[ale] OT: ESP8266

[Jim Kinney]

Wife used to lift the phone to see if I was online or not. Took an extra week to download the 7 floppies of Slackware, my first Linux install. Eventually did a batch script to dial out at 1 am and download then after all in bed. It was still a while before my Walnut Creek CD subscription. 

I miss exactly none of it.  The terror of accidentally toasting a monitor by typing a wrong modeline. Monochrome monitors! ASCII art was the best we could do. 10 MB hard drives. Had to compile every kernel release hoping to get a part to finally work. Then having to rip out that version and forward port it three versions later when it broke.

I have no misty eyed memory of the past. I'm waiting for my direct connect cranial implant running at 10000000 Yotobits per second accessing all knowledge of all life forms for the past 5 billion years. And a perpetual beer supply.

On April 30, 2020 9:13:21 AM EDT, Scott Plante via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>Also the anticipation of a 640x480 photo to download! Remember the
>progressive JPEGs that would load at low res and then fill in as more
>data
>came down the line?
>
>On Thu, Apr 30, 2020 at 8:12 AM Boris Borisov via Ale <ale at ale.org>
>wrote:
>
>> Listening to dial-up tone of negotiating modems was full of
>anticipation.
>> Something was about to happen a new connection is about to get born.
>>
>> Nowadays is just there :(
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 30, 2020, 1:38 AM DJ-Pfulio via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Every Govt Fax machine does. It is the cheapest, easiest, way that I
>>> know to request an absentee ballot.  FAX!  Sure, it don't get
>printed
>>> on the other side and ends up in their email, but I didn't have to
>deal
>>> with stamps or the lag time of mailing.
>>>
>>> One of my sisters in SD was using free dialup until 2 yrs ago. She
>>> works at a University, so didn't see any need to have a connection
>at
>>> home. They have one cell phone and share it. It is almost always
>off. ;)
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, 29 Apr 2020 17:01:40 -0400
>>> Scott Plante via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Are there any ISPs that take dialup anymore? ;-)
>>> >
>>> > On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 3:49 PM Boris Borisov via Ale
><ale at ale.org>
>>> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> > > I just bought the ESP8266 kit from Microcenter. Besides using it
>as
>>> > > IoT device I've heard that you can use it to emulate the dial-up
>>> > > modem so you can connect old machine to the internet. Anyone
>done
>>> > > it ?
>>> > >
>>> > > Perhaps I'm guilty for trying to avoid RTFM part :)
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-- 
"no government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interests of the few.” - John Dewey
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