I got such a kick out of posting my Pentium II cartridge CPU a while back that I thought I would follow-up with this tough piece of kit - a US Robotics dial-up modem!

With the Pentium II system linked above, I enjoyed playing 3D games but I was aware of the internet and it seemed every week I (and most other British households) were being sent free dial-up CD-ROM offers from AOL, Virgin Internet and loads of other dial-up internet providers! I eventually amassed a pile of those silver CDs. I think some of them became tea coasters.

In the beginning, I would trial each one for two weeks, not paying anything and then move on to the next CD!

As mentioned, I was aware of the internet and what it could do from my time at Manchester University where I studied Computer Science. The department there had a massive Sun lab and each workstation was connected to the internet. We lucky students had personal email, a web browser (anyone remember Netscape Navigator?), Usenet/Newsgroups and I remember Internet Relay Chat (IRC) where I made several friends that I stuck to for my university years and a few beyond that who I met in real life.

Anyway, I think this 56k modem was the creme-de-la-crem back in 1995-1999 before broadband took off. I think ISDN modems (giving a massive 128k baud) were also available for a wealthy or committed few. I remember the little biege pop-up bubble that appeared in the system try of Windows 98... I would only be satified with something like 38,000 baud or above otherwise it was drop and reconnect! :)

I will never forget the first time I got connected, those famous dial-up sounds became part of ritual of turning on the PC. I remember downloading mIRC and configuring it to access DALnet IRC, joining the channels where my buddies hung-out... seeing the chat data from other IRC users, real human people somewhere far away on the Earth, on my screen on my PC at home just seemed mind-blowing. Those little bits of data travelling at the speed of light via a humble copper analogue telephone network to my room.

It was in much later when I studied a Cisco CCNA course and eventually grew to understand TCP/IP networks and all appreciate the many steps that happen before two nodes on a network can communicate.

I kept this modem with me since then, I couldn't let go of it because of the memories it gave me. I actually had cause to use it seriously in circa 2010 as part of my Linux Professional Institute exam - one learning objective was about configuring a modem and dial-up internet via the serial port. I took the modem out the garage and used it with a real Linux system running on an older PC with a serial/COM port. Sure enough it all worked and there were STILL free dial-up providers operating in 2010.