Dialing Up At Home

If you've ever wanted to try out dialup, or have a need (there are plenty, believe it or not) to make a dialup connection, you don't need a phone line or any monthly fees to do it! You can get this gadget on eBay for thirty bucks, spend about fifteen minutes configuring it, and any pair of modems (or anything else) will be able to talk through it. The rest is up to you.
The guide for configuring the hardware is here: gekk.info/arti...
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[@offrails]

Count me in as one of those people who played Doom across continents over dial-up. I was living in the US, while my dad was living in Australia at the time. I believe we connected at something like 9600 baud, and the game played like a slide show. He picked up the bill because he worked for a phone company at the time. Also, those Windows 95 dial-up dialogs struck a nostalgia chord for me - the excitement of connecting to the ISP, getting a good connection speed, and exploring the magical world of the Internet.

[@croolis]

Firstly, thanks for a really interesting video! In 1995 I actually set up an ISP from scratch - it was running on a Sun Sparc workstation with a serial breakout board (64 ports, I think) and around 40 analog modems initially. The early users would dial up and be presented with a unix login prompt .. username and password and then type 'startppp' and you'd see the PPP stream in the terminal, at which point windows would take over and connect itself. Of course the fastest speed supported was 36kbps, however considering the whole setup was connected with a very, very expensive 64kbps leased line, 36kbps was more than enough! Later on, the individual analog lines (so many problems!) were replaced with a 2Mbps E1-PRI connection that could support 30 simultaneous calls - we had a specific rackmount unit for this that could take I think two E1s and a number of boards each of which was populated with I think 4 modems. These modems could do 56k - the crux was in having a digital 64kbps connection back to the telco. You have a really brought back many, many memories .. Thanks for the many great videos :)

[@jakegardner8667]

Just go overboard about the 56K problem! I'm intrigued

[@jfh400]

Yes please! I remember when I first got dial-up it was advertised as 56k, but we couldn't get that speed because something V.90 something something k56flex something...

[@z185284]

Yeah, I agree, I’d love to see the 56K stuff, sounds interesting!

[@jondoe6608]

Same here

[@CathodeRayDude]

No worries then, I will!

[@scarfboy]

As someone who used to be able to hear the connection speed to within 10kbits or so, I'm intrigued.

[@LonSeidman]

I've always been curious how 56k worked. I used to use a local ISP that let me bond two 56k modems together, almost ISDN speeds :)

[@jonboy545]

I had a neighbor who claimed he did that back in like '00 or '01, and I always thought he was bullshitting. Would love to hear more!

[@LonSeidman]

@@jonboy545 Back then most ISPs were small privately owned businesses. I was one of their first customers so they were always willing to let me try crazy stuff. I think I had to use Windows NT back then to do it - it would let you bond two or more modems together and utilize the aggregate speed provided the other end was configured for it.

[@lztx]

@@jonboy545 I remember we were at a LUG (Linux user group) where a member was demonstrating that. He had two phone lines and one always connected. He ssh'd in and showed a speed test, then connected the other modem, then showed the faster speed test. He was the main tech of a small ISP that even used this tech between their pops. They had dozens of pops (each might have had 8 or 16 phone lines, going into a Red Hat box), carefully having each one within local call distance of at least one other, so it would be local calls for their pops to get online. (Here in Australia a local call was to your own zone or a neighbouring zone so that was possible). So one 64kbps (or 128 if it was busy) ISDN DoV call would service several modems. Eventually they used a megapop service so it was one number for anyone to call instead of having to maintain all that hardware.

[@vylbird8014]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trellis_modulation Maths. That's how. Advanced modulation combined with forward error correction.

[@jackedup447]

Wasnt that called modem shotgunning?

[@shannonolivas9524]

"Before the internet became a cesspool" My dude. Yes. People can comment about how it's always been that way, but back in the day your average user was a little more savvy. There may have always been trolls and memes but the internet being a hive of disinformation and a gateway into an alternate reality didn't start until everyone and their mom (literally) was online.

[@CommodoreFan64]

I use to work for Lycos back in early 99- 01 as part of their chat SOS moderation service, and I can tell you even back then it was full of scum, but it was mostly kids, and teens seeing what they could get away with on the internet, and in chat rooms, not like today with people who go RRRREEEEEE!!!! when people don't bow down to their social, and political BS!!

[@epb9000]

​@@CommodoreFan64 I feel like the other major difference is you could LEAVE a given community pretty easily. With so few platforms basically controlling everything now, starting up new is not necessarily as easy as when the Internet was fractured into many smaller communities and it's a lot easier to coordinate large-scale harassment and disinformation campaigns.

[@thysonsacclaim]

I miss the old internet.

