This Dutch caught my eye: “Dutch telecom operator KPN has turned off the inbound internet dial-up equipment. It keeps possible to dial the number, as dial-up traffic is now handled by provider xs4all”:
KPN heeft de apparatuur van zijn inbelplatform voor internet uitgezet. Het blijft nog wel mogelijk om in te bellen via het nummer 06760-12321, maar het inbelverkeer wordt voortaan afgehandeld door provider Xs4all.
Source: KPN zet inbelplatform uit en laat Xs4all inbelverkeer afhandelen – IT Pro – Nieuws – Tweakers
The thread is full of nostalgia on Dial-up Internet access, like:
- EUR 500+ monthly phone bills
- KPN owning both Telfort and xs4all (and explaining the differences between them)
- CompuServe (they laugh at it in the thread, as over here it never caught on, but for me it was a life-line for the beta-test and tech forums that were there. The TeamB forum was quite famous)
- xs4all (my first ISP where I still have a fiber and a DSL connection) and xs4all dial-up instructions
- Early technically stable ISPs like DDS and Demon internet.
- dial-up via university (before xs4all was there)
- modem handshakes:
- dial-up numbers I haven’t used for a very long time (xs4all:020-5350535 or 06760-97400, KPN: 06760-12321, Zonnet/Tele2: 06760-75030)
- ISP dial-in equipment: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/107363/kpn-zet-inbelplatform-uit-en-laat-xs4all-inbelverkeer-afhandelen.html?showReaction=8128340#r_8128340
- kerktelefoon (a way to listen to church services from home; one of the people in my network used to create equipment for that)
- “free” dial-up ISPs like 12move, zonnet, wannadoo, freeler, flevonet, raketnet, myweb, superweb, wish, etc.
Yes, the Dutch are cheap indeed, so plenty of them keep changing their main email address when they switch to yet another ISP. - mxstream (the first DSL you could get here) which got me 4 IP addresses at first which they later retracted to 1.
- funet.fi en sunet.se
- i-mode and WAP
- XMODEM, YMODEM and ZMODEM
I still have my original Courier HST Dual Standard modem from USRobotics I got around 1987. It’s looks like the second from the bottom at (image via: Do Modems Still Matter?) the picture below (one day I will make a picture when I’ve cleaned out the glass cabinet it is in; there are some more USRobotics, ZyXEL and DrayTek modems in it too).
There is a very interesting piece of USRobotics (in Russian, but Google Translate does a nice job on it): The history of the US Robotics.
I wrote mentioned the Courier HST Dual Standard before in Going to try PowerLine (next to CAT5, and having used 10Base2, 10Base-T, 100Base-TX and 1000Base-T), but never about the why, so here it is:
The Courier HST standard would train faster and at better speeds over Intercontinental lines than the Trailblazer and Hayes and later V.32bis technologies. In addition, they were also faster with firmware upgrades to support faster speeds than competing brands.
This mattered a lot to me, as initially CompuServe was only accessible by dial-up to the USA. The same for a lot of BBS and FidoNet uplinks.
For me, they weren’t any cheaper buying them (as the BBS discounts for them were not valid in Europe; I bought mine for a more than DM 1000 in Germany) but it was cheaper gaining knowledge (my motto always has been “a life long learning”).
Since the above article,
- the Sportster magic string entry on Wikipedia vanished, but the info is still at USRobotics Sportster magic string – WOW.com,
- I stopped using PowerLine as it wasn’t stable enough, so during the replacement of our solar panels with more modern equipment a few years ago, had CAT-6 pulled up to the utility closed on the bedroom floor.
More info about modem training and standards in this 1998 article:
Everything you wanted to know about modem and fax standards and software, but were afraid to ask is covered in this great overview article by Frank Gao from Gao Research. This article discusses all the functions that go into today’s modem products, but is not tied to any particular hardware implementation.
–jeroen
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 