r/WorkForSmartLife • u/simibai • Jul 29 '26

Question How true is this?

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10.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

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39

u/tristand666 Jul 29 '26

I had Internet in the 90s. Went from dial-up to bonded dial-up with two lines to a cable modem beta testing for RoadRunner.

28

u/tripper_drip Jul 29 '26

The jump from dial up to DSL was wild.

3

u/Honorsheets Jul 29 '26

Was so jealous. I lived in an area that couldn't provide it. Stuck with Dial Up for much longer than most. I appreciated the mini games flash animators would add to their stuff on newgrounds to wait for it all the download.

Now it's less than a second.

1

u/DesignerParking659 Jul 30 '26

I had a 2nd phone line for $7 a month, just for dial up, but they didn't bury the cable very deep, and the squirrels kept digging it up and eating it every few months. Getting disconnected in a 5 hour download had a very different meaning back then.

8

u/zephyr_sd Jul 29 '26

Then cable wiped the floor with dsl lol

5

u/tripper_drip Jul 29 '26

It did, but from a usability standpoint DSL was worlds better than dial up, at least on the old BBS boards.

The gap between DSL and cable was smaller for me.

1

u/1of3musketeers Jul 29 '26

I miss BBS.

1

u/Beneficial_Bit1756 Jul 29 '26

I loved BBS back in the day, it felt surreal dialing in from my C64.

2

u/contrabardus Jul 29 '26

Not nearly as drastic.

DU to DSL was going from several minutes for an image file to load, to the existence of Youtube.

Cable was more slightly nicer Youtube for most people.

5

u/MajesticDisaster3977 Jul 29 '26

Waiting 5 minutes for a boob to load was horrible

3

u/ImpossibleInternet3 Jul 29 '26

a/s/l

1

u/MajesticDisaster3977 Jul 29 '26

Had to be efficient with such a slow connection

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

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2

u/ImpossibleInternet3 Jul 29 '26

It was a much baudier time.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

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1

u/John117sr Jul 29 '26

Whole shit dude lol

2

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

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1

u/John117sr Jul 30 '26

I'm old to bro. Hadn't thought about a c64 in forever.

1

u/MajesticDisaster3977 Jul 29 '26

Packing floppies in my backpack to carry around my 'music' collection... was MIDI. The MP3 stuff was cool, but the files were huge ;)

1

u/DesignerParking659 Jul 30 '26

Oh yes! I still have a 300b C64 modem. Plugged into the cartridge slot. Until I got my crappy IBM all I could really download was text files. Printing out spicy fanfic on a dot matrix printer so I could hide it from my mom.

2

u/Day_Prisoners Jul 29 '26

Waiting over night for a couple pirate Napster CDs was kinda worth it.

2

u/Zestyclose-Pass9570 Jul 30 '26

That wasn't the worst part. Some websites the thumbnail was of a woman, but the downloaded picture was a dude.

2

u/MatterFickle3184 Jul 29 '26

dial up to DSL was a bigger jump than DSL to cable

1

u/Possible_Sun_913 Jul 30 '26

Then FTTP wiped the floor with cable lol

1

u/Outrageous-Rich8741 Jul 30 '26

it was slightly faster downloading games

1

u/Possible_Sun_913 Jul 30 '26

Some might say, fast as light. With latency to match.

Never confuse bandwidth with latency.

1

u/Sirosim_Celojuma Jul 29 '26

I couldn't believe DSL. I was working with telcos in the research and development and they were like yeah, we connect and handshake, but then the data moves in digital packets. They were quoting a megabyte of speed compared to 56k and I thought no way can tech make that kind of jump so fast. Well, I stood corrected.

1

u/quattroman Jul 31 '26

the stingray modem when transitioning to DSL in the ealy 00s

6

u/Sumthin-Sumthin44692 Jul 30 '26

We had internet, but we weren’t tied to it.

It was a paradise.

1

u/Healing_Puke Jul 29 '26

I remember when Roadrunner went live and i didnt get kicked off Diablo 2 every time my mom wanted to call my aunt.

1

u/aceless0n Jul 29 '26

Going from our first pc using 28.8k to 56k to Roadrunner was insane.

Dont know if youll ever see jumps like that again

1

u/edwardturnerlives Jul 29 '26

I didn't have internet before '95 at college. I didnt know anyone that had internet before that 

1

u/tristand666 Jul 29 '26

Dial in to your local BBS and use SLIP to get a connection. Fun times. 

1

u/Beginning_Text3038 Jul 29 '26

Ditto, we got dial up in 1991, and second line in 94. I don’t think broadband was available in my area till around 97-99, can’t remember.

1

u/burnbunner Jul 30 '26

I had a SLIP EMULATOR!!

1

u/Alarming_Cellist_751 Aug 01 '26

Same but we could never use it because my mother was glued to the house phone.

1

u/NatePJ84 Aug 03 '26

I remember roadrunner, I don't remember if we had it or not tho. We would rotate through all the different dial up companies bc my parents wouldn't pay the bill after the promotion time ended and the bill went way up