Homelab Dial-Up

[@noahisamathnerd]

Bringing in The Serial Port and CRD!? It’s the crossover episode I never knew I wanted!

[@danisgay100]

I would like to see someone do dial up with windows ce in 2024

[@theserialport]

Dial-up Dreams

[@papalyjon9087]

Geeks are sleeping on ClabRetro

[@VK2FVAX]

@@danisgay100 CE?! Why you hate them so much?!

[@cda32]

TSP never went into much detail of their POTS setup :(

[@NickBouwhuis]

The Napster server mentioned running on 127.0.0.1:8875. That means it only listens for incoming connections on the localhost. Try setting the listen address to 0.0.0.0:8875 or :8875. If you do the latter, make sure to edit the hosts file with your internal IP, too.

[@pearcomputers2542]

Yeah, that immediately caught my eye at 33:41 :D I guess i already tried too often to reach stuff that wasn't even listening globally.

[@jonathanschober1032]

Agreed! This is why Napster failed!

[@adampope5107]

The meta server is talking to the main server over loopback. They're both on the same physical server.

[@jonathanschober1032]

@@adampope5107 I thought the meta server is what clients communicate to. It also explains why Napster also on localhost worked

[@adampope5107]

​@@jonathanschober1032it looks like the meta server acts as some sort of redirector which should be talking only to the main server. The client should be talking to the main server over port 8888. I think the client browser is configured to talk on the wrong port. If the meta server is supposed to be the client facing service, then yeah, it needs to be configured to listen to the IP address on the NIC.

[@BAgodmode]

The big flex was leaving your away message to show you had broad band. Problem was, my brother liked to do that on our dial up connection.

[@rnts08]

We used isp+speed prefixes, like [IPNet/10] meant that someone was on the ipnet isp (within same network was usually unmetered) and 10 meant 10Mpbs unlink, everything from Napster, Kazaa, redline and DC++ before torrents took off.

[@nickwallette6201]

I eventually got a second phone line, and had a RAS manager called DUNCE installed that would detect when the connection dropped, and automatically reconnect. My computer was online 24/7. I would use mIRC's extensive scripting engine as a remote shell so I could access the filesystem through DCC Chat windows, and send/receive files to myself at school on the blazing-fast 128Kbps broadband connection.

[@willosfloppydrive]

I'm happy you're succeeding in making KZbin videos, I remember talking to you when you had less than 10k subs and I checked to see how many subs you had 1 year ago, you had around 640!

[@clabretro]

thank you! it's been a fun ride so far

[@willosfloppydrive]

@@clabretro I hope it is!!

[@mazda-787b-enjoyer]

damn, how did he go from 6.440971856520002e1519 to 31.4k subscribers? he must have posted big cringe

[@willosfloppydrive]

@@mazda-787b-enjoyer "wow, 0 views in 3 seconds? must have fallen off"

[@JustOrdinaryPao]

Wholesome moment on KZbin? I must be dreaming XD Congrats on the dude for getting so many tho, massive achievement

[@digitalsparky]

Dialup is the reason LAN parties were so friggin fun :P.

[@clabretro]

yes!

[@BillAnt]

Back in the 80's and early 90's dial-up BBS's were all the range. In fact ran a Commodore C64 and Amiga board with single lines ("Mom! Get off the line!!" lol). Ahh the good ol' days (or bad from your perspective). heh

[@digitalsparky]

@@BillAnt I live in Australia, I was using dialup 'til the early 00s. with a 4 hour session limit, I was making a lot of phone calls... LOL

[@BillAnt]

​@@digitalsparky - Back then we used "phreak codes" for making free long distance and international calls to BBS'es overseas. We were living on the edge dangerously. hehe

[@ffwast]

@@digitalsparky I was using dialup until the LATE 00s. Makes me appreciate my new fiber line lol

[@KayleeKerin]

Topical! I've been setting up a 24 line internal dial-up phone system at the Large Scale Systems museum. We used a Rhino T1 Channel bank, Asterisk, and T1 card to set it all up. Allows us to dial up different BBSs and systems in our second floor personal computer area. Glad to see more dial-up fun in other places!

[@clabretro]

very cool!

[@makceg]

as a admin of small dial-up isp in 1994 I "invented" a gear with 16 USR Courier v.34 modems without plastic cases which were stacked on 4 thread rods with some plastic spacers and this beast was mounted into standard 19" rack using some drywall tin elements. We had full rack of this, home-brew AC-AC large transformers to power this up, a fans sourced from old mainframe and two linux servers with multiport rs232 cards from Equinox to accept calls and run pppd. Later we put 2511's to replace linux machines built from consumer grade hardware. Was fun time, we offered "unlimited" night plans and all lines were busy, I loved to take night shifts to chat with people on our IRC channel or play something over network

[@TerabyteForever]

Wow. What a story...

