The ‘90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president::1998 plea for restraint reveals a lost world where the 'Net was an opt-in experience.

  • @[email protected]
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    451 year ago

    Anyone remember download accelerator plus? I’d download stuff at night while everyone was asleep, then pause DAP/disconnect from the Internet in the morning. Rinse and repeat.

    • @Fartbutt
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      211 year ago

      My god yes! I remember downloading the Soldier of Fortune demo over the course of a month. 95 megabytes over a 28.8k connection.

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      You’ve unlocked some deeply buried memory there.

      I remember I used that not so much to “accelerate” downloads but mostly because it let me download stuff in multiple sessions, instead of trying to do it in my browser and lose everything because of a lost connection.

      Hours to download a few MB, interesting times.

    • @TheHighRoad
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      61 year ago

      I remember the anxiety of downloading the Quake demo the afternoon it was released. My mother is a notorious phone talker, so I guarded the handset like a hawk and prayed to God that no one called. By some miracle it completed after a an hour or two. 1.1 mb I believe it was.

  • FuglyDuck
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    271 year ago

    20 hours… … …what were you doing?!