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F4rt5 posted:ISDN in 2010? 2005 even?  Google tells me you could still get new ISDN installations in Australia in 2018!
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Nov 20, 2020 03:13
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My favorite tech relic ISDN story is when I was talking to a friend of a friend about ten years ago; this guy does voiceover work in his spare time, and apparently then (please, please tell me not still now) the voiceover community standard was ISDN lines and had been for ages. I have no idea why, and he said it was not even worth explaining why. He did say that every time he had a problem with his line he knew it would take him two or three hours on the phone with Verizon tech support before he even got to someone who knew what an ISDN line was, let alone someone who could help him get it serviced.
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Nov 20, 2020 06:20
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Back in school they told us MP3 was developed expressly to transmit quality voice over a single channel, or CD quality stereo over a dual channel ISDN connection. This made it the de facto broadcast standard from then on out, because all you need to run a feed is a working ISDN line.
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Nov 20, 2020 06:34
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My office in the early to mid-2000s had a videoconferencing system that relied on ISDN lines. I don't think it was used for anything else, but if memory serves it was only kept around for our Polycom system.
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Nov 20, 2020 07:03
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barbecue at the folks posted:I got ISDN in 1999 to play Counterstrike and had updated to ADSL by 2003. I think that was the last time I consciously thought about making sure I got enough bandwidth. These days I just turn on the 4G hotspot on my phone when I need to get online from my laptop and everything p. much just works, hah. I was the first one my block to convince my parents to get cable internet in like 98 or so right after it came out, it was basically a fiber to the neighborhood, copper to the house set up, right after they installed it, if i maxed out the connection (around 2 mpbs I think) it would shut off for about 2-5 minutes, me being the 16 year old loving nerd that I was spent a bunch of time that summer on the phone with the cable company trying to get it fixed. Turns out that the problem was that the fiber repeater at the end of the block to serve the neighborhood didn't have a pot set right and was overheating or something. They thanked me for being a complete dick because my AOE games would just randomly cut off.
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Nov 20, 2020 07:12
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I remember when I upgraded from 56k dial-up (so at best 50kbps) to 256k/256k DSL to play Tribes and such, and it was revelatory.
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Nov 20, 2020 07:29
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RandomFerret posted:It is very funny to me that millions more people remember the Simpsons parody than remember the actual game: It's no:  It was surprisingly fun. Mostly because my brother would try to play proper basketball and I'd just take away the ball by hitting his players with a flying tackle.
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Nov 20, 2020 08:48
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My company is only this month removing the last On-ramp 30 (Telstra ISDN PRI). Migrated most of our voice to SIP but there were a few holdouts. It was meant to go end of life this year but Telstra delayed to give customers more time to transition.
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Nov 20, 2020 08:48
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F4rt5 posted:Must be well more than a decade ago, dude! ISDN in 2010? 2005 even? Man, I remember budgeting for being online 24/7 on a single IDSN line in 1998 (all subscribers got two lines, but I didn't always bundle them for online since having a landline available even though you were connected was one of the luxuries of ISDN) and by 2000 I was on 2Mbit SDSL for a third of the price. It would have been in the range of 2006-2008 going by my stupid memory. Small holiday town in Australia = no infrastructure. A few years later I got ADSL and it would cut out almost on the hour on weekend evenings which really poo poo me. Took weeks for a tech to come and suss it. Turns out it was one specific floorboard flexing enough to wiggle the phoneline under the house that had a break inside the insulation. Everytime I ran from computer room to kitchen for a beer whilst playing Spreadsheets in Space it would trigger it. Capt.Whorebags posted:My company is only this month removing the last On-ramp 30 (Telstra ISDN PRI). Migrated most of our voice to SIP but there were a few holdouts. Still have one of these in an old HP laptop I used for work ages ago: 
Humphreys has a new favorite as of 09:42 on Nov 20, 2020 |
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Nov 20, 2020 09:39
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Thomamelas posted:It's no: Haha now I'm recalling Arch Rivals which was the funniest loving game I'd ever played https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARXA4ZPsPlE
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Nov 20, 2020 14:54
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Dr. Quarex posted:My favorite tech relic ISDN story is when I was talking to a friend of a friend about ten years ago; this guy does voiceover work in his spare time, and apparently then (please, please tell me not still now) the voiceover community standard was ISDN lines and had been for ages. It's because ISDN was point to point guaranteed bandwidth once connected so you could use a fixed rate codec and not worry about dropouts in places with questionable internet connectivity. It's only in the past 3 or so years that the transition to full IP codecs like tieline or comrex has taken place
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Nov 20, 2020 15:48
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Yeah I’m sure the ISDN being the standard for voice work is true as you always knew when a radio DJ had made it big, as they’d build a studio in their own home and do their job via ISDN.