[@imark7777777]

Every so often I would read a story of a small ISP and think that would be fun to do. Especially the free ones. One of these days I'll get it figured out on my end at least like to be able to dial-in to my house.

[@rwieber79]

II met my wife in early 2003 in an AOL chatroom and instant messenger. 21 years later and we're still together and going to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary in July of this year. I'll never forget how dial-up was and having to make sure everyone stayed off the phone when you wanted on unless you had a separate line which eventually we got.

[@clabretro]

ha that's awesome! and congratulations!

[@TravisNewton1]

My fun dial-up story is that one day I was tired of having to get off the Internet whenever my mom needed to get on. Since we had a LAN that I built (so me and my dad could use the printer attached to the family computer over the network), one day I got the idea to install a proxy server on the family computer. Then I dialed up into AOL and ran back to my room. I configured my laptop to use the proxy server running on our family computer. I then opened Firefox and wirelessly browsed the web (albeit very painfully slow!) and showed my mom that we could both be online at the same time - just at a MUCH slower speed. And that's why I think modern tech is so boring. There used to be real problems to solve and it was always fun to solve them (or at least attempt to).

[@sertralina100mg]

I was born in 2002 but was still able to catch the nostalgia about something I didnt even lived??? This tells something about the way you're making content. Keep it up.

[@seshpenguin]

Same! I have a little tiny bit of nostalgia for dial-up, because I remember when I was very young watching my dad occasionally use dial-up for some work related site VPN stuff (something like that), and a little bit later on messing around with NetZero was very fun as a kid (even though the entire time we had broadband).

[@floodo1]

"DONT PICK UP THE PHONE {insert family member} !!!!!!!"

[@nealhocker]

lol “Hellorld!” UE would be proud

[@fredneedle123]

I had two phone lines. One for voice calls and one for dial up internet. I couldn't afford an ISDN line, or whatever it was called. When I got my first broadband line, I had one of them USB frog type modems for it. I had to use the main computer like a router for other computers to connect at the same time. It was all very exciting.

[@oldschooldude8370]

Haven't heard isdn in quite some time. Noone could afford it 😂 It was designed for businesses like t1 or t3. Dsl was what became affordable.

[@fredneedle123]

@@oldschooldude8370 indeed. Not sure about the speed of ISDN. Probably nothing compared to fibre to the premises. That's got some grunt.

[@oldschooldude8370]

@@fredneedle123 The isdn you're likely referencing was typically 128kbps. Broadband isdn was fiber instead of twisted pair.

[@fokthewef]

That was thoroughly enjoyable. As an ex ISP tech who got to play around with E1s, T1s, Cisco dial-up configs, modem troubleshooting, customer support, and spending waaay too much money on dialup 😂😂😂😂 you keep bringing back precious memories buddy.. thanks a bunch.. i can see you too liked big butts 😂😂😂

[@clabretro]

😆

[@breadramen]

I also grew up on the tail end of dial up, we lived outside of town in a rural area though, too far from CO to get DSL, so we were stuck using 56k until about 2010!! At that point I convinced my parents to get us smartphones with cellular data instead. Wasn't much faster at the time but the ability to be always online was game changing. You hit all the highlights of my memories of dial up, although I was more of a Limewire/MSN kid. Looking forward to future content with this setup!

[@HyperDroids]

A Saturday upload by clabretro? Oh, today's a good day!

[@coreybabcock2023]

Seriously I'm literally in tears cause I would do anything to go back to 2001 and redo it all over again

[@user-pf9dr2bt6z]

I know what you mean, it was amazing !!!!

[@DataDashy]

You still can 😂 get some retro friends and play ipx games on kali, nothings better 🎉

[@Gnomesenpai]

you need to self host MSN too!

[@rnts08]

And IRQ

[@basroos_snafu]

The 4 wire telephone line allowed me to have my own number at my parents' house, so I could be online without keeping their line engaged. Those were the days, but I'm also happy they are over. And now, now I want a wife that uses the word "asynchronous". Thanks for the video!

[@daaero]

We had that 'scarce resource' of a single phone line as well. As soon as I was able to afford it as a kid through odd jobs, we had a second phone line installed. This allowed us to run the connection 24/7. We used a Cisco router, which was exotic for home use at the time to share the connection.

