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Remember back when "Broadband" ...

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  1. jake Silver badge

    Remember back when "Broadband" ...

    ... meant frequency division multiplexing, not "as many bits per second as I can personally get"? Kids these days ...

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  2. AndrueC Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    I remember Home Highway. And the boing-boing of a successful k56 connection. I'd like to day it was happy days but the k56 in particular could be a bit temperamental.

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    1. M Mouse
      Reply Icon

      I remember using Freeserve and Clara.net, plus dialler software to automate which to dial depending on my own set of rules re time of day etc...

      At one time had HH, plus two POTS lines in a hunt group. Later, in 2000 or so, I found they decided hunt groups were incompatible with ADSL (you remember the original 500/500 kbps service)...

      I had one of the Alcatel (?) "green frog" USB modems which cost 100 quid - sold later to a client for 75 and I bought a router (PTZ-1 I think).

      2014... FTTP is available here, but only an estimated speed below 35 Mbps where I live... so not bothered

      10 Mbps perfectly adequate for 400+ GB a month in traffic. Two lines + unlimited mobile data as business backup.

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  4. IHateWearingATie
    Thumb Up

    I used to be jealous of ISDN

    I remember lusting after a twin channel 128bit ISDN line.....

    Now I'm hacked off if downloading podcasts doesn't run at 50Mbit.

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    1. Anonymous Coward 15
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Luxury!

      In my day, we had 1200/75 and we were glad of it.*

      </yorkshire>

      *may be lies, I'm actually far too young to have used 1200/75

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I used to be jealous of ISDN

      I must have been one of the last homes to have ISDN - broadband was late coming to my village. Don't miss the expense, but broadband speeds round here are not that much faster.

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      1. jake Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: I used to be jealous of ISDN

        Somewhere here on ElReg, I commented on how I managed to install my personal T1 line in the mid 1980's ... thus bypassing the ISDN clusterfuck. I can't be arsed to find the post.

        That said, I still connect to TehIntraWebTubes via modem at 2400 baud about 7 days per month, and sometimes 1200 when it's damp. Aging cable plant & Mendocino County sea-fog makes for a poor signal/noise ratio.

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  6. funkenstein
    Meh

    do you remember the days...

    when Baud was a relevant term people used? I do. I also remember flatmates getting pretty angry at £150 phone bills on 56k stupendous speed - I believe xkcd said it best when http://xkcd.com/598/

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  7. Richard North
    Holmes

    Somewhere in my museum of horrors...

    I have a 1200/75 modem that still works - it's about the same size as a modern netbook!

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  8. Youvegottobe Joking

    My first "broadband" was 256k that dropped to 9600baud or less when it rained ....

    At work we still connect to some of the hardware using 28.8k multitech modems, so I hear those mellifluous tones weekly. Issuing commands and seeing them typewriter across the screen 5-10 seconds after you type them.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I remember signing up for my very first broadband account, it was blueyonder, here in blighty! The guy said to me over the phone 'You can now call your existing ISP and tell them you want to close your account as you have moved to a ridiculously faster account'. He was right too.

    I got a whole 256k down and about 56 up, or something like that. Throughput when downloading was something like 24k/sec.

    God, if i had that now i would probably cry, or just go to the pub instead!

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    1. peterharley
      Reply Icon

      I must have been one of the last homes to have ISDN - broadband was late coming to my village. Don't miss the expense, but broadband speeds round here are not that much faster.

      We had L, a, b and later "b1" charge bands... charging was in "units" and each unit gave you a number of seconds, depending on charge band, and time of day/ day of week. Off peak wasfrom 18:00 to 08:00 and all weekend, while "peak" was split into two levels, lower was 08:00-09:00 and 13:00-18:00, with 09:00-13:00 being the even more stinging higher level.

      I had to write software to determine costs of calls made via modems that offered 300/300, 600/600 and 1200/1200.

      Thanks

      http://www.followthesteps.net/sky-contact-phone-number/

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  10. JavaMan
    Pint

    old but slow...

    How about a 50 baud modem used with a commodore 64?

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  11. Htos1
    Thumb Up

    1995

    I had my first General Instruments broadband modem in Nov.1995.I was located in one of the first five city rollouts.Here in Jacksonville,we had a miltary based optical switch node which facilitated that.It was exciting,having that and NT4 all at the same time.FF ten years later,at the same location,server room,racks,gigabit lan,A+/code station.Staring originally in a traditional,all paper office environment.

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  12. dayglo
    Pint

    BROAD band?

    My good grammar school had a Westrex Teletype and an acoustically coupled modem and a paper tape writer/reader with a dial up link to the City of London Polytechnic.. HP FREE SY FREE WHICH COMPUTER HP OR SY?

    A few years later I managed to obtain a PO 62-type rack mounted modem which had to have the correct cards strapped to give your required settings (7-bit, 8-bit etc., 50/110/300/1200-75,etc). Great fun with the Dragon32.

    Eebagum.

    </yorkshire>

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  13. StevesWeb

    I once worked for Teletype Corporation, upgrading TTY machines to 300baud modems.

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  14. M Mouse
    Boffin

    Happy, happy, happy days...

    When I studied at S.C.O.T. in late 70s they ran a CTL Mod-1 system with card reader, paper-tape, and around 8 black and white VDUs made by ?Diablo? running via RS232 at 600/600 into the computer suite. Even 600/600 seemed pretty good at the time when compared with the teleprinter on TV with the football scores on Saturday around 5pm :)

    In my first job they used HP 2000 and ICL 1904S ... they also ran HP plotters and Tektronix graphics displays. Oh, the nostalgia !! circa 1980....

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  15. Come to the Dark Side

    I still recall the deep and unabounded joy of being informed by BT that we couldn't have an ISDN line as the property was served by a DAX connection which also accounted for the fact that the maximum dial-up speed we could get was 28.8kbps and we'd get disconnected if our neighbour picked up the phone....

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