Ahh…. I was there my friend. Similar setup, 486 DX4 100, USRobotics modem. I had the IRQ conflict. Me and my friend figured out how to change the channels by reading the mainboard‘s manual. I had to change some jumpers around. It was my first modem and I had never connected to the internet before.

Were you by chance running a proxy, even on localhost? Here's a good description of that issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29539106

That thread also mentions the Windows 95 requirement for randomization on mouse movement. A page you visited regularly may have been using this.

On linux /dev/random will use inputs such as mouse movement to generate random data. If a program needs random data for something such as encryption it will seemingly hang whilst it generates enough. This isn't good on servers without an active user so you configure it to use /dev/urandom instead. Perhaps windows had similar back in the day.

Ah yes web 2.0 was also a thing. I remember.

I’ll never forget watching pictures roll in line-by-line on dialup back in 1995 or so.

Agreed. 1999-2000 was also peak internet for me. Netscape, Napster, Neopets, and Nick.com (and StarCraft multiplayer). It didn't get any better than that.

I remember thinking Netscape was way cooler than IE based purely on the throbber animation

I've seen that some dude on here has the Netscape throbber (for Gen Z: that's what the animated doohickey in the corner that shows your page is still loading and your computer has not frozen is called) as his profile icon.

Maybe you've just summoned him up, Beetlejuice style.

Going from Netscape 1 to Netscape 2 which supported animated gifs. What a day that was!

"We hates the AOL!"

Yep - me too. I had to go to our "mainframe room" where we had our only Sun workstation - the only thing that would run the first versions.

Yes, if all had been perfect it should have only taken about an hour but dialup internet was ditzy and unreliable so I spent a huge chunk of that weekend getting a full download.