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Nov 20, 2020 16:16
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At my first job in 2006, we were paying nearly $1000 per month for a 64k ISDN line between the Melbourne office and the Tasmanian stores. First thing I did after I started was to migrate them over to a VPN.
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Nov 21, 2020 04:20
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My high school had a T1 line installed my junior year - except whoops, it was a fractional T1, 6 out of 24 channels, and every single teacher with a networked computer treated it like it was exclusively theirs. Wound up so slow it was faster to unhook the network and use dialup instead.
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Nov 21, 2020 04:53
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Oh good the new media servers showed up at work. 
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Nov 23, 2020 22:55
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Sweet, just stick a mixer in between them and you'll be rinsing fresh tunes in no time.
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Nov 23, 2020 23:30
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TheDarkOfKnight posted:Oh good the new media servers showed up at work. You work at Vault-Tec?
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Nov 24, 2020 02:47
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I used to work first level tech support for an ISP from 2004 to 2005 that was almost exclusively dialup. The customer base was mostly rural people and the elderly. More than half of the calls were why they couldn't get the full 56k. We would start off with the usual "the FCC limits speeds to a maximum of 53k" and then TRY to explain that the farther you live out of town the harder it is to get a good signal just like TV and radio. I have only come across a true 56k dialup connection once in my life and that was with to a 4 foot analog phone cord to a PBX with a 6 foot T1 cable to a modem pool. My ISDN story is that I got a not poo poo job in the telco biz and I got contract work installing polycom video tele-presence equipment for the department of homeland security in satellite offices. It used a like 6 or 8 channels of a T1 PRI to make data calls with public phone numbers to other polycoms. I guess ISDN was used instead of the internet was to keep it simple for the mouth breathers to to use. Every time I installed one and showed them how it worked some knuckle dragger would ask how to use it with their iphone because Apple just released face time. At first I gave them the real technical reason it wouldn't work (data calls aren't regular or internet phone calls) but then I would just say it was secure government network.
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Nov 24, 2020 03:08
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The Wurst Poster posted:I used to work first level tech support for an ISP from 2004 to 2005 that was almost exclusively dialup. The customer base was mostly rural people and the elderly. More than half of the calls were why they couldn't get the full 56k. We would start off with the usual "the FCC limits speeds to a maximum of 53k" and then TRY to explain that the farther you live out of town the harder it is to get a good signal just like TV and radio. I have only come across a true 56k dialup connection once in my life and that was with to a 4 foot analog phone cord to a PBX with a 6 foot T1 cable to a modem pool.  The ISP I worked for in 2005-2007 was rural and a mix of wireless broadband (a few different types) and dial-up. Far and away the most common dial-up call was people calling in to have us delete emails their family sent with fuckoff huge videos that made their email client time-out when trying to refresh their inbox. The frequent fliers were usually pretty good about it - they knew the drill, and just sighed that no matter how many times they told their kids/grandkids not to send them videos or huge images it kept happening.
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Nov 24, 2020 04:21
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CaptainSarcastic posted:
should have just told their kids "56k?? NOOOOOO."