[@nickwallette6201]

One of my fondest dial-up memories was when I got my first cable modem. I connected to Napster, found an MP3 I wanted, and started the download. A few seconds later, I hit Play. It had always been an option in the software to play the file while it was downloading, but on dial-up, it wasn't fast enough to keep up with real-time playback. Finally, with my shiny new cable modem, I could. The smile I got on my face when I could actually play a file _while it was downloading_ was so wide it broke through the walls in my bedroom. Second coolest experience was when my older brother came over and saw Windows Update downloading updates for Win ME. Back then, software would tell you what it was doing and how it was coming along, so it had a counter of KB downloaded. My brother watched for a moment, and then asked, kind of incredulously, "... is that 12 MEGABYTES downloaded already?" "Yep." "Wow, that's fast." "Yep."

[@Jacobhopkins117]

I grew up at the tail end of dial up. I remember having a Windows 98 Toshiba laptop that my grandma gave me and running a 100ft RJ11 cable across the house. We used MSN as our ISP. We thankfully got broadband ~2003. But that was a core memory for me. Great video as always!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Lucky, I got broadband in 06! I used KZbin for a year and a bit on dial up… but tbh it wasn’t that different of an experience compared to loading Flash animations/games (on Newgrounds, Explosm, etc) anyway.

[@simono.d9469]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane! I’m totally with your wife in terms of the instant interaction. As soon as you saw a buddy log in, especially with msn, you knew you were going to have a good night.

[@stephensalex]

The story of you and your wife really hits home. Same here and we still have the entire TXT file of our chat log, uninterrupted, from the time we met until the day we moved in together. So sweet!

[@AROAH]

It’s remarkable how similar our childhood experiences were. My dad had dial-up long into the mid 2000s and I was always excited to visit my mom’s on weekends because she had broadband, since she lived in the city. I’ll never forget the days of trying to open a high res image at my dad’s and having to walk away and watch TV or play a game for a while as it downloaded.

[@MatteoSaitta]

Fun fact, both 6P4C (the four wire grey cable) and 6P2C (the two wire white cable) are the official RJ11 pinout. 6P4C is used for basic landlines if you want to provide extra power to the phone, otherwise 6P2C is more than enough.

[@alexdhall]

Really? The more you know....

[@JesseTheStig]

Finally got a chance to sit down today and watch the full video and what an absolutely amazing episode! Between the hardware setup, the software setup/config, trying out different hardware/troubleshooting, setting up your own napster and aim servers and then the special guest of your wife!!! You are by far my favorite channel and I am really enjoying watching you put more and more effort into these videos because your efforts really show! The fit and finish of your videos is spectacular and I love every second of it! Keep at it because I can't wait to see what the future brings!!!!

[@clabretro]

thank you, that means a lot!

[@matthewnirenberg]

WinMX was the go-to for music back in the day!

[@lmaoroflcopter]

WinMX came later for me, but its support for opennap/napster networks was amazing.

[@stan464]

Its still alive and kicking too! :)

[@Graham_Rule]

I ditched my last Windows 95 laptop (which had a modem) a few weeks ago and yesterday came across one of those SIPURA/Linksys/Cisco units that I'd forgotten about. Then KZbin recommends this video to me. I must have forgotten to turn off my current laptop's camera. 😊

[@DeathCubeKX]

Takes me back to the early 2000s on my Win 98 machine my grandma gave me. Complaining when someone would pickup the phone and making you completely start over on your download, scheduling to download pointless programs overnight, what a blast lol. Always love the "dial-up sound".

[@kaitlyn__L]

Yeah, me too. I wish I’d known about download managers back before I got broadband 😅

[@yukayuyu3844]

That was a pleasure to watch. Brought back memories of laying down about 30 meters of RJ11 around the house every few days just to connect and preload some extremely simple flash games and then disconnect so my parents could use the phone, what a pain that was. Extremely expensive as well, billed by a minute AND per some amount of data transferred (hooray for telecom monopolies). But then broadband came in the form of euroDOCSIS over coax - the image of my dad coming back from work with a motorola SurfBoard modem and a 10/100 PCI card is burned deep within my memory - night and day difference compared to 56k.

[@BestSpatula]

You have saved me so much work. I don't have to do any of the setup or troubleshooting to see this awesome retro stuff.

[@jtpro2572]

Time machine! Super retro video! My respect to episode with your wife! True love to people and technologies.

