DSL

How did the internet ever do anything before broadband?


I remember my sisters logging onto a mainframe at the University of South Alabama using a modem card on a Commodore 64. We'd hook it up to a little 13" black and white television set (which means the Commodore's then ground-breaking color graphics were lost on us) and dialed it up for some computer science class or other. There were even a couple of games you could play, but I think I only got one tryout with that, as they charged for the computer time.

Then there was the NEC computer and Compuserve and bulletin boards. I upgraded to a whopping 9600 baud modem. Still dialing up using pulse instead of tone 'cause ma' bell was still charging extra for that sort of advanced feature.

Then there were the days of 56k, if I was lucky, and it didn't rain, whilst living in the piny woods of Georgia and North Carolina.

My parents, never saw the need for DSL or cable modems, and for them it wasn't needed. But having spent a pretty fair amount of time back home the past two months and suffering through slow dial-up just to check email, well, when I stop and think about it, DSL (or cable) is a marvel that's a very good thing for me.

I'll try not to reminisce about DOS and floppy drives next week.