I think by now all NeoTeo readers know that I love retro hardware. However, there are some things I don't even want to go back to. One of them is dial-up connectivity. Too many family arguments, too much money burned, too many lost downloads… but dial-up hasn't completely disappeared. After making several adjustments to his landline, YouTuber Ionic1k connected the phone to his Windows 9x computers… and started dialing.
Do you feel your current connection is slow? Well… you should celebrate, because things were much worse. Here is where I enter Grandpa Simpson mode and start narrating some of the ominous horrors of dial-up: your own home turned into a battlefield over phone control, begging for flat-rate, "have a good night" with 3 kilobytes per second of download, emotionally collapsing with every unexpected drop, corrupted files, the downloader that doesn't do its job… ugh.
However, what terrorized me in the past now serves as entertainment for others, and that brings us to the small channel of Ionic1k on YouTube. His adventures with retro hardware have gained a little traction in recent months, but recently he decided to connect to the Internet via dial-up using two of his machines, one with Windows 98 and the other with Windows 95. His introduction to dial-up with the original sound is excellent:
Internet with dial-up in 2023: Yes, it still works
The first minutes of the video focus on the history of dial-up, BBS, and communication protocols, until reaching the classic V.90 that dominated many connections in the late '90s. But this experiment by Ionic1k has a key piece: his provider, Xfinity. The service includes a traditional phone line (i.e., no VoIP) through its coaxial link, and Ionic1k decided to redirect that line to the distribution box in his home… with the seasoning of a 90-volt shock, and an earthquake!
The USRobotics modem had no problem, but his Windows 98 machine suffered a hang. Things went better on the Windows 95 computer, even though its internal modem can't detect the line tone without help. So how does it connect to the Internet exactly? With the free NetZero service that (still) operates in Los Angeles and grants ten hours of browsing per month. A quick TCP/IP installation in Windows 95… and Google appeared in the browser, with all the magic that Internet Explorer 5 can deliver today (the same happened on the Windows 98 computer later). Do you know any dial-up service in your region? Leave a comment!