[@thysonsacclaim]

@@epb9000 - It was also small enough that if you got a bad reputation, people wouldn't let you in. And people didn't really dump their handles even if they could. It was such a better place. The internet's IQ has dropped 100 points since then.

[@fss1704]

Yeah, google definetly doesn't like people that think, instead of evolving we're becoming a true idiocracy.

[@PAkMan1999]

Ohhh, sweet days of dial-up. Those sounds just bring me back to my childhood. Sadly, I didn't caught golden times of dial-up, i was just a wee child, after all, but still cherish those memories, when my big brother would show me funny pictures from this world of internet, and this sound of modem, or shouting of my brother across the room, just because I picked up phone. Just awesome memories. Thank you!

[@wesd3370]

Is anyone else here chain watching this dude with absolutely no prior interest in old tech? I have no clue how he manages to make this so interesting but it is pure gold.

[@steverogers8163]

piling my pillows around the computer so my parents wouldn't hear me logging on at night.

[@lztx]

Aren't you silly for not knowing ATL0M I think, it's been a while lol. I used to know all the AT commands

[@CompuKonstantin]

Remember your video about the Canon L1 Camcorder? Well, I replaced all 150 caps on mine last weekend and now it’s fully working.

[@CathodeRayDude]

oh my god that's incredible, I can't believe you had the patience for it.

[@fisqual]

Shit, I'm excited for you!

[@Definitelynotacelebrity]

Glad I waited to ask about why your handshake sounded different, but now I’m quite excited for the 56k deep dive!

[@AmbiguouslyBrown]

Best channel ever. Growing up as a teenager in the ‘90s, this makes me super nostalgic. Thanks for the awesome videos!

[@tekvax01]

It's very simple! two cables connected together in series with two 9 volt batteries. Then you AT commands to open the connection, one ATA and the other ATD, and you're done! You may have to set them to ignore Dialtone with another AT command. But it works, I've done it many times!

[@aydenkron2254]

Having grown up never knowing what a modem was, this is really informative, keep it up!

[@CathodeRayDude]

Thanks, glad I could help! I'm thinking of actually trying to do a video where I explain in depth the history and how modems worked down to the nuts and bolts of the signaling standards, let me know if that'd be appealing!

[@Morphior]

@@CathodeRayDude I'd love that!

[@aydenkron2254]

@@CathodeRayDude would love to see that :)

[@MatheusSilva-bi2yc]

@@CathodeRayDude YES

[@concr3t3]

@@CathodeRayDude So down for a "how modems work" from you.

[@divarin1]

In the early 90's I connected a commodore 64 (1670 1200 baud modem) to an xp laptop (built-in 56k modem) using just a phone cable and a 9 volt battery. The battery wired into the line provided enough power to allow signal transmission over the line. Since both modems are hays compatible you can connect just by typing "ata" on one (answer) and "atd" on the other (dial). Since you're not actually dialing a number you don't need to put in the phone number, nor specify if you're dialing pulse (atdp) or tone (atdt). It worked well enough to backup my c64 BBS I had been running in the late 80's to the PC. Granted this might not have worked at a higher baud rate but I didn't encounter any errors at 1200 baud other than the occasional bad floppy disk.

[@HoratioHopkins]

That’s long bit at the end of the dialup connection is because there’s a default setting on dialup profile to try to auth using the provided creds, so it’s timing out on that step even though the connection is already up with an ip assigned. You can toggle the setting and the connection will complete a lot faster

[@CathodeRayDude]

I don't see why that would matter; I'm not using unauthenticated PPP or SLIP or something, this is a proper LCP-authenticated PPP session using LCP and MS-CHAP for auth, and it completes the auth as intended.

[@Andrew_Sparrow]

You can join two devices together using a phone cable, just plug either end in to each device and cut one of the two wires and connect a 9v battery to the two cut ends, this creates the loop current. I used to use this years ago when I only had a fax machine and no printer. I would 'fax' things I wanted to print to the fax machine :)

[@imark7777777]

Worked at a Boy Scout camp in the kitchen, needed to print some thing the office had a fax machine..... I think I only got to do that twice for some reason we didn't have are printer there and prior to that it was just a pie in the sky idea.

[@X5Industries]

Back in high school I used to play around with dialup modems on old machines making them talk to each other. Instead of an IP phone terminal I used my parents landline and my cellphone to coax the connection. I had the modems connected directly with one line, with a splitter on one end that had a connection to my house’s landline. I’d plug the house line in to give the “calling” modem a dial tone, and after it dials the first digit I would unplug it from the line, leaving the receive modem connected to the the landline. I’d then call my house phone with my cellphone and once the receive modem kicked on with the answer tone I’d plug back in the calling modem and unplug the line to the house, leaving the direct connection between the two. It was quick ‘n dirty, but reliable….my parents certainly were annoyed by the house phones ringing once and stopping every 5 minutes though 🤣

[@Richard_Ashton]

Where I worked there was a Plessey telecomms device to control the phones. The interface was via a Windows 95 PC at 300 baud.

