It has a 28.8 KBPS Modem!!! - Hackers (1995) Discussion

[–] AlwaysMoneyInBananaStand 14 years ago

Actually he says 28.8 bps modem which is just bisarre, 28.8 BITS per second what the hell were they thinking, or was bps slang for kbps? ^^, the correct quote is:
"Yo! Check this out guy*, this is insanely great, it's got a 28.8 bps modem!"
*guy = Dade.

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[–] cdz6969 11 years ago

Yea I think it was slang for kbps.. I remember talking to my friends about upgrading to a 28.8 bps from a 14.4. Eventually in 97 I got a 56K, It seemed light-years better especially for downloading.

Jesus would support Universal Health Care

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[–] EleazarHisSon (769) a year ago

28.8K modems could download at a speed of 3.6KB/s and 13MB of data in one hour. Later 56K theoretically could do 7KB/s, but in practice gave you no more than 5KB/s.

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[–] Diagoro 13 years ago

I remember war dialling freephone numbers all night long using my brand new 28.8 modem. Surprisingly enough, looking back, my mum didn't mind!

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"Another brilliant post Steinberg..."

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[–] PhrenicGermal 13 years ago

HA! I used to go on Compu$pend and BBS' with an Apple //e and a 1200 bps modem (approx 1.17 Kbps).
I hacked the hell out of that machine. Of course, it was easier on older computers (more open and much less complex).

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[–] mjz688 13 years ago

My first desktop in 1990 had a 20 MB hard drive -- I remember using a program called Stacker that gave me an unbelievable 40 MB of storage lol

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[–] 13 years ago

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[–] matt_S_haines 12 years ago

My first computer was a Gateway 2000 33mhz processor 256 megabyte hard drive with windows 95. It ran duke nukem 3d but pretty damn slowly and i was pissed because it wouldn't run "death rally". It had a 5 1/4 floppy 3 1/2 floppy and a cd rom. As for modems a at first a us robotic faxmodem 28.8 then a 36.6 speedster.

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[–] ydobon-1 11 years ago

My first computer was a Commodore 64 back in 1984 or 1985. I had it for about a year before someone introduced me to the concept of modems. I went out and bought a 300 baud modem from Crazy Eddie. I made sure to get a good one that could be dialed by the computer itself, rather than having to manually dial the phone and then swap the phone cable, like my friend had to do.

The first time I downloaded a game, the terminal program printed a gauge across the 40-column screen, the disk drive spun for a few seconds and a single dash appeared under the gauge. A short time passed, the drive spun again and a second dash appeared. I figured it wasn't so bad, when the line got all the way across, it would done. Then it started a second line, and a third, and a fourth, etc. It took over half an hour just to download 64K!

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[–] Gabe1972 8 years ago

I had a Commodore VIC20 when I was a kid. We then got the Commodore 64. The first computer I bought myself was an IBM clone in 1997 and it had a Pentium 166MHz with 8MB of RAM, a 1.2GB HDD and a 28.2Kbps modem. No Windows 3.1 for me. It was Windows 95 all the way! LOL.

Time wounds all heels.

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[–] ydobon-1 8 years ago

I had a Commodore VIC20 when I was a kid. We then got the Commodore 64. The first computer I bought myself was an IBM clone in 1997 and it had a Pentium 166MHz with 8MB of RAM, a 1.2GB HDD and a 28.2Kbps modem. No Windows 3.1 for me. It was Windows 95 all the way! LOL.

My computer history starts with the C64, then to the Amiga 500, Amiga 2000 (one of the add-ons for my A500 developed problems), P2 233Mhz with Win98, 64MB of RAM, 6GB hard drive and a 28.8 modem.

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[–] don savant 9 years ago

I was the hottest thing on the block when I got my 56K. I could dl a pic in under a minute.

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[–] matt_S_haines 9 years ago

Yeah, 56k was pretty blazing fast! You could download an MP3 to play on winamp in about 30 minutes on napster! Ah the good ol' days!

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[–] bigbadwolf666 (4707) 5 years ago

No Fkin’ doubt!

Something about it being harder made it worth it.

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[–] bobbydallas (8681) 3 years ago

hahaa true

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[–] 9 years ago

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[–] darkness_surroundz 9 years ago

I remember when movies (sic fi) showed huge computers of the future covering acres of space (well maybe hundreds of square feet) I worked in a research lab in the mid-late seventies-we had 4 large refrigerator sized IBM mainframes w/tape drives and an air conditioner in a dedicated room. a few years later we replaced them with a new model no larger than a big suitcase, with no need of a/c

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[–] Druff (1845) 3 years ago

>I remember when movies (sic fi) showed huge computers of the future covering acres of space (well maybe hundreds of square feet)

Would love some examples.

Zardoz was on the right track way back in 1973. The 23rd century mega super computer/A.I. was a small gem that fit in the palm of Sean Connery's hand.

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[–] moviechatterer (16326) 2 years ago

A lot of the reason your super computer smartphone fits in your hand is that its farming off most of the work to warehouses full of servers at Apple and Google.

Maybe Connery's gem was doing the same.
Ditto for the series of Red Dwarf where Holly lived in Lister's watch.

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[–] Druff (1845) 2 years ago

The tiny smartphones of today have faster processors and more storage space than big desktop computers from the past. That has nothing to do with server farms hosting data. Computers get smaller, faster and more powerful over time. Moore's Law.

As for Zardoz- no. The entire point of him finding the gem was that he was searching for the core computer so he could destroy it. He comes right out and says in dialogue that the crystal "has infinite storage space for refracted light patterns." The gem was the "warehouse full of servers" and the characters wore rings that were basically their version of smartphones that connected to it.

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[–] Kimmie (353) 2 years ago

The fun part being that it didn't really make dialup downloads much faster

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