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Nov 24, 2020 05:18
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TheDarkOfKnight posted:Oh good the new media servers showed up at work. Googling the model number brought up a few videos of those things in operation (both from Russia but from different accounts for some reason). Here's one demonstrating threading, playback, and rewind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umjSukJ8kgg And here's a video with a direct-feed capture, which demonstrates the high quality of the video signal (which is to be expected as these are broadcast-quality VTRs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk4kkFS3ocg
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Nov 24, 2020 06:49
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CaptainSarcastic posted:
Oh my god same, except more like 1996-97. Rummaging around in /var/spool/mail, less'ing through the massive files, writing little scripts to snip out the UUencoded (pre-MIME) attachments,
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Nov 24, 2020 13:13
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insta posted:You work at Vault-Tec? TV station. One of these machines will be brought back to operation because they want to transfer a bunch of 1” tapes we have in the bomb shelter. I’m going to have to get some more pictures of the crazy stuff we have going on around here before we gut the studio next week for a full remodel.
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Nov 24, 2020 16:29
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TheDarkOfKnight posted:TV station. One of these machines will be brought back to operation because they want to transfer a bunch of 1” tapes we have in the bomb shelter. I’m going to have to get some more pictures of the crazy stuff we have going on around here before we gut the studio next week for a full remodel. 
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Nov 24, 2020 16:59
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I did tech support for AT&T cable internet (then bought out by Comcast) from 2002-2004. Memorable events include:
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Nov 24, 2020 17:00
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GI_Clutch posted:and the tech that accidentally killed a chihuahua with a screwdriver and then just hid it back behind an entertainment center. what
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Nov 24, 2020 17:12
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GI_Clutch posted:I did tech support for AT&T cable internet (then bought out by Comcast) from 2002-2004. Memorable events include: YIKES
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Nov 24, 2020 17:14
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On the other hand, feel free to not elaborate
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Nov 24, 2020 17:15
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Thinking about it again, I believe the story is that it was tracked back to the tech because the screwdriver was branded with the AT&T logo and he didn't remove it or something. It's been 18 years since I heard the story, but I think that's how it went.
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Nov 24, 2020 18:48
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The database we used at the ISP for customer calls had a field you could make pop-up when you accessed a customer account. My favorite was something along the lines of "This house is a health hazard! Do not let them ask for service calls! Tell them they can pick up a standalone modem if they have problems with their service!" While I worked there the company also instituted a rule that you were not supposed to speculate about a customer's intelligence in your notes.
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Nov 24, 2020 21:38
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https://twitter.com/OFalafel/status/1329381558999015424
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Nov 24, 2020 22:14
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MOM HANG UP THE PHONE!!!!
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Nov 24, 2020 23:11
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TheDarkOfKnight posted:Oh good the new media servers showed up at work. tv club  our BVH goes to 3000 and still has the original scope and QC monitor 
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Nov 25, 2020 02:34
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Qwijib0 posted:tv club WOW I've never seen the complete setup as it would have been used back in the day. Also what's up TV buddy?
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Nov 25, 2020 13:39
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https://i.imgur.com/y5PbUrN.mp4
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Nov 26, 2020 17:56
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The Wurst Poster posted:I used to work first level tech support for an ISP from 2004 to 2005 that was almost exclusively dialup. The customer base was mostly rural people and the elderly. More than half of the calls were why they couldn't get the full 56k. Wow, were we co-workers? Because I had basically the same exact experience working the same job. The one silver lining was we had a no-haggle policy if a customer wanted to cancel. This was late-stage dial up timeframe and the margins were already razor thin. We couldn’t offer a discount and still make money. Customers would call all pissed off for whatever reason and would be used to strongarming the big telcos with threats to leave. But we weren’t having it They would call and say they want to quit, I’d take their info and say “ok, I’ve cancelled your account, we are sorry to see you go” and of course I wouldn’t do it because 99% of the time they were bluffing but it was fun to hear them go “buuhhh. Wait what? You cancelled it” and I’d say “yes, you asked me to cancel your account”. Then I looked like a hero when I was able to “recover” their old account as-is. Never got old.
