Re: But is UseNet "Social Media"??

On 2026-02-02 14:54, Paul wrote:
> On Mon, 2/2/2026 6:39 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
> 
>> In the subject of winmodems, I bought one by mistake. At that time I
>> double booted to Linux, and that blasted thing would not work in Linux at all.
>> I think I resold it to a friend what was a happy Windows user.
> 
> Modems were never a lot of fun at the best of times.
> 
> I had two modems with datapumps, one each from the different
> modem factions. If I was "dialing into a Livingston front end",
> there was a modem for that, and there was another modem
> for the other flavors of front ends (modem pool).
> 
> I think if you mixed the wrong modem types together,
> there would be a spiral of death, where the datarate
> would drop, until the datarate dropped so low, it would
> do a disconnect. And this is because if conditions improve,
> the bins that weren't being used, would not be recommissioned.
> And thus, a connection could only go downhill.
> 
> My modems may have been flashed once or twice. I needed to
> flash them, for them to run at 56K. And I think a typical
> good day with the modem, was 43.3 or so. The line to the
> CO was likely too long, to support more than that. They used
> to connect a tank of dry nitrogen to our "wire bundle"
> in the manhole, and leave the gas running for a couple
> days, to "dry the lines". And this would help bring my line
> back to 43.3K again. I would occasionally have it drop all
> the way to 33.6K because of line conditions.
> 
> I had to disconnect the household phone wiring, drill a wire up
> through the computer room floor, and run a brand new phone wire
> up into the computer room. And that's how I got the ability
> to run at 43.3 . You had to fight every inch of
> the way with that crap.
> 
> My manager at work, when he had to debug his damn modem,
> there was corrosion in some phone wires where they passed
> through the foundation wall.
> 
> "Good riddance, to bad rubbish."
> 
> I don't recollect anyone lamenting that their modem was
> in the junk room now :-)

I had two lost battles that I remember. One was that I got a win-modem 
that would not work in Linux, except at a low speed. 9600? Then I 
learned that I needed an external modem to be sure it had the whole 
hardware.

Later I had another trouble with a modem of about 30000 or 40000 bps. 
The box said compatible with certain protocol that I have forgotten the 
name. Compatible, ie, not included. I had to buy another modem.

Finally, I got an V90 modem. Worked fine. I never improved it to V92. 
I'm not sure I got the numbers right.


Oh, and here we had (have?) to pay local phone calls, so we tried to 
make our calls to Fidonet or Internet as short as possible.

-- 
Cheers, Carlos.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;