The ‘90s Internet: When 20 hours online triggered an email from my ISP’s president::1998 plea for restraint reveals a lost world where the 'Net was an opt-in experience.

  • @[email protected]
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    4411 months ago

    Anyone remember download accelerator plus? I’d download stuff at night while everyone was asleep, then pause DAP/disconnect from the Internet in the morning. Rinse and repeat.

    • @[email protected]
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      2111 months ago

      My god yes! I remember downloading the Soldier of Fortune demo over the course of a month. 95 megabytes over a 28.8k connection.

    • @cheezoid2
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      1511 months ago

      GetRight was a godsend too

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      You’ve unlocked some deeply buried memory