[@olepigeon]

00:00 100% true. Back in the day you had to rent a phone from the phone company, they were permanently connected to your wall. You couldn't unplug it. A lot of houses in the late '70s and early '80s still had them. Since we didn't have a phone jack in which to plug in a modem, my dad had a data coupler, which was a modem that let you place the phone receiver on top so you can dial out. My brother and I, being toddlers, were ''running around the house squealing,'' as my dad put it. My dad would yell at us to shut up for a minute, because it was his 10th time trying to dial into work, and every time we squealed it'd mess up the modem. :D

[@linux42069]

This is the fire content I'm here for

[@kaitlyn__L]

Just the other day I was talking with a partner about ways to recreate dial-up over VoIP! Excellent timing.

[@gblargg]

This is great for preservation, being able to talk with old devices that only had a modem. People so often want to change how things work to match the latest, but sometimes it's easiest to cater to how something wants to communicate.

[@weeardguy]

Yep. Basically about the same as trying to convert the filename of a whole bunch of files that have the same filename when it comes to number of letters or digits and using MS-DOS commands to do that instead of downloading some piece of software to do that. It's still strange Windows still can't do that (well, at least as far as I know...) Just like I hooked up my laptop to my desktop via a direct cross-cable network to send something like 60 GB of data. Oh yes I could have used a USB-stick or disk big enough to do that, but it would take so much longer. The direct cross-cable connection got up to speeds I could only dream of via USB, even though the USB-connection on both the laptop and my desktop is 3.1.

[@JeffHochberg]

OMG! 3D Pipes screensaver! NT 4.0 with RRAS! You are the man! This video brought back so many memories. I actually cut my teeth in the IT world on NT 3.51 and Windows 95…just as NT 4.0 was about to ship. I got my MCSE certification and bam! The rest is history. 26+ years later and…we’re not in Kansas anymore. I’m glad I found your channel tonight! You officially have a new subscriber! Now I need to fight the urge to build an NT 4.0 VM just to relive those days. Thanks…seriously…great stuff!

[@NickBouwhuis]

It’s funny you feel like debugging things on linux is infuriating. I have the exact opposite feeling. I always feel like Windows knows what’s wrong and refuses to tell me, where in Linux I can just check a log file and know exactly what is up. I’ve created this network with a Pi and an iMac G4. It’s great fun. Thanks for the video!

[@Lethaltail]

I got an ATA recently. One line goes to a server for the XBAND SNES and Genesis modems. The other one goes into a brand new AT&T Trimline "Princess Phone." It goes into a VoIP network that's run by the same people as the XBAND server.

[@jesusvillafranca5714]

I grew up on the late 90s..my first computer was a compaq presario 5300, Celeron, 433Mhz, 64 MB RAM, Windows 98 and a winsoft modem..I think that is what they are called. Its not a fully hardware modem but half hardware and the other software..it will slow my computer whenever it connected. It wasn't until later that I was able to purchase a full fledge 56k v90 modem PCI. Man, good old times..my ISP at the time was CompuServe..once my contract was over with them. I switch to ISPWest..I was allowed to use the Windows dial up which it used very few resources comapared to the full software of AOL/CompuServe at the time and with this slow machines..everything single CPU cycle and megabyte of RAM was needed..Good old times..thanks for doing this! Awesome channel! Great content!

[@CathodeRayDude]

"softmodem" and "winmodem" are both terms for not-quite-hardware modems, for the record. Thanks for watching!

[@marcelofrau8818]

Please talk more about modems!! I really like this, so nostalgic to hear the handshake in the connection again... Good days playing games through phones.

[@FliesLikeABrick]

yeah the nostalgia is strong in this video

[@destari5917]

Awesome explanation. I've had to use that exact converter at "remote" business locations with only phone service available.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Thanks! Yeah, the 122 is common as dirt - I assert in the video that it's really intended for fax machines etc. but I've worked for a company that installed thousands of them for normal phone lines, it happens at convenience stores and fast food chains all the time. They're incredibly flexible little boxes.

[@destari5917]

@@CathodeRayDude in my case it was used in mine locations, many miles from anything, where phone lines were inconsistent but still available. It was either deal with minimal bandwidth or pay thousands for satellite.

[@aitchpea6011]

When I worked at Marconi, making the original Videophone as sold by BT, AT&T, Deutsche Telekom and others, we used to use a line simulator so we could connect two phones and dial one from the other.

