The OS armaggedon is coming

On 06/01/2018 08:20 PM, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2018-06-02, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
Does anyone still have narrowband internet? Why would we need a DVD? I can download 3GB (the whole of Windows) in 7.5 minutes. It would take a day or three to receive the DVD by post. That's 384 times slower.

There are plenty or rural places in the US where the only choices
for internet access are dialup or satellite. I only went to broadband
a few years ago myself.

I had satellite internet (Starband) in 2001. That had problems when I
got it (very high and variable latency) and got so bad after a few
months that when I went back to POTS dialup (48kbps) it was a big
improvement.

BTW, when I took that dish down I could see workers replacing the cable,
getting ready for cable internet. That's now 50mbps. I downloaded
Windows 10 in less than 8 minutes.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Despite what the majority seem to think, death is not a reset button.

On 06/02/2018 06:45 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

[snip]

Isn't satellite pretty fast?* I got satellite in the UK for a few years
when I couldn't get DSL.* At that time it was as good as DSL.

Fast, with really high latency. Often servers will drop the connection.

BTW, latency is seldom mentioned in ISP ads, although it's usually more
important than speed.

And what do you mean crappy DSL?* DSL is fast enough for updates, just a
bit slow for Piratebay :-)

Movie downloads? A Windows disk is as large as most movies.

--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Despite what the majority seem to think, death is not a reset button.

On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 16:37:27 +0100, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 06/01/2018 08:20 PM, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2018-06-02, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
Does anyone still have narrowband internet? Why would we need a DVD? I can download 3GB (the whole of Windows) in 7.5 minutes. It would take a day or three to receive the DVD by post. That's 384 times slower.

There are plenty or rural places in the US where the only choices
for internet access are dialup or satellite. I only went to broadband
a few years ago myself.

I had satellite internet (Starband) in 2001. That had problems when I
got it (very high and variable latency) and got so bad after a few
months that when I went back to POTS dialup (48kbps) it was a big
improvement.

BTW, when I took that dish down I could see workers replacing the cable,
getting ready for cable internet. That's now 50mbps. I downloaded
Windows 10 in less than 8 minutes.

No cable here, but we (almost everyone in the UK) gets "Fibre to the cabinet". There are little boxes about a meter or so wide dotted around, one within about half a mile of every house. It's very fast fibre to those, then normal existing copper phoneline to the houses. I get 54Mbps.

--
CONGRESS.SYS corrupted... Re-boot Washington D.C. (Y/N)?

On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 16:40:51 +0100, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 06/02/2018 06:45 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:

[snip]

Isn't satellite pretty fast? I got satellite in the UK for a few years
when I couldn't get DSL. At that time it was as good as DSL.

Fast, with really high latency. Often servers will drop the connection.

My latency was 250ms. Nothing ever dropped. Not once.

BTW, latency is seldom mentioned in ISP ads, although it's usually more
important than speed.

Only for playing online games.

And what do you mean crappy DSL? DSL is fast enough for updates, just a
bit slow for Piratebay :-)

Movie downloads? A Windows disk is as large as most movies.

Yes but I watch more than one movie. A windows update that big comes about twice a year. I watch many movies in 6 months.

--
My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed.
I turned to her and said, "Do you want to have sex?"
"No," she answered.
I then said, "Is that your final answer?"
She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying, "Yes...."
So I said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend."
And that's when the fight started...

On 06/02/2018 07:29 AM, slate_leeper wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 12:45:44 +0100, "Jimmy Wilkinson Knife"
wrote:



Isn't satellite pretty fast? I got satellite in the UK for a few years when I couldn't get DSL. At that time it was as good as DSL.


Up until a little over a year ago, I had Wildblue satellite. MAXIMUM
download speed, 57KB/s. Often slower than a 9200 baud dial up modem.

It was 9600, I'm pretty sure I remember that right as it's 8 times 1200.

I never had one (I forgot why, but I went from 2400 to 14400), but I did
hear about them a lot, and frequently saw baud rate lists.

Max allowed download amount, 7 gigabytes per MONTH, effectively 5.5
gig because they count all the network handshaking. Downloading
anything large was nearly impossible because of the frequent loss of
signal. And yes, they advertise it as "equivalent to DSL."

-dan z-


--
Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Despite what the majority seem to think, death is not a reset button.

On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 16:46:37 +0100, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 06/02/2018 07:29 AM, slate_leeper wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 12:45:44 +0100, "Jimmy Wilkinson Knife"
wrote:

Isn't satellite pretty fast? I got satellite in the UK for a few years when I couldn't get DSL. At that time it was as good as DSL.

Up until a little over a year ago, I had Wildblue satellite. MAXIMUM
download speed, 57KB/s. Often slower than a 9200 baud dial up modem.

It was 9600, I'm pretty sure I remember that right as it's 8 times 1200.

I never had one (I forgot why, but I went from 2400 to 14400), but I did
hear about them a lot, and frequently saw baud rate lists.

My first connection was free from the university I was studying at. My friend gave me an old 1200 modem to test it, then I bought a 14400. Then I shared the connection via coax ethernet between me and a few neighbours, also we could play multiplayer games and speak to each other.

--
Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.

On 06/02/2018 10:43 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 16:37:27 +0100, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 06/01/2018 08:20 PM, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2018-06-02, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
Does anyone still have narrowband internet?* Why would we need a
DVD?* I can download 3GB (the whole of Windows) in 7.5 minutes.* It
would take a day or three to receive the DVD by post.* That's 384
times slower.

There are plenty or rural places in the US where the only choices
for internet access are dialup or satellite. I only went to broadband
a few years ago myself.

I had satellite internet (Starband) in 2001. That had problems when I
got it (very high and variable latency) and got so bad after a few
months that when I went back to POTS dialup (48kbps) it was a big
improvement.

BTW, when I took that dish down I could see workers replacing the cable,
getting ready for cable internet. That's now 50mbps. I downloaded
Windows 10 in less than 8 minutes.

No cable here, but we (almost everyone in the UK) gets "Fibre to the
cabinet".* There are little boxes about a meter or so wide dotted
around, one within about half a mile of every house.* It's very fast
fibre to those, then normal existing copper phoneline to the houses.* I
get 54Mbps.


In Winnipeg Canada on Shaw cable I am getting 178Mbs which is really
great, and very reliable.

Rene

On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 16:52:45 +0100, Rene Lamontagne wrote:

On 06/02/2018 10:43 AM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 16:37:27 +0100, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 06/01/2018 08:20 PM, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2018-06-02, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
Does anyone still have narrowband internet? Why would we need a
DVD? I can download 3GB (the whole of Windows) in 7.5 minutes. It
would take a day or three to receive the DVD by post. That's 384
times slower.

There are plenty or rural places in the US where the only choices
for internet access are dialup or satellite. I only went to broadband
a few years ago myself.

I had satellite internet (Starband) in 2001. That had problems when I
got it (very high and variable latency) and got so bad after a few
months that when I went back to POTS dialup (48kbps) it was a big
improvement.

BTW, when I took that dish down I could see workers replacing the cable,
getting ready for cable internet. That's now 50mbps. I downloaded
Windows 10 in less than 8 minutes.

No cable here, but we (almost everyone in the UK) gets "Fibre to the
cabinet". There are little boxes about a meter or so wide dotted
around, one within about half a mile of every house. It's very fast
fibre to those, then normal existing copper phoneline to the houses. I
get 54Mbps.

In Winnipeg Canada on Shaw cable I am getting 178Mbs which is really
great, and very reliable.

I take it you live in a town or city? In the UK unless you're mad enough to live in a severely built up area, there's no cable. But 54Mbits is fine by me.

--
"A life without danger is a life not worth living" -- Moist von Lipwig

On 2018-06-02, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
My first connection was free from the university I was studying at.
My friend gave me an old 1200 modem to test it, then I bought a 14400.
Then I shared the connection via coax ethernet between me and a few
neighbours, also we could play multiplayer games and speak to each other.

You had 1200, then 14400 bps? They must have thought the sun shines out of
your ass! I had to make do with a 300 bps acoustic coupler. (It is still
sitting in a closet.) I remember doing some remote work on an overseas
Unix server with that and a VT100 terminal many years ago. Though I'm
sure some wisenheimer will pipe up and say they had to make do with a
hardcopy terminal connected to a 110 bps modem.

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Sat, 02 Jun 2018 17:51:27 +0100, Roger Blake wrote:

On 2018-06-02, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
My first connection was free from the university I was studying at.
My friend gave me an old 1200 modem to test it, then I bought a 14400.
Then I shared the connection via coax ethernet between me and a few
neighbours, also we could play multiplayer games and speak to each other.

You had 1200, then 14400 bps? They must have thought the sun shines out of
your ass!

1200 was only for 5 minutes to make sure the connection worked before I paid money for the 14400.

I had to make do with a 300 bps acoustic coupler. (It is still
sitting in a closet.)

I remember those for some reason, never used one, not sure if it was a museum or something I saw it in, maybe computing or history class at school.

I remember doing some remote work on an overseas
Unix server with that and a VT100 terminal many years ago. Though I'm
sure some wisenheimer will pipe up and say they had to make do with a
hardcopy terminal connected to a 110 bps modem.

At that speed you'd be better with a manual morse code tapper.

--
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?

In article , Roger Blake
wrote:

My first connection was free from the university I was studying at.
My friend gave me an old 1200 modem to test it, then I bought a 14400.
Then I shared the connection via coax ethernet between me and a few
neighbours, also we could play multiplayer games and speak to each other.

You had 1200, then 14400 bps? They must have thought the sun shines out of
your ass! I had to make do with a 300 bps acoustic coupler. (It is still
sitting in a closet.) I remember doing some remote work on an overseas
Unix server with that and a VT100 terminal many years ago. Though I'm
sure some wisenheimer will pipe up and say they had to make do with a
hardcopy terminal connected to a 110 bps modem.

asr33 teletype, 110 baud acoustic modem, punched paper tape for storage.

On 2018-06-02, nospam wrote:
asr33 teletype, 110 baud acoustic modem, punched paper tape for storage.

I worked with quite a few ASR33 teletypes used as hardcopy terminals for
old DEC systems like PDP-8 and PDP-11 years ago. Noisy and slow suckers
as I recall and typing would give your fingers a real workout. I liked
the DECwriters better, which had better keyboards, supported 300 bps,
and printed at a super-fast 30 characters per second. Even had a small
buffer so characters would not be lost during carriage return. (No paper
tape on the DECwriters though.)

Lowest speed I've had to deal with in a dialup modem was 300 bps. It was
pretty exciting to move up to a DEC DF03 modem at a blinding 1200 bps
that connected direct to the phone line rather than being acoustically
coupled. (Still have that as well.)

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In article , Roger Blake
wrote:

asr33 teletype, 110 baud acoustic modem, punched paper tape for storage.

I worked with quite a few ASR33 teletypes used as hardcopy terminals for
old DEC systems like PDP-8 and PDP-11 years ago.

that's what they were connected to.

the pdp-11s had high speed paper tape readers. those were fun to watch
and way the hell faster than what was on the asr-33.

there were also crt terminals with audio cassette storage.

Noisy and slow suckers
as I recall and typing would give your fingers a real workout. I liked
the DECwriters better, which had better keyboards, supported 300 bps,
and printed at a super-fast 30 characters per second. Even had a small
buffer so characters would not be lost during carriage return. (No paper
tape on the DECwriters though.)

those were faster, but also noisy and frequently jammed or failed,
which is why they were often called drek-writers.

Lowest speed I've had to deal with in a dialup modem was 300 bps. It was
pretty exciting to move up to a DEC DF03 modem at a blinding 1200 bps
that connected direct to the phone line rather than being acoustically
coupled. (Still have that as well.)

300 baud was fast..compared to 110 baud, and there also were acoustic
1200 baud modems.

On 06/02/2018 1:11 PM, nospam wrote:
In article , Roger Blake
wrote:

asr33 teletype, 110 baud acoustic modem, punched paper tape for storage.

I worked with quite a few ASR33 teletypes used as hardcopy terminals for
old DEC systems like PDP-8 and PDP-11 years ago.

that's what they were connected to.

the pdp-11s had high speed paper tape readers. those were fun to watch
and way the hell faster than what was on the asr-33.

there were also crt terminals with audio cassette storage.

Noisy and slow suckers
as I recall and typing would give your fingers a real workout. I liked
the DECwriters better, which had better keyboards, supported 300 bps,
and printed at a super-fast 30 characters per second. Even had a small
buffer so characters would not be lost during carriage return. (No paper
tape on the DECwriters though.)

those were faster, but also noisy and frequently jammed or failed,
which is why they were often called drek-writers.

Lowest speed I've had to deal with in a dialup modem was 300 bps. It was
pretty exciting to move up to a DEC DF03 modem at a blinding 1200 bps
that connected direct to the phone line rather than being acoustically
coupled. (Still have that as well.)

300 baud was fast..compared to 110 baud, and there also were acoustic
1200 baud modems.


Yep, 300 baud modem, RO33 teletype as printer, 5 1/4 floppys on an Apple
II+.

Rene

On 2018-06-02, nospam wrote:
the pdp-11s had high speed paper tape readers. those were fun to watch
and way the hell faster than what was on the asr-33.

I remember having to toggle the low-speed paper tape reader program
into the switch register on the front console, which could then
load the high-speed paper tape reader from a tape. Then there were
those DECtape mag tapes on the small reels.

those were faster, but also noisy and frequently jammed or failed,
which is why they were often called drek-writers.

Fun times for sure! The young folks here arguing over their favorite
GUI don't know what they missed!

--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Blake (Posts from Google Groups killfiled due to excess spam.)

NSA sedition and treason -- http://www.DeathToNSAthugs.com
Don't talk to cops! -- http://www.DontTalkToCops.com
Badges don't grant extra rights -- http://www.CopBlock.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------