not sure what the availability of DSL/Cable was for us at that time, but us kids certainly never worried about tying up the phone line or got hollered at for being online.

[gcode]

Have you ever had the pleasure of using dial-up internet?

I once had to download a 1 meg update to Falcon 2.0, a fighter aircraft game I played way back in the day.
I never got it done.
We had dial up internet ( I forget the speed)
and
a teenage daughter in the house.
It was about a 12 hour download and I never managed to get a 12 hour time slot where she didn't call out
or somebody didn't call in.
Either case would break the connection.
I finally gave up.

[Jeff]

Dial-up was the worst.
Stealing songs with Napster and Limewire took forever.
Hours just to get a single song, and you hoped you ended up getting what you wanted.

[Brad St]

It would be kinda fun to install an older version like this on an older platform and find all the things that are the EXCACT SAME in Mcam2026....

I have my seat of mastercam version 9 design lite installed on my windows 10 laptop =)

The hardest thing I fight is not having the same cursor options and hotkeys. I used to have all the map keys dialed into memory and the shortcuts but they have changed slightly over the years and especially how you use them.

[JakeL]

It was about a 12 hour download and I never managed to get a 12 hour time slot where she didn't call out
or somebody didn't call in.
Either case would break the connection.
I finally gave up.

Wait... you had to stay ON THE PHONE to maintain internet connection??? That sounds terrible

[neurosis]

Wait... you had to stay ON THE PHONE to maintain internet connection??? That sounds terrible

I had two phone lines. One strictly for internet. Cell phones were almost non-existent until the late 90's / early 2000's. Unless you had $$$$$$ 

[SuperHoneyBadger]

Wait... you had to stay ON THE PHONE to maintain internet connection??? That sounds terrible

I've got a wild one for you that I've only heard about from older gov't employees, to bring everything together in one: Teletype machines. It was a typewriter that you put the receiver of a phone onto and it called out to send a message you typed or received a call from another telephone that would type out a message on your machine. Wild stuff, pre-printer fax machine.

[jstell]

I had an old Radio Shack (Tandy) computer, the TRS-80.  Plugged it into a 13" black and white TV thru the VHF/UHF (antenna) adapter.  To store or retrieve programs, you used a portable cassette player/recorder.  And it howled like a fax machine when outputting data to the tape.
Here's an example:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/retrocomputers/posts/24564143693188847/

[rdshear]

I kind of collect/hoard (LOL) old Radio Shack computers.  I have a few TRS-80's (Model 1 as it was called later), a couple model 3's and some model 4's, 4P's & 4D's.  I worked for Radio Shack in the 80's and those machines were my dream.  I couldn't afford them back then though.

[gcode]

Wait... you had to stay ON THE PHONE to maintain internet connection??? That sounds terrible

No.. if you were dialed into the internet and someone picked up a phone and dialed out
OR
someone called your number, your internet connect got shut off.

[kccadcam]

Let's go Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back.
Acoustically Coupled Modems,,,,,
The first PC I got to use had 300 Baud in 1976.
Dialed a phone number, wait for the screech, insert phone.

[jstell]

I love the fact that it's a rotary phone as well.

[CNCAppsJames]

My first computer with a modem had an acoustic coupler type modem. 300 Baud IIRC. It was a Commodore and black. I think the computer was a Vic 20 (beige IIRC). I was around 12 and we were not rich by any stretch. So that tracks as it was released around '80/'81. Had the cassette drive first, then I think we got a floppy drive for it. Though the floppy drive may have been with the Commodore 64 (dark gray IIRC) we got in '83/'84. Long, long, long time ago. 

One of my first programs I wrote was a program that required a password to run the computer as long as the floppy was in. It was written in BASIC so nothing real high level. Easily defeated. Kept the honest people and my 7th grade computer teacher out of my stuff tho. Got two A's that year... Computers and Wood Shop. The rest... D's and F's. I may have had a C in PE.