[@veo_]

Wow. Watching you explain an ATA on KZbin is taking me on a complex emotional journey. This makes me miss my V.32bis modem that I used for BBSes and eventually Eskimo North (Unix dialup) where I'd have to call in to the CLI and manually launch slip remotely, then hard launch TCP/IP on my Mac's serial port locally to experience the web. It was a trick, let me tell you. Anyway, congrats on the channel. It's awesome!

[@DaleDenton]

Dude keep making these videos! I've always been fascinated by the way old phone networks were set up, especially once internet came into play and how modems were used. Great work!!

[@erik-victory]

Getting notified that CRD's uploaded a new, 10+ minute (inevitably excellent) vid covering some unglamorous, passé technology: hell yeah.

[@Valery0p5]

I once used a modem expansion board I found laying around in my dad's office, hooked it up to an old XP computer and connected the phone cord to -wait for it- the VoIP port of the VDSL modem 😅 And it worked! I dialed to Alice something ISP, a spinoff of Telecom Italia. Sadly that computer hard drive failed, it was very beaten up and it was a nightmare to get my father to move on to 7 and then 10 on a newer machine 😅 The modem was probably for the even older w98 computer he had at some point... Only other time I had a similar experience was using telnet to log in a BBS over internet since I was obsessed with those for some time.

[@queenkjuul]

I NEED THIS lmao I have a Pentium 1 and a Pentium 3 and both actually have working Ethernet BUT ETHERNET DOESN'T MAKE THE FIZZY NOISES

[@Eric_Pham]

And don't forget doom

[@queenkjuul]

@@gtzgreatride lol there is no modem in my 98 rig, I just use Ethernet, so no TAD either (though if I had a spare cable long enough, I'd hook my second cdrom up there instead)

[@yestertechnet]

Why can't I find an AOL disk!

[@Johnhdv540]

I stumbled on your channel due to a lot of my other interests and I’m impressed! Keep it up. I appreciate your no nonsense approach to explaining things. I also appreciate that you actually know what you’re talking about. Keep it up man

[@j2simpso]

Having dialled up the Texas BBS for Doom when I was a little kid and didn't understand such concepts as international long distance dialling and its associated charges, I can attest to my parents seeing a $300 telephone bill and wondering where it came from! 🤣

[@CathodeRayDude]

hahahaha, oh man, of course that had to have happened! mind if I ask where you were dialing from?

[@j2simpso]

@@CathodeRayDude Ontario,Canada and it was only like an hour match too!

[@StevieCooper]

I’ve never subscribed to anyones Patreon until now. Only stumbled across CRD a few days ago after someone commented in another channel. I must find who and thank them. Really loving this channel. Thanks!

[@SamuliTuomola_stt]

2:30 in some places phone company pays you to get a phone line, kinda. (trivia follows) ever since first phones in 1882 until late 1990s getting a phoneline in finland involved joining a regional co-operative association (some alternate plans existed but that was the primary way). in late 1990s they decided to turn the co-ops into public companies and make old owners shareholders. some of these companies now give out 1000€/year dividends for the amount of shares one could get for just having a phone line, assuming people didn't just immediately sell their stock which many did. (also some phoneline owners never claimed theirs, eventually they liquidated those stocks and put the money into a holding account, just for Helsinki area such account had 4mil€ in unclaimed money.)

[@Lysander-Spooner]

Great memories of life in the 1980s, thanks.

[@GC-qe8vc]

The AT command to tell the modem to not expect a dialtone was necessary and common knowledge in Greece: our dialtone was different than the US and most of Western Europe's (and still is). The normal, everything-is-fine dialtone contained pauses (tut tuuut tut tuuut) and that freaked out modems designed to assume a Bell dialtone.

[@KirkIsmay]

V.90 connections use a channelized T1 (each channel being 64k) at the ISP end, so the connection is a digital signal, which gets converted to analog closer to the subscriber. This is why 56k dial-up is 56k down, and 33.6 up. To get bidirectional 56k connections, you'd have to get an ISDN modem at the subscriber end. The same gear at the ISP end could handle both ISDN and 56k dial-up.

[@GarryGri]

You could get a PBX phone system, made for local office extensions etc, and use that to connect modems, faxes etc... The trick is to get it connected through a PC or something to your LAN, then you can use that to get to the internet through a modem connection.

[@FernandoDoom]

The 90s: when you would call a phone number to sacrifice a robot to get into Prodigy so you could check your email.

[@ixionn563]

As someone too young to personally experience dial-up and modems, it was cool to see it shown here, even if it was just a short demo. Also I love those series of Dell Latitude laptops, we had them all over when I was in middle through high school. They're extremely easy to service and practically bulletproof, they're like the Ford Panther-Body of laptops. Personally, I'd probably use that device for something more along the lines of getting my 1950s/60s Western Electric rotary phone working on VoIP service. Just for the absolute geek out factor (and possibly hipster factor) of using a rotary phone in 2020. Great content as usual!

