Hardware Does anyone miss Dialup and old computers?

[RPG_Lover]

I don't miss dial-up speeds, but there is something to be said for the simplicity of the internet and dial-up BBS's back in the mid/late '90s.

 

[FAST6191]

I don't miss dial-up speeds, but there is something to be said for the simplicity of the internet and dial-up BBS's back in the mid/late '90s.

Better on netscape and the browser wars when it actually meant something
WYSIWYG editors spewing atrocious code and the less said about the "hand crafted" stuff the better
Granted I am not sure where I fall in the usenet as discussion board vs fractured everywhere and mish mash of today but I am posting it anyway.
Webrings, geocities and altavista unless someone managed to break you out of the cycle, no mean feat when comments systems were not necessarily the order of the day
If you were especially unlucky compuserv still existed, failing that AOL
That probably brings me to IM protocols but I am not sure about the IM market as it stands today so who knows.

Either way I would not say simplistic.

 

[mechadylan]

I don't miss dial-up, but I feel ya on the nostalgia thing. I miss "discovering" things on the internet on old search engines (B.G--Before Google.) Back on Netscape Navigator, you could toggle the pics on/off to improve load times; good times. Then you'd Yahoo stuff (not Google.) "Where'd you find that Led Zeppeling page?" "Aw, bro. I Yahoo'd it." "Oh, because I'm still using WebCrawler. Have you tried AltaVista yet?"

 

[Harsky]

Also, before I forget. Finding Pokemon cheats on Geocities. With midi music and frames, frames, frames everywhere.

 

[LDAsh]

I miss the making Doom maps on Win95 days, getting results within a day of mapping instead of the weeks and 1000s of triangles it takes these days. I wanted to start up a TC project using the Hexen engine for handheld ports, but it's really difficult to find a programmer to help out who doesn't want to just get rich on next-gen aspirations instead of just development simply for the passion of doing it and getting it done.

 

[Foxhounder]

No I'm fine, I don't miss any of that shit. Why would anyone mis dial up? The last old computer I had ws Pentium 2 2 years ago and managed to get an AMD Sempron 2000 at 2.0 GHz and that was a year ago now I have a AMD Dual Core 2.4 GHz. And my internet speed is boss(every now and then it will go offline for some odd reason for an hour or so).

 

[VashTS]

i hated it when it was happening and loving every second of the future.

 

[mechadylan]

I miss missing calls because I was online and getting a busy signal when I called someone. This was before everyone had a cell phone; we had pagers instead. I eventually bought one of those "don't-miss-a-call" ringer boxes from Radio Shack.

 

[jumpman1229]

The only thing about AOL I miss are all those 90 day free trial discs that you could keep using once your 90 days ran out. Man those were all over the place!

 

[FAST6191]

The only thing about AOL I miss are all those 90 day free trial discs that you could keep using once your 90 days ran out. Man those were all over the place!

I never actually used aol/compuserv trials but their floppy discs meant I was never without one back when.

 

[jumpman1229]

This may be a stupid question, but was AOL available to anyone outside the US?

 

[pwsincd]

i miss 20 minutes for an mp3 from napster .. and do recall them rolling out 1g broadband it was immense...


edit AOL was available in the UK , but i opted for freeserve omg that took me back...

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I miss that time, but for entirely different reasons. It was a much simpler time.
Can't believe anyone would actually miss having slow internet

This may be a stupid question, but was AOL available to anyone outside the US?

Speaking of AOL, I had one of their dreaded CDs and I can't even remember where I got it. AOL wasn't even available in my country

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

ITT people who miss Windows 95/98 etc etc don't realize you can just virtualbox.


As for dial-up, god no. I'm hardly old enough to have had extensive experience with it, but I know it was terribad compared to today.

As for AOL CDs I used to have a binder full of them, which was about 50 or so. Used them for a "history of the internet" project a while back though, I glued each one to a poster board to use as a background. To be fair, that's probably a better use for it than the actual intended use.

 

[mechadylan]

The only thing about AOL I miss are all those 90 day free trial discs that you could keep using once your 90 days ran out. Man those were all over the place!

For some reason, I could never bring myself to throwing those away and family members were constantly saving them for me because I was the "computer kid" in the family. I still have a tupperware tub somewhere in my closet where I throw in all my driver discs and OS discs; I bet I have at least 1, 2 or 10 of those AOL discs.

 

[retKHAAAN]

Don't think I ever paid for internet back in the day. Just cycled through 1 month free trial discs from various ISPs... So...the only thing I guess I miss from those days is free internet.

 

[Chary]

Oh. Yeahhh. I SURE miss waiting minutes upon minutes for a single webpage to load.

I remember the first time my parents set up our new modem and dell. We turned it on, and opened AOL. Holy crap. I was forever scarred by the dial tone.

 

[mechadylan]

ITT people who miss Windows 95/98 etc etc don't realize you can just virtualbox.


As for dial-up, god no. I'm hardly old enough to have had extensive experience with it, but I know it was terribad compared to today.

As fir AOL CDs I used to have a binder full of them, which was about 50 or so. Used them for a "history of the internet" project a while back though, I glued each one to a posted board to use as a background. To be fair, that's probably a better use for it than the actual intended use.

ROFLMAO! There was a commercial out around then with Jerry Stiller and a family that uses the discs to make a fish or something above their fireplace or something like that.

 

[Maxternal]

For some reason, I could never bring myself to throwing those away and family members were constantly saving them for me because I was the "computer kid" in the family. I still have a tupperware tub somewhere in my closet where I throw in all my driver discs and OS discs; I bet I have at least 1, 2 or 10 of those AOL discs.

Put that tupperware in the microwave for 10-15 seconds and enjoy the fireworks. have a camera ready because you might want to relive the experience.

 

[mechadylan]

Put that tupperware in the microwave for 10-15 seconds and enjoy the fireworks. have a camera ready because you might want to relive the experience.

But my drivers. What if I need to reinstall ProTools 9 demo on a Mac running OS 9.2.2?

Found the commercial: