Well, I probably misinterpreted that. I just remember being told that we didn't have to listen to that sound every time we logged on. I might have taken that to mean that it didn't actually do anything. The more you know, right?ravensheart18 said:Whoever told you that was full of it. Modem connections were SOUND transmitions. It was the same tech used on the cassette tape drives used on some early PCs. The initial sound was a carrier tone, which waited for an answering response, which then initiated the handshake. All data was transferred in tones.Saltyk said:You know what the worst part is? I learned recently that the whole noise was unnecessary. It wasn't actually the sound of connecting to the internet. There was no sound. Someone just though we needed to hear something. Isn't that awesome?Innegativeion said:
ALL OF MY HATRED
so.
much.
teeth gnashing.
Later modems were more sophistiated and had to scale through different handshake options to find the correct speed and protocol in use (very similar to a fax handshake that's still in use today).
Whether or not you HEARD the noise was up to you. Initially we used phone couplers, you heard a bit of leak but not more than that. Later direct connect modems often had a speaker that you could turn on and off either by a physical switch, or more commonly by AT commands sent to the COM port. People often left it on because early modems and connection software couldn't tell the difference between fail to handshake, busy, no answer, and a human answering. So, if you didn't connnect you wanted to know why. Other people left it off and would manually dial the number if they didn't connect after a few tries so they could hear what was happening.
The linked recording is of a fairly late modem (It cycles up to a 1200+ baud speed) and of course it touch tones, the sign of a fairly modern system! It also seems be be hanging on post handshake, I think someone forced speaker on during the actual datatransmition after connection.
That's probably because you are so young. Sort of like there are soon going to be children in developed countries who haven't heard of chickenpox, because they and all their classmates were vaccinated.Yomandude said:Wow...
...suddenly I feel so young.
Thanks for this thread, OP.
You know something...Saltyk said:You know what the worst part is? I learned recently that the whole noise was unnecessary. It wasn't actually the sound of connecting to the internet. There was no sound. Someone just though we needed to hear something. Isn't that awesome?
Was 'Milk and Cereal' before it? And the good old hamster song was a legitimate hit in the UK in 1996/7!Saltyk said:Well, there was stuff like Hamster Dance. Wasn't that the first internet meme? Like before there was even a term for it.
rofl was thinking the same thing, kid is 16 years oldDags90 said:That's probably because you are so young. Sort of like there are soon going to be children in developed countries who haven't heard of chickenpox, because they and all their classmates were vaccinated.Yomandude said:Wow...
...suddenly I feel so young.
Thanks for this thread, OP.
Back in my day, we had our varicella zoster and we liked it! We loved it.
I remember by about 2000 our house had four landlines, so we could use our computers without tying up the phone. And oh Lordy the popups. You think computer viruses are bad now, my brother got one that made his computer dial-up to a long distance connection. We got a phone bill for over two grand.
I also remember that before 4chan became popular there was a site that was...rotten.
And seeing this meme on a TV show...
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