[@imark7777777]

You'll have to give me a call when you get that set up, not too many people call my car phone. If you haven't looked at the xlink devices it's a Bluetooth Gateway with capability to ring bell phones and decode rotary. I had one on my wish list for many years and I finally said it's time and bought 2, one for the home and one for the car. I dug out a rotary phone and a Vonage box for a demonstration to some kids. I told them here's some paper here are some pencils here's a picture of a phone and if you need inspiration here's a 3-D one and I went thud on to the table with the rotary. Later after we took a break I was watching them looking at it and one of them picked it up and put it to there ear and heard "your voange device is not connected to the Internet". They were quite shocked that it was working and at that point I said I need to get a Bluetooth gateway. So I have a pouch with the gateway, a battery and a voltage converter that's easily removable from my car, and my not so great black rotary phone. definitely no texting while driving and it's hands-free, now if that dang operator "Siri" would just listen to me.

[@Morphior]

Damn, your upload schedule is way more regular than I thought it'd be when I subbed. I like it! Keep it going, I thoroughly enjoy your content!

[@CathodeRayDude]

Thanks!! I'll tell you, I actually do not consider myself a person who can stick to a weekly schedule and I'm sure it's gonna slow down eventually, but for the time being I decided to just throw myself at it and see what happens - KZbin rewards people who upload regularly, and while that isn't sustainable long-term, I figure if I get up to a significant number of subscribers I'll be able to slow down and breathe a little easier without getting deranked into oblivion.

[@Morphior]

@@CathodeRayDude makes sense. Don't overwork yourself though!

[@wisico640]

@@CathodeRayDude don't overwork yourself, but if it works for you, it works for us 🙌

[@jeffp3495]

Digging all the positivity here in these comments

[@Niarbeht]

I remember turning on compression and sending custom-sized pings that were just obnoxiously large. It was a good time.

[@lelandclayton5462]

A few years ago I did this with two Hayes compatible modems, a 9volt battery and two PCs running Windows NT3.51 and Procom. Had to use AT commands to make the connection and didn't give the handshake signal. Basically made it work like a Null Modem. I might revisit this and buy a couple of Cisco SPA122 ATA Boxes.

[@thousandoaksmall1995]

I'm really digging your channel and presentation style. Keep it up.

[@samuelbanya]

That was a fantastic explanation near 5:30. Good job. You have a gift for explaining these kind of concepts. Kind of wanted to fuck around with old phones connected in a network at home to just call each other, kind of like just to call someone in the basement etc.

[@Valery0p5]

6:21 I once went to a telephone exchange originally built in the '70 and seeing all the space they had in those (now almost empty) floors for switching equipment, they probably would have killed to have something like that. This old manager was our guide, and he was so proud to show us how nowadays a single, small refrigerator sized server was able to handle all the phone lines of an entire city district, knowing that when he started working the Italian equivalent of Direct distance dialing (Teleselezione it was called) just came into fruition for the entire nation.

[@henryatkinson1479]

>before the internet became a cesspool from what I remember its always been that way

[@knightcrusader]

Nah, there was a time where there was no spam, no youtube comments full of hate. T'was a magical place.

[@scarfboy]

@@knightcrusader it helps that youtube didn't exist until 2005ish. From the comments I've seen about usenet, though, it's always been... a mix.

[@dtraindaimyo3377]

@@knightcrusader No spam, sure, well less of it anyway. No hate? No way, that's always been a thing, literally forever.

[@llary]

Yeh but it used to be OUR cesspool

[@lztx]

Today is the 9970th day of September of the year 1993

[@WhitfieldProductionsTV]

service merchandise used to have one when I was 13 and hungout on the mall. that was 92/93 lol

[@d4m4s74]

My ISP's modem (Fritz!Box) has a built in 2 port VoIP to analog converter (and VoIP to ISDN) and you can call internally with 3 digit numbers. No extra hardware necessary

[@zivan56]

I used dialup so much that I could tell you what speed a 56k modem would connect at based off the sounds alone most of the time. There was a very specific series of tones that indicates higher baud rates, and the series of "steps" and their count indicated how fast it was connecting.

[@OutlawNix]

When I was growing up the best choice for internet accesss you had was dialup. At the end of my dialup phase I used a 56k USRobotics modem like the one shown on the table in this youtube video. I remember having to download game updates on dialup that was around 150MB in size where it would take like 7 hours to download. When highspeed internet first became available for our area the only choice you had was DSL. I had the 512 Kbps DSL plan where my maximum download speed was 64KB/sec at the time I felt like a kid in a candy store. Now I'm on cable internet where I can download a 60GB game in little over an hour. My provider does offer 940 Mbps internet plan but the monthly price is too much for my blood and the fact it has a steap setup type fee.