[@user-wu4cw5ed5w]

In 2006, we had another infuriating pet peeve - a broadband 100mbit connection that was time limited and metered. It blew us!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Gosh, 100-150 still feels fast to me today. I can’t imagine having that in 06 (since even if you were booted off it after a time, you could download/cache more than enough stuff to keep you going offline. If your computer could keep up I guess). I had “56k” (more like 30k) at the start of the year and got a blistering 128-256k DSL by the autumn.

[@hariranormal5584]

IIRC in 2006 100Mb was probably the standard connection speeds for ISP's, Datacenters etc to communicate itself for haha. Per port they probably peered via that. Today, 100G is the "boring" standard. Faster is 400G now

[@greenconscious210]

FYI, Sipura was the company that Linksys bought the ATA designs from before they themselves were bought by Cisco. Neither Linksys nor Cisco improved the Sipura firmware in any way, they just changed the logo on the top and called it good. That's why the firmware doesn't behave like anything else Cisco or Linksys have ever made. The UniFi controller isn't actually recognizing anything, the SPAs send "SipuraSPA" as their hostname in their DHCP requests

[@kaitlyn__L]

Do they send the little picture of it too? If not, maybe that’s the part that was the router’s doing.

[@leeterthanyou]

1:12 AW YEAAA I still have my Hayes modem! One of the coolest things back in the day was having it set up at home on a little 486 linux machine in my basement and dialing IN from my highschool computer lab to grab my homework.

[@b3pp0]

My first experience with dailup was with Windows 3.11 and 14.4kb modem.. that was good times

[@anidnmeno]

i had a performa 6200cd with a 14.4 in it.... took an hour to load my own myspace page

[@peppigue]

think mine was 3.1 and 28.8, ibm aptiva in 1994. my big regret is not starting my tech journey then, tinkering and trying to figure out what was going on under the hood. only started learning these last four years, back then didn't have anyone around me (nor youtube channels) to spur me on and inspire me

[@b3pp0]

@@peppigue I had my father repair my computer when i opened it and changing stuff, until he said to me if you open it and tinkering with it you can fix it yourself likewise with installing/reinstalling stuff... and on that way i learned.. :D

[@James-hy8gu]

That was nostalgic hearing the dial-up. I almost cried

[@user-fh2fm7vr4m]

Awesome video as usual! I have a good understanding of the things happening, but I like including the mentions of what hosts files are and the registry etc for those who may have not encountered. Awesome to see Usagi online!

[@stuartykins]

Not sure if anyone else has said this, but you can create a small "loopback" connector to plug into the LAN port of the SPA instead of it having to be plugged into your network. That way it tricks the box into thinking it's connected to some kind of network, and it'll allow you to place the calls between one port and the other without having to be wired via ethernet. Only do this once you've got it configured as you need though. My mum is a childminder and I created a very simple setup for kids to play with. It allowed two phones connected with immediate dialling. When one was picked up, it would phone the other. I also powered it by a battery pack, and hid it inside a box, so no mains voltage and the kids could phone each other and speak!

[@DjAle1]

Thanks for the tip!

[@Montycopa]

When our cable company first came out with broadband our first cable modem had a coax connection for download and a phone line connection for upload! Then we got a letter a couple of weeks later to disconnect the phone line, but we did get “the sound” from it when it had to redial.

[@SteveC84]

This video reminds me of when I took my Associates in Networking. One of my classes was on Cisco systems and doing the commands on the command line configuring networks. We did 'virtual labs' but you had to screenshot each step to show it worked correctly. I tell you that was very confusing but I aced it. All of my classes were online so I did many many virtual labs simulating various procedures.

[@jameysummers1577]

Thats why we wqent online late at night. everyone was in bed and your one phone line was all yours. My first exposure was BBS in the late 80s early 90s. My gawd...I'm older than most people online. I'm listening to you guys talk and thinking "we had pagers in school".

[@bw6378]

Napster was great, it was a distraction that helped keep Limwire et al. going for a while longer. lol Thanks for the dose of nostalga. Of course you can go even more retro some day with BBS (I even used Sprint Tymnet outdial modems to get to BBS in distant cities). Thanks for the video!

[@lukmly013]

Soulseek still exists, by the way.

[@powerspec88]

First got the internet in 1997 using a 14.4k modem and Windows 95, by 2004, we had a dedicated phone line for the dial-up connection and by 2006 I had a Windows Server 2003 box running the connection and using a proxy software to route the traffic out the ethernet port to my Linksys router in AP mode so I can connect all my devices including my Xbox 360 so I could connect to Xbox Live (I could never play MP games though)! Using NetZero, my connection never dropped unless my power went out. I had a screenshot of showing over 51 days of uptime. I lived 10 minutes to the closest town so dial-up was all I could get till DSL came in 2010 as they setup a R-DSLAM right down the road from my house so I could get 10Mbps Embarq DSL in the middle of nowhere! I now have 8Gbps fiber and getting 20Gbps installed here shortly! 2006 me would NEVER thought these kind of speeds would be for home users!

