So basically I need a dial up compatible service. Does anyone know of any of these? Are there any free ones?

VivienM wrote on 2024-08-12, 23:02:

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-08-12, 22:57:

VivienM wrote on 2024-08-12, 22:49:

PCI?!? ISA LT Winmodem FTW...

Interesting question - why would an IBM Aptiva-nee-Acer in 1998 come with an ISA modem? The thing had about equivalent number of ISA and PCI slots... so... why go ISA in early-mid 1998?

(And now that you guys have me talking about modems, I actually think I have a brand new in box USR Winmodem of some sort from 2002ish sitting around somewhere... hmmm...)

That thing sounds awesome...

The LT Winmodem or my NIB USR modem?

The LT Winmodem, I don't know how I feel about it. Never had good results with it, buuuuuut... when I subsequently tried to get DSL, I discovered that the copper line into that house was incredibly bad. So bad, in fact, that the phone co tech told me to switch to cable Internet because they just couldn't make the DSL work reliably in summer conditions. (For anyone who wonders what summer has to do with it, heat causes copper to increase in size, and that increase in line length caused the DSL service to get worse and worse between January and late June). So, can't blame the LT Winmodem for also performing poorly on that line..

Heat increases electrical resistance, this affects all conductors. On cable modem distribution lines, the actual coaxial cable part of the line (optical fiber is used along most of the path), needs to have its gain and equalization profile adjusted based on seasonal temperature variations.

Lucent controllerless modems (with hardware DSPs) were some of the better winmodems available, IMHO.

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-08-13, 15:59:

So basically I need a dial up compatible service. Does anyone know of any of these? Are there any free ones?

You would need 2 things :

a) a dial-up modem compatible phone line

b) a dial-up Internet service provider . It is not a question of the service being "compatible" with dial-up, but of it explicitly being a dial-up Internet connection service

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-08-13, 15:59:

So basically I need a dial up compatible service. Does anyone know of any of these? Are there any free ones?

I don't want to be that guy, but have you tried Googling dialup internet service? The answers to questions like this already exist.

darry wrote on 2024-08-13, 16:07:

Heat increases electrical resistance, this affects all conductors. On cable modem distribution lines, the actual coaxial cable part of the line (optical fiber is used along most of the path), needs to have its gain and equalization profile adjusted based on seasonal temperature variations.

Yup, but isn't it kind of crazy that, on a Nortel 1MM platform that could do 320/640/960 kilobit sync rates, it would sync reliably at 640 in the winter, then 320 in spring, then... basically by mid-June it's not even staying up for an hour without a multi-minute connectivity loss. And by late June, the telco technician is telling me to switch to cable...

That just seems like an insane amount of variability, but I guess the fact that it never ever did 960 tells you it was marginal even in peak winter...

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-13, 21:03:

I don't want to be that guy, but have you tried Googling dialup internet service? The answers to questions like this already exist.

Consider the slop.

Cursed Derp wrote on 2024-08-13, 12:30:

So it won't work with normal phone service?

What is 'normal phone service' in 2024?

For decades, 'normal phone service' meant calling up the monopoly carrier (what they call an "ILEC" in North America), so Bell Canada here, Verizon and its predecessors in New York State south of here, France Telecom now Orange in France, etc. And you ordered a copper analog phone line. On the other end of that copper line, since some point in the 1980-90s, you would most likely have a digital TDM switch (Nortel DMS-100, Western Electric/Lucent 5ESS, etc) with a line card that converted your analog voice to 64 kilobit digital voice. (Certainly, to have 56 kilobit modems, you needed a digital TDM switch on the carrier end, otherwise the max you could do was 33.6)

In 2024, I am not sure that's true anymore. There are still plenty of TDM switches, copper lines, etc around, but there are a lot of other things. Even if you call up your legacy monopoly carrier tomorrow and order plain vanilla home phone, who knows if they'll give you an old-fashioned copper line or if they'll give you some fiber box with a phone port and a built-in SIP client. Then you have a whole bunch of other carriers who offer home phone - a few may do old-fashioned TDM on copper, but the majority is some kind of IP over cable (your cable co's phone offering), IP over the public Internet (Vonage, etc), etc.

Crazy thing is, if you had a dialup account with, say, a phone company ISP in 2000 and you just kept your account going and you kept your copper line going, I think you could dial in just fine in 2024. But if you want to sign up for a new dialup ISP account in 2024... I think people will think you're insane and most providers won't even know how to sign you up.