[@ChristianKoehler77]

Many years ago I was actually able to make 56k dialup work at home. The server was a Linux PC with an ISDN card. The server and the computer with the modem were connected to a PBX that had both ISDN and analog ports. Since the server had a digital (ISDN) connection it could act as a V.90 host modem. Probably because the analog line was short I got rock stable 56k (56 k down/33 k up) speed. I have never seen that on real world phone lines back in the day (usually 44k or 48k , sometimes 52 k if you were lucky). I wasn't able to get stable V.92 (symmetric 56k). I think the analog to digital converter in the PBX wasn't good enough for that.

[@HPad2]

Back in the early 00s I remember bridging two modems with 2 phone lines :D. At around 6kbps downloads was amazing at the time lolI faintly remember the modems connecting at around 46-48K

[@CathodeRayDude]

I've heard tell that this was a thing, never knew about it at the time. Absolutely fascinated and thinking of tracking down some equipment and trying to do wacky multilink PPP setups!

[@kennylauderdale_en]

So theoretically, you could use this to play SEGA Saturn Bomberman through dial-up?

[@CathodeRayDude]

I don't know how the Saturn did dialup but if it was direct peer to peer then yes.

[@MrAwol007]

SEGA Saturn Bomberman love that game

[@Dylfunnymoments]

Whoa it’s the anime dude who finds old anime it’s so awesome seeing u on another channel lol

[@Helladamnleet]

I know Dreamcast has DreamPi which simulates a dial up connection and allows a ton of games to work, so probably.

[@mor4y]

I'll second the dreamPi recommendation, if it can be done at all, then that's the tool to do it Then you can get a dreamcast as well, there's a few games where enthusiasts are keeping some games online :)

[@iceowl]

the worst modems of the 90s were WinModems, modems which would only work in Windows because the manufacturer decided real hardware was too good and replaced it with a DSP and closed-source Windows drivers.

[@chronossage]

This whole video reminds me of the dreamcast online community. They spent years with guide on making line voltage simulators and have charts of computer modems which could be modded and dialed into. Alot of people kept windows 98 installed because it was the only windows with the modem settings you needed. They finally figured out something very similar to this using a raspberry pi and certain usb modem models. I think it's called dreampi.

[@mosquitobrainbutcool]

Yep. They even have a preconfigured usb modem for the pi you can buy with all of the line modifications that you need already installed

[@winlover37]

The amount of collective dedication the Dreamcast community has is insane.

[@RhinoXpress]

this guy is one of the most underrated content creators on youtube. i hope to see this guy at 1 million subs in the next few years!

[@nbarrager]

I went on Alibaba and ordered two sample units of the cheapest PBX I could find (shipping was the same and quite high) and sold one of them on ebay. Then I created an adapter using some old cat5e wall sockets that would allow me to use the unused wires in the ethernet cable going back to my room to have two phone lines.

[@jamesdouglaswhite]

I worked at Verio an ISP bought by NTT right after Verio bought and ended every local ISP nationwide, and then removed ISDN and forced DSL. I would love to see more

[@kd1s]

My first modem was a Radio Shack DC-2. That got upgraded to a Hayes 300. And finally a Supra 2400. That last is how I found out telephone systems do a reboot at around 1-2AM every day.

[@upsidedownroad]

"Great I can get my Coronavirus news right here on my pentium 3" A brand new sentence

[@s8wc3]

56k tldr: 56k required too much bandwidth for a purely analog setup, so the downlink is a kind of PCM digital signal, going directly from the ISP to the telecom's (then) shiny new all digital phone system via an ISDN line. On V.90 the uplink was still analog 33.6, so that's why you can't have a 56k connection between two consumer modems. Unfortunately you won't find 56k access equipment that hooks up to a standard POTS line, the ISDN setup removing an analog to digital conversion step and the much lower noise floor was the main factor that allowed 56k to work at all.

[@jakelancaster5889]

I wish you released source code for anything you've done for YT like on github! That one hard drive app you made for that one where you opened the HD case for example! Ugh! Youre awesome!

[@therealchayd]

I can say for sure that the US Robotics Courier modems could do point-to-point as we used to use them for el-cheapo leased lines for our customers back in the early '90s.

