We had a no internet before 9pm (in case someone wants to call) rule at home. Explaining to the kids what it was like in ancient times is really hard. How we couldn't just watch Bluey whenever we wanted. If we wanted to listen to music at a time we wanted, we used to have to record from the radio onto a cassette tape, and the DJ always talked over the start/end of the song. And later, we had CDs and would rip them onto a PC and then copy to an MP3 player. Or go on file sharing programmes (was it Limewire and something starting with K? The napster thing was all over by the time I caught up).

And how if we wanted to play music in the car we had this thing that went in the tape player with a cord coming out to play music from an MP3 player or discman.

These days with Spotify and bluetooth we just play whatever song we like whenever we like and it magically plays through the car speakers. It's normal to them but it still feels like magic to me 😆

[–] NoRamyunForYou 3 points 1 year ago

Haha yeah come to think of it, I wonder how many phone calls my parents missed throughout the day when I'd leave the internet on to download something.

[–] eagleeyedtiger 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah the kids don't understand rushing home to watch Dragonball Z or any other after school cartoons. And having to watch like 3 ad breaks in a 23 minute show.

No internet before 9PM is crazy! I used to tie up the line to play Rainbow 6: Rogue Spear or TFC online. You couldn't even do it sneakily because of the modem noise when connecting. Even MP3's took ages back then on 56K, when we finally got ADSL was like the transition from ADSL to fibre now.

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And having to watch like 3 ad breaks in a 23 minute show.

My kids only know what ads are because we visit the grandparents, they love them lol.

No internet before 9PM is crazy!

My Auntie and Uncle had a second phone line for internet! Unfortunately they lived in another city, but my Auntie used to play Quake 2 online and introduced me to it. I remember being on a 56K modem and you'd often come across people on what I think they called a T1 connection? They would normally clean up. Hard to say if the faster connection helped them win or the more dedicated players would have the better connections, but I'm guessing a little of column A, a little of column B.

I don't really play twitch games or even online ones anymore, but over the years I've played the occasional game of Quake 3 for nostalgia's sake.

[–] eagleeyedtiger 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That sounds familiar. I think T1 lines were more common with businesses or universities, not sure how common they were in residential here? I was pretty young then so I would have had no clue. I do remember seeing those with much better ping than what I could get on our connection.

I don't have much time for online either nowadays. I still get the urge to try playing once in awhile and realise how terrible I am at shooters now 😅

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago

Haha oh boy am I bad at shooters. Well, all games really. I play them on easy and treat them like an interactive movie.