[@kaitlyn__L]

Oh, Xbox Live (for text chat etc I presume?) over dial up! I knew a bunch of people who had original Xboxen who just believed Microsoft‘s “does not work without broadband” disclaimer and never got theirs online at all.

[@powerspec88]

@@kaitlyn__L yep, for chat and achievements! Trying match making in like halo 2 would just keep searching for matches and never find one.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@powerspec88 that’s awesome honestly. I wish those pals knew it was possible back in the day lol. Some of them waited until 2006-09 to finally get their Halo cheevs registered lol

[@imark7777777]

Impressive up time. I toyed around with the linux distribution router Software and Old systems but eventually ended up back with ICS on Windows or Mac. In 2006 when we eventually settle down into a house I wasn't sure what kind of Internet connection I was going to have so I picked up an airport express? ( I think that's what it was ) with built-in modem and Wi-Fi. wow you can connect wirelessly! Never got to use it for that purpose as we ended up getting Comcast cable and no landline to use it as dial-in. There were a few integrated boxes to do that but not many. I remember scanning where we used to live when I finally got a wireless card and being not surprised that there was absolutely nothing around me in the middle of nowhere of a Valley.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

That is awesome! Better than my setup which consisted of 2 modems and a small unbranded PBX with a BT master socket stuck to the top 😅 but them I preferred to play with telephones and answering machines anyway especially old cassette based ones!

[@imark7777777]

Oh Cassette based answering machines has so much character.

[@UntouchedWagons]

Oh man a Cisco 2600. I learned networking on one of those back in high school.

[@SupportSquirrel]

lol, my dad used Netzero until 2006 when we got DSL. But I needed internet and wanted my own line in College in case I was away from home. I remember having to run a cable to my parent's room to my room to plug into my COmpaq Win2000 laptop - but I could only use it after 10:30PM when my dad went to bed. Man these videos are nostalgic!

[@JTrickZ]

The guides from all my other Netro youtubers is great! Saw you in a clip on a channel about an in person event as well!

[@clabretro]

ha awesome! probably VCF East or something?

[@JTrickZ]

@@clabretro yup that what I believe it was! Kinda wished I had know and was available would have loved to head down to it!

[@alarmingly_good]

This weekend has already been pretty good, and now it got even better

[@argentlupin]

Love this retro stuff was born in 1980 and my dad was into computers had a ti-99 which i learned my abc's and 123's before kindergarten. then moved to an xt computer and other better pc's from ega to cga to vga to svga. using dial up for bbs's and early internet like aol, prodigy, and sierra online 3600 buad and earlier then moving up to 14,4 then 56k. getting a sound blaster card and first cd-rom drive 2x speed was big deal cd's had to be put in a reader case like a floppy at first. when i went university in 1999 i had been a little out of the tech loop so i learned then about napster mp3's irc aol chat and icq chat. thanx for the vid and the memories.

[@Blaidomon]

Real cool hearing you mention CRD. Big fan of Gravis' work. Hope y'all do something together sometime

[@dariendragon]

What a throwback with 'instant' messaging. I never used AIM, though. I started with ICQ and later moved to MSN messenger. I think Trillian was a thing for a while, and it integrated all the messengers into one app. Talk about nostalgia.

[@djtecthreat]

Part of the Nostalgia is also it was usually after 8pm (for me) because the phone was free. Back then we had minute plans so parking a PC on the net for hours was expensive. We'd finish up dinner, get a bath, and then get on the internet until bed time (9-930pm). It was an experience.

[@rnts08]

Ah, the free/cracked internet dialing lists, unlimited minutes, 1-800 numbers saved me from my caretakers wrath around the cost or dialup.

[@hw2508]

If you knew, you were just reading something, you'd disconnect to save money / minutes. You could receive your mails, disconnect and read them offline. Often there were CDs in magazines with 20 free hours from ISP X or Y. But when an over night download failed, it was disappointing.

[@djtecthreat]

@hw2508 Back then I had a program called "Get Right" that would allow download pausing and scheduling. It would also drop the connection or shut down the PC when downloads finished.

[@hw2508]

@@djtecthreat A good download manager was priceless.

[@mateuszgierblinski]

I surely hope you'll make it big on KZbin cause your videos are not only entertaining to watch but also make me feel like i'm back in the old days. Thanks!

[@clabretro]

thanks!

[@Lord_Dillinger]

I jumped on AOL with a 14.4 Modem back in the day...reliving the dial tone days via your video, makes me love the high speed we enjoy today! I still have an old HAYES serial modem with a router/switch that can tell it to dial up and share the connection via a network! Let me know if you'd like to try that setup!

[@o0julek0o]

God this is so much fun to watch. I got to play with the internet just after dialup died off in Central Europe. But this looks just so fun

[@JJFlores197]

Dang this is cool stuff. I had dial up up until 2008. It wasn't because we didn't have any other options, but at the time, my dad just didn't see the purpose in faster internet. It wasn't until we started discovering youtube that my dad realized that dial up just was not feasible anymore. And plus it was sometimes a hassle balancing internet use vs landline use. My mom was the one who used the landline the most to talk to family. My dad eventually upgraded to AT&T DSL with a mind-boggling (at the time) speed of 768 Kbps. It was awesome as youtube videos didn't buffer as much as on dial up. And plus we had wifi which I thought was really cool as I could play with my friends on our Nintendo DS'. Over the years, we upgraded to 3, 6, 12, and finally 18 Mbps which we had for about 5 years before we switched over to Comcast internet. And now we're getting rid of cable internet as fiber internet installed tomorrow afternoon! I never really used the chat programs. I was too young at the time and I didn't know anyone who used them, but I remember reading about them in computer books and magazines. Fun stuff.

[@bankruptsee]

Thanks for reliving the memories. Getting online in itself was so exciting back in the day

[@TastyBusiness]

Ohhhh, retro AIM server hits a sweet spot for me.

[@damirkvajo]

My IM of choice was ICQ and I still remember the UIN number :)

[@rnts08]

Me too, 5-digit original, 7-digit alt. ;)

[@nickwallette6201]

@@rnts08 Haha... I had a 6-digit UIN. Still remember that, and my GeoCities URL.

[@Hahuh378]

I remember the tail end/when we migrated from dial up to broadband at my parents. It took us quite a long time to get to faster speeds (Yay for being in the middle of nowhere) and it used to take forever to download or upload anything, definitely don't miss that side of it, but would be fun to get some of my retro gear hooked up to the network in a similar fashion

[@NEStalgia1985]

Gotta love the CRD

[@4rft5]

i've been wanting to set up an AIM server for years, this'll be interesting to watch

[@clabretro]

it was really easy!

[@MinorLG]

I specifically bought one of these ATA router things at Goodwill when I found it one time. I deshelled it, with plans to rack mount

[@smpstech]

Your story about why dial up is so nostalgic is very familiar to me. My childhood home did not get high speed internet (FTTN through the power company of all places) until years after I had moved out. A good day was when you could get a 26.4k connection. My parents were divorced, dads house had high speed access, a blazing fast 1.5mbps DSL connection. I had an early smartphone and I figured out how to tether it at my mom's house, I remember staying up all night then playing Fable 3 with my friend over Xbox live.

[@david78212]

People have no idea what they take for granted. I remember when dialup first came out and they would disconnect you, no matter what you were doing, after a couple of hours. Several ISPs would just cut you off for downloading too much in a 24hour period and you would have to wait until the next day. Now your internet is just on and people are so used to it just being there, they don’t know how to act when it doesn’t work, like their life is incomplete because they can’t get online…and I say all this while posting a comment on a KZbin video online. 🙄 FWIW - I used to run the network for a metal fabrication shop, yes the shop was networked, and we had two shops, one in Nashville and one in Waco, connected with a T1 and terminal server. Those Cisco routers were my nemesis, we had a 99% guaranteed uptime T1 that went down weekly, until we switched providers and then it was rock solid…which was baffling because it was the exact same lines, nothing changed except who we paid. I hate technology.

[@hariranormal5584]

This wasn't just configuring Cisco equipment or dial-up. It was much more than that. Thanks. Even though I grew up with 8Mbit Fiber (yeah! back in 2011, wasn't rich, just was in the right place haha) just hearing those voices and the vibes even after recreating them feels so cool. Nostalgia experienced for sure.

[@grabasandwich]

My dad got PC's thru his railway union in the early 90s. I think we started with 2400 baud. A couple years later they paid for a separate "fax" line. I used a few BBSes and even went to a meetup at a pizza hut downtown when I was 13 or 14. It gave me a real sense of what kind of people used them. I think we got DSL around 97-99? I don't think we ever had cable internet while I lived at home (til '02) cuz his work must've had a deal with the telco for DSL. I wish I'd learned more about coding or programming and gotten into tech. I envy those who made a lot of money at the time. Thanks

[@AlexZanderMuro]

Ive been looking into one of the 16 port modem cards that goes into the big slot on the 2600 for a little while now, but the prices on them were pretty crazy when ive checked so i havent pulled the trigger yet. Awesome to see you actually get it working for dialup!

[@clabretro]

I was eyeing those too but yeah the prices are nuts!

[@rnts08]

Problem is, they're still useful in some applications. Disaster recovery, oob, travel...

[@OVERKILL_PINBALL]

I love the Nostalgia on this channel Thank you

[@williama29]

oh dialup is nice I used to use it from 2000-2004 myself with the woes of dialup

[@TheRetroNobody]

i tried this with just an ATA and a computer acting as the server. I had no idea using an old cisco router was an option. I think i have a 2500 series. good stuff!

[@ayitsyaboi]

Seeing AIM took me on a nostalgia trip I wasn't prepared for. I used to spend the summer nights on sites like omegle and always added people on AIM. Being social on the internet was a totally different experience back then. The point your wife makes on asynchronicity is something I haven't thought about, but it definitely rings true. There's also the fact that it's so scattered now, especially in the mobile world. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, whatsapp, etc. On desktop it's 99% Discord, which just makes me miss TS3 more than anything. I don't know if it's the nostalgia and fading memories, but I really believe the internet was a more fun experience back then. Not necessarily better, just more intimate and creative. Web 2.0 lacks the more personal feeling that web 1.0 had.

[@clabretro]

yeah it was so fun to use it again

[@DrathVader]

Not sure if you thought of it while attempting to install XP on the Thinkpad, but I remember having to switch the SATA controller mode from AHCI to IDE in BIOS, otherwise XP wouldn't install on these Vista-era computers.

[@clabretro]

yeah unfortunately setting it to compatibility on this machine didn't work for some reason

[@AlejandroFerrariMc]

I've been addicted to this channel since I found it a few months ago. I love to see what was powering networks when I was growing up, and your general antics 😂😂

[@clabretro]

haha glad to hear that!

[@hariranormal5584]

I love those old router led styles. Where it goes down a bit in the edge so you can see it from the other angle aswell.

[@tjmbv8680]

Love this channel, it gives me the joy of playing with old enterprise gear without having to store it.

[@TylerLasagna]

great video as always, what a trip down nostalgia lane!

[@m1k3e]

Awesome video! These ATAs were going on eBay for $20-something dollars the morning this video came out. A few hours later, a lot of the sellers jacked up the prices.

[@clabretro]

The original seller I bought these from still has them for $18 www.ebay.com/itm/126162564513

[@m1k3e]

@@clabretro Much appreciated!!

[@k9man163]

Ive watched all of your videos at least twice. Idk how you don't have a million or more subs. I love your content. keep it up.

[@clabretro]

thanks! more videos in progress

[@aggelos_0256]

why does this have only 3.5k likes? this video deserves much more recognition!

[@ToxicKlay]

I relate to your specific dial-up stories very deeply - our home had an AOL dial-up connection well into 2008! I had moved out by that point and access to broadband elsewhere, but an overwhelming amount of time was spent browsing the Internet on dial-up! As an aside, I remember buying the platinum edition of F.E.A.R. at CompUSA and wondering why the setup wouldn't launch. My PC only had a CD-ROM drive and FEAR shipped on a DVD. The mid 2000s was such a fun time for computers

[@johnvanwinkle4351]

The technology is nostalgic and videos like this is history of the internet. Thanks for making this video!

[@acfrazier]

I'm not someone that normally comments on KZbin, because lol, KZbin comments, but I gotta say: I've enjoyed watching the growth of your channel, and others like it over the years. You have managed to catch the vibe of "Someone sharing something they are passionate about with online friends, who are also somewhat knowledgeable, but maybe not necessarily as deep in the same niche". It captures the energy of, ironically enough, one side of some IM/IRC conversations I've had over the years. So, I can't help but cheer you on. I caught the tail end of this nostalgia as a middle Millennial. I'm glad folks are making content about this stuff, because retro tech is an expensive (and obscure!) hobby, and as much as I would like to own a lot of different niche things (wouldn't we all?), my wallet can only handle so much pain.

[@clabretro]

Well I'm glad you commented, thank you! The exact vibe I'm trying for when I sit down to make a video is "how can I convince everyone this is as exciting as I think it is?" -- it's really awesome to hear that's coming across!

[@Ki113dbysw0rd]

One of the intercom systems we sell/service is very clearly designed for the POTS / PBX days and carried through into SIP (much simpler...) and can confirm that phone guys are another breed. It's absolutely wild. By far the most complicated thing I've had to work on. A good analog would be going from making a batch/shell script to coding in Assembly, borderline binary.

[@nukfauxsho]

We got broadband when i was 13 (2002). Before then, my mom was nice enough to give me the phone line whenever i wanted. My uncle gave me a laptop (first a pentium 1 MMX, then a Pentium 2 with win 2000). I loved it. I was truly "always online" then.

[@UpLateGeek]

This thing's giving me PTSD flashbacks to when I set up my own dial-up internet service (and later BBS) at home. I could do a full the full 56K speed because I had a fancy digital modem card for my Cisco router, otherwise you can only go up to 33.6K. That whole experience caused me so much frustration that I packed the whole lab up and put it into storage as soon as I got my fix. Then apparently sometime later I pulled the main router out and used it for something else, wiping the config along the way, but it turns out I never took a backup of the config, so all that work has been lost.

[@spartansfan1026]

I enjoyed the discussion about dial-up nostalgia! My family got our first PC just in time for the 56k era. We had lots of good times exploring a more simple internet in the late '90s and early '00s. Like you, I didn't get a broadband line for years later, not until 2010 in my case, due to living in an area underserved by ISPs. Let me say, you had to be very committed to load webpages and media on 56k in 2010!

[@einarmiger]

Thank you! This video was just like a time machine for me ... I was still able to use Napster when it was still free and legal ... since 1996 even with an ISDN dial-up connection with a flatrate before I got an ADSL-line in 2000 with the incredible speed of 768 kb/s …

[@AleksyGrabovski]

Nice nostalgic video. I also didn't have good internet back in the early 2000's so me with friends regularly visited local internet cafe to get online.

[@arizonapalms]

No kidding, I've had a video planned to set up a Napster server but have never gotten around to it, looked like a major pain! For dial up at home I'm using a few of those Linksys ATA's and a Cisco SPA 8000 + Win2K RRaS server. Was fun to hear you and your wife share some memories from back in the day. I was more of an MSN kid personally and remember putting so much effort into writing a status to try to get someone's attention... simpler times :)

[@clabretro]

when you get that Napster server going let me know 😆

[@arizonapalms]

@@clabretro If I do, I'll let you know the IP so you can download my 128kbps Metallica songs and South park movie clips

[@taldmd]

Great video! triggers some nostalgia and old memories indeed. Regarding to the 4 wire, I remember certain models of DSL routers allowed you to choose between inner or outer pair. At the beginning of DSL, subscribers needed a splitter which separated the lower band (voice) from the higher band (DSL/data), so you could use the two outer wires which were always unused by the phones for your DSL router without running new cables. These splitters were later made obsolete by the microfilters.

[@andresbravo2003]

Nostalgic!

[@m_rocka]

Used dial-up until my early teens, you summed up the experience pretty well.

[@dashoeman]

I moved to ICQ when i left AOL messenger. I talked to my parents to let me pay for a second phone line so i could stay logged on our dial up connection. I also had a VERY small network setup and was sharing a dial-up connection on the network so i could have my computer in my room and my parents had their new computer in the "office". They got so used to having a second line that when i moved out they swapped names on the acct so i could still have my phone number at my house. About a year later they had DSL.

[@7667neko]

Great to see there are more dial-up setups around!

[@craigbaarck5446]

There was definitely a special feeling about being online back in the dial-up days. Hopping online for 30 minutes or so to sync outlook express and check your fourms to see what new was posted, and if there were "56k warning" posts that you would want to download overnight. I too did not get broadband until I started college in 2006, much time was spent downloading and burning CDs elsewhere to sneakernet back home.

[@Soruk42]

I acquired one of those Hayes Smartmodems, in fact that same model. I didn't have the original PSU, but I found feeding it 15V AC (as I had a transformer that delivered that) worked just fine. It even worked without issue on the UK telephone system (with an appropriate RJ11 to BT lead). The top pin didn't seem to do anything, but putting 15V AC across the bottom two pins worked for me. Without the proper lead, I just soldered a couple of wires to the pins and connected them to my transformer (step-down from 240V AC).

[@clabretro]

perfect, thanks

[@rayneradam]

Amazing vid, I was more of a ICQ user (still remember the sound) then onto MSN. Awesome mention to my other favourite channel. CRD.