[@ZiggyTheHamster]

This is almost how you get a Dreamcast online in 2020. You need to route stuff to different addresses and run a daemon to convert the voice chat stuff. The DreamPi OS basically does all of this for you, and all you need is a voice capable modem and a way to introduce voltage to the phone line (two 9V batteries works, you don't need the full 40V or whatever or for it to be AC). The voice modem is so the DreamPi can send a dial tone down the line to trick the Dreamcast into thinking it has a dial tone. It's also possible to do this in a VM, though I never got those changes into the project because I lost interest (and as I'm using that USR modem as the server side, I can't send a dial tone so some games simply don't work because it won't dial without one). What would be awesome is if someone made a digital modem software application. You could have it accept SIP calls and downlink 56k to the Dreamcast, and then use the ATA to make the connection possible. The "ISP" side would handle the routing/DNS overrides. I imagine this would require someone to have expert knowledge of the V.92 standard and telephony, so an open source project seems unlikely.

[@stuartnolan9313]

The TLDW on 56k is they removed the digital to analogue conversion at the ISP end. The isp pushed out a digital signal to you over ISDN and the phone network converted it to analogue. Then your modem (MOdulator/DEModulator) then converted the analogue back to digital. That’s why it’s (up to) 56k down and 33.6k up.

[@zacksstuff]

My dad had sprung for cable internet by the late 90s, so I never had the (dis)pleasure of using dial-up. I've used it a grand total of once entirely out of curiosity, and it was over a cable modem phone line so really it was just bad internet via good internet.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Yup, "phone lines" provided by cable are literally VoIP - an ATA built into the modem that terminates to a gateway service at your ISP.

[@synthoelectro]

The internet felt more like the Internet when we had a modem to dial up into.

[@jonathanwarner1844]

I don't know what the line-man's tech was like in the USA, but I know that the British Telecom line-man's test set that I have here can set up a phone connection on a line that is not connected to an exchange, so I guess that some vintage line-man's equipment should exist over there to set up a test phone line comparatively cheaply.

[@KoopaMedia64]

Thank you for not trying to impersonate a dialup modem with your voice

[@chinesepopsongs00]

V90 could go only 56kdown and 33k6 up, but v92 could also do 48k down and 40k up. In theory v92 could do 56k duplex but cable reflections prevented that from practically being possible 99% of the time. So maybe when you have silly short cables in a controlled environment now that you might get it to work.

[@mrfoodarama]

Absolutely love the modem and networking aspect of these era machines! Looking forward to more

[@manamaster_]

This is the video I have been looking for for years. This is way easier than all of the other solutions I have found on the internet thanks!

[@ZygZ4g]

Algorithm just point to your channel. Spent the morning binging on your vids. Keep up the good work!

[@MatheusSilva-bi2yc]

just dump the 56k stuff in a vid I want that juicy theory lol

[@CathodeRayDude]

don't worry, it's comin!

[@DaleDenton]

I could see myself sitting thru a 45 min video no problem lol

[@eliasb8]

I recently found your channel and, besides the great content, I love your sense of humor and the way you talk. You are a wonderful communicator and I am always entertained by your videos, even if I am not very interested into the subject. Keep up with the great work.

[@RC-nq7mg]

I am about to set up my old Tandy 102 with my Sportster 14,400 plugged into my PBX and try to dial a few BBS servers through my VOIP subsription.

[@franklincerpico7702]

I did this exact setup yesterday @Cathode Ray Dude. I found that I could not get the modems to negotiate a link without making some additional changes in the Cisco. Namely disabling the echo cancelation. After that I was able to get my two PCs to connect at 37000bps as opposed to 9600.

[@adamninezero]

Huge props for the BLM and Pride Flag stickers in the background. Keep up the great content, I got recommened your channel from a Technology Connections video and I'm so happy I discovered your channel.

[@TechGorilla1987]

@corey Babcock I won't elaborate but you're correct. It seems one cannot even escape divisiveness and politics even when watching technology channels. It makes me sad.

[@scott8919]

@corey Babcock No one said only black lives matter. The whole point of BLM is that they need to be heard amongst all the other voices. Basically "black lives matter too!"

[@Phos9]

Another neat thing I suspect you can do with that gizmo: I imagine you can use it to make a Sega Saturn Netlink work. The USA version of the Netlink didn’t connect to the internet, it just dialed a phone number, so it actually still works if you have or can simulate POTS

[@CathodeRayDude]

What does it actually dial in *to* though?

[@Phos9]

@@CathodeRayDude The other person's phone number, it was a direct connection.

[@doug834]

As a child of the late 90's/early aughts this brought back a lot of memories. Awesome video!

[@picklesidekick011]

Fun video! On the topic of modems, one concept I don't see well explained on youtube are "winmodems". Before there was great product information on the internet, you basically had to check the system requirements to see if a modem needed a math-coprocessor to know whether you were getting a "real" modem, or a "winmodem" that was a glorified rj11 adaptor that would slow your system to a crawl.

[@jmr]

There are free dialup ISPs(yes in 2020). Some are run by library's and some by nonprofits.

[@Drinkyoghurt]

that download transfer screen is taking me back. Wild days. I also miss startup music.

[@lztx]

You quickly mentioned null-modem cable. I used one of those to get my Compaq Contura laptop online. I had a desktop computer running Linux that provided the PPP server to the Compaq as well as sharing the dialup (later ADSL when I moved in with friends circa 2000) to both this PPP connection and the LAN (thinnet!). Trumpet Winsock worked well, as did the DOS port of pppd. The advantage of null-modern cable was instant connection - no dialling or handshaking - and it connected at 115.2kbps instead of 33.6k.

[@McFlyOrPie]

You just did this whole set-up just to hear that dial-up sound, ain't?

[@TechGorilla1987]

Are you from Central Pennsylvania?

[@McFlyOrPie]

@@TechGorilla1987 are you magic?

[@McFlyOrPie]

@@TechGorilla1987 I see you are from Central Pa. Im from York.

[@TechGorilla1987]

​@@McFlyOrPie Did I call it? I'm in Northern York county,

[@TechGorilla1987]

@@McFlyOrPie Only people in my area use an "Ain't" as a question mark at the and of statements. It's one of many things I learned marrying in to a Perry County family with the first wife.

[@johnvanwinkle4351]

Thank you for a great video and instructions! I was looking for a solution to dialing in across my network to a BBS computer here at the house and two of these were the solution. Since the computers are in different rooms, it works great! I would like to recommend adding a few changes to your write up about configuring the SPA 122 I learned in this process. If you are interested, let me know.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Awesome! By all means, do share your knowledge! You can reply here or email me cathoderaydude at gmail.

[@YouStEeLz]

Hey John, I'd also be interested, I am kind of struggling with my 2 Linksys ATA2102, could use any documentation possible!

[@johnvanwinkle4351]

I am not familiar with the linksys product, only the Cisco spa122.

[@YouStEeLz]

@@johnvanwinkle4351 It's the same product as the SPA122, just rebranded

[@johnvanwinkle4351]

Send me an email about your issue(s) at linuxman27 at gmail.

[@this_time_imperfect]

Please keep making videos, you are up there with Techmoan and 8-Bit guy etc you just haven’t blow up yet, keep it up it will happen soon!

[@glufke]

I came to your channel since I found that Yamaha MSX video. (I'm a big MSX fan). Since there, I subscribed and I really enjoy the content.

[@PotatoFi]

I totally did this last year with my Macintosh SE, a Global Village modem, a Dell USB 56k modem, and a Raspberry Pi Zero! The only real software I needed was DreamPi, which is a Raspberry Pi image designed to connect Sega Dreamcasts to other players via it's 56k modem. For hardware, I connected the two modems together, and induced line voltage by pulling 5v out of the USB modem itself. There was also a capacitor involved. Totally sketchy, but it was enough to convince the Macintosh SE to dial, and for the Raspberry Pi to pick up! Soon, I was FTPing files at a blazing fast 2,400 baud! Wow! My iMac G3 on the other hand was grouchy, and refused to dial the Raspberry Pi. I'm not sure if it didn't like the 5v line voltage (it's supposed to be 9v) or what. That Cisco gateway would probably solve my line voltage issues. Awesome video, really, REALLY enjoyed it!

[@southDutchMan]

I’d really like the 56k follow up video! Great work on this one.

[@nickjuly4A]

A very easy way to create a dial-up server is to use one of the old UFO looking Apple Airport routers that have a 56k modem in them. You just enable PPP dial-in and enter a username, password and how many rings it should wait to answer then connect a phone cord from one of the lines in the ATA to the Airport and dial it.

[@wisico640]

Man you almost got me wanting to buy 2 modems just to try it out 😂

[@ElectroMatrixLab]

It is possible to connect two modems without a phone line. All you need to do is inject into the "phone line" a 48-52V AC voltage with a frequency between 15 and 68 Hz (depending on the year of the modem) for around 1 sec to simulate the ring signal, and the awaiting modem will "pick up" the phone and start establishing the connection. Some of the modems need constant voltage to be supplied to power up the virtual "phone line", so 9-12V DC should be enough to sustain the connection. I did this many times in the 90's to test the modems or to link two computers over 20m over 1-pair wire. I was using a 52V 50Hz AC adapter to simulate the ring tone. Definitely doable!

[@coen123]

Don't you hate it when your Coronavirus news experience requires a newer generation of browser? Kinda surprised that web portals like MSN still exist though. Either they are still popular or they must be really cheap to run.

[@s3vR3x]

i discovered your channel yesterday and i cant get enough