Intel 9600EX! (on a 386 SX 20, iirc)
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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2400... in 1993
3Com U.S. Robotics. 56K* Professional Message Modem
My family didn't get a modem until 1995, when we got a Mac Performa 5200 with a built-in 14.4 modem.
A Boca modem 28.8 and some years later we upgraded to a US Robotics 56K.
- I remember when we upgraded to 14400 it felt like light speed.
My first was 28.8 Hayes but was limited to 9800 cause of Telxon audiocopler. I also had a USR PCMCIA card that was 56k(? My memory is slipping cause of long covid) and somehow that was able to connect faster through Telxon audiocopler.
ZyXEL U-1496E which, if I recall correctly, was up to 19.2 Kbps.
Some 14.4 kbps modem...I recall sometimes having to deal with BBSes that only supported 9600 bits per second. It was frustrating.
Now, on the desk in front of me, is a smartphone with 5G and wifi that'll do nearly 300 Mbps -- speedtest just said 274 Mbps. Let's see, that's...about 19000 times faster...
1200 baud at the time 9600 was the norm. Dad didn't know that they would autonegotiate, and had a 1200 baud modem at work, so...
It was the U.S. Robotics 56k PCI Winmodem that Dell was selling with their "Dimension XPS" Pentium II desktops. I later bought a proper 56k PCI modem off of a high school classmate so that I could download Debian packages without having to reboot into Windows first.