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Nov 26, 2020 18:13
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Wow, were we co-workers? Because I had basically the same exact experience working the same job. The ISP I worked at had a hacked-together system for wireless broadband that included no less than 4 different discrete systems that each covered a specific geographical area. I mean different towers, provisioning, and modems. On some parts of the system the customer had what looked like a TV satellite dish which ran to a conventional cable modem inside. On a couple parts of that system the DHCP had to be manually configured for a given MAC address, and whenever the client changed what was plugged into it they had to call in and we had to manually provision it for it to get an IP address. (That same system would also just flat reject Linksys WRT 54G v5 routers out of hand - just would refuse to accept them, for whatever reason.) There was this one frequent flier who called in because he was changing from his computer to his Xbox, but we all grew fond of him because he always sounded transcendentally stoned, and was also super nice and patient. We were kind of sad when he finally followed our advice and got a router so he didn't have to call in anymore.
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Nov 27, 2020 00:44
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CaptainSarcastic posted:The ISP I worked at had a hacked-together system for wireless broadband that included no less than 4 different discrete systems that each covered a specific geographical area. I mean different towers, provisioning, and modems. On some parts of the system the customer had what looked like a TV satellite dish which ran to a conventional cable modem inside. On a couple parts of that system the DHCP had to be manually configured for a given MAC address, and whenever the client changed what was plugged into it they had to call in and we had to manually provision it for it to get an IP address. (That same system would also just flat reject Linksys WRT 54G v5 routers out of hand - just would refuse to accept them, for whatever reason.) I love old ISP stories. Probably why I love 'Halt and Catch Fire' There was a computer shop in town that also ran a local ISP in the dial-up and ISDN days. I traded 24MB of RAM and 100GB of stuff from the owners personal usenet account for my Nokia F/MBUS cable (used to send screensavers/backgrounds and ringtones directly) which was required except for those premium SMS services. Then WAP came about and I ran a site for direct downloads of all those backpage filesfor free as long as you had data. In my crowd we had full unlimited as VodafoneAU was dumb and zero balance on a SIM equaled zero limit on data.
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Nov 27, 2020 15:18
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No ISP offered a local number for dial-up in my hometown until 1995 or so. It was through a bit of weirdness through a very small, now-defunct provider. Back then, you could not call any of the neighboring counties for free. This number was in a neighboring county, but because of some weird mileage thing, it was considered free. A couple of years later, some of the surrounding counties became free calls, which tripled the available numbers. AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy still sent out the floppys and later CDs offering free hours, but I'd assume that usage was really low here because of the lack of free numbers. High-speed wasn't available until 2006, but I lived out in the sticks. I'm not sure I ever clocked over 24 on any dial-up modem, even after getting a 56.6. I don't know if it was the phone lines or the quality of the modem, but if lightning so much as flashed while it was plugged in, the modem usually fried. Walmart sold a US Robotics external modem and went through about five of them.
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Nov 27, 2020 17:35
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I lived in rural Ohio and had a similar experience. I wrote a letter to Compuserve in 93 or 94 asking if they could add an access number in Wauseon, OH, the county seat. It was the only place outside of our small town that was a local call. The town five miles down the road where the middle and high schools were? Long distance. I got a letter back letting me know I could use their WATS line at $6/hr. That wasn't happening, so I continued just getting permission from my parents to dial into a BBS from the back of a gaming magazine on the weekend when long distance rates were the cheapest to download shareware games, hoping mom wouldn't forget and mess up my download thirty minutes in. Then in 95, a bunch of local telcos got together and started bright.net which is still around. We started with the $10 for 10 hrs plan (free usage between 12AM-6AM, so I was up late on weekends), and eventually got a second phone line and unlimited service within a year.
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Nov 27, 2020 18:51
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