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NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2024 15:02:36 +0000
From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Dial-up modems (Re: FREE GAME: Spirit of the Mouse)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2024 11:02:33 -0400
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On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 20:23:29 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

>Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:16:58 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
>
>> >Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> On Tue, 08 Oct 2024 02:07:34 +0000, ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
>> >> >Justisaur <justisaur@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> >> We had an acoustic coupler for awhile.  I think I could type faster than 
>> >> >> it sent letters.
>> >
>> >> >That's like 300 speed. ;)
>> >
>> >> Depends on how fast you can type :-)
>> >> 300 baud is probably amazingly fast to hunt-n-peck typists. 
>> >
>> >I hunt and peck on smartphones since I have to have one hand hold it and while other hand type!
>> >
>> >
>> >> And in the 80s, before GUIs were common and everything -even a lot of
>> >> games - were character-based, 300 baud was probably usable, if a bit
>> >> slow. Although I can't imagine using anything that pokey for
>> >> downloading stuff; even 28,8kbps was tedious at those speeds (the
>> >> original Doom Shareware took me over an hour to get, back in the day).
>> >> Even looking at images was a chore; you'd queue up two or three and
>> >> that would be it for the night ;-)
>> >
>> >Yeah, but you had those evil line noises!!!!!!!!!!!!
>
>> No, you didn't. Most modems supported the AT M0 command, which turned
>> off the speaker from the start. It was one of the first AT commands I
>> learned, and boy howdy did I make sure every AT string I used included
>> it! That squeal people associate with the dial-up era of the Internet?
>
>> I never heard it.
>
>No, not the modem connection audio. The line noises that lag and even 
>disconnect your connections. If the dial-up modem didn't have error 
>corrections like my 2400 modems, then you get bunch of characters on 
>screen if using text mode connections like in BBSes with terminal 
>clients like $^UY&HW24tr856g65 (pretend some of these are extended ASCII 
>characters too). :(

Oh, that.

I was fairly lucky; I never had significant problems with line noise
(then again, as noted, the majority of my modeming-years were in an
era where modems _did_ have built-in era correction). Disconnects were
actually fairly uncommon for me. And software existed to automatically
redial if there was a disconnect, so even when it did happen it wasn't
more than a momentary annoyance.

Maybe it was more of an issue on the Apple ][; I really don't
remember. It may or may not have had error-correction; I have no idea
as to the specs or capability of the modem I used. (I dont' even know
the brand).  But, I think, between the wonderousness of just being
able to connect to another computer, and the fact that I didn't make
much use of the thing, I've no recollection as to how often I had to
redial because my connection got unceremoniously dumped whilst
browsing some BBS.  It may have happened -it probably did- but it
didn't stick with me as some tremendous disadvantage.

Honestly, given the limited capability of the Apple ][, the computer
probably froze long before the line noise had a chance to kill any
connection. ;-)