Really cool being able to see the status with the lights. And the cool dialup sound of course.

  • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    10 months ago

    As far as I’m concerned, the downfall of little blinking lights on the hardware that showed you the status of what’s inside, was the beginning of the making-shitty of the entire internet and computing world.

  • psvrh@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    An official Hayes one? No.

    I started with an 1200 baud Commodore 1680, then upgraded to a SupraModem through a BBS sponsor program. USRobotics pioneered these, but other manufacturers followed suit on. Basically, if you ran a BBS and displayed a banner ad for the modem, you could buy it (the modem) at a pretty reasonable discount.

    It worked really well for years, especially after the initial ROM upgrade (which came supplied not as a flashable update you could download, but as ROM chips that you had to physically swap out).

    Supra, like USR, supplied upgrades as well, in the form of a motherboard swap.

    I did always want a USR Courier; there was something to the big, black, red LED-lit badassery that was appealing to my teenage self, but the Supra had a little green matrix that told you the status of the session, which was really nice.

      • shamrock@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Dialing into security alarm systems that are still connected via POTS lines. They’re certainly on their way out but there’s still plenty out there.

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    10 months ago

    Hah, no one alive back then is going to miss spotting that. I knew it would say Hayes before I clicked. 😁

    My first modem: https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1644

    And my second: https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1647

    I was so excited when I got the 1200 because I could no longer easily read faster than the BBS output. I always wished I had a Hayes though, because back then the red LEDs were so damn cool. 🙂 😎

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        10 months ago

        I always envied the Compuserve folks - the most “online” I got during my C64 days was QuantumLink (which would go on to become AOL) - Compuserve was real internet to me for a long time, but I was never a customer. More or less the same as I felt about Prodigy.

  • holycrap@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    I kind of regret getting rid of mine years ago. You really don’t know in the moment what will be nostalgic and what is trash.

  • indepndnt@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I couldn’t find a picture, but my 2400 baud modern was a Prometheus, it was tan and had a slightly upward facing face. Designed for your phone to sit on top of it.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      RJ11 clips into the back. There was a time when you had to plug in a handset but it was gone by the mid 80s, as a direct connection to the wall allowed for higher speeds than a hand fitted coupler could.

      • Ian@Cambio@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        Aww. I was just pulling your leg. My earliest modem was a 9600 baud with those rj11 plugs.

  • doublejay1999@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Dreamt of a Hayes! Can’t remember the ones I had. V42bis .

    Then I wanted the US robotics courier that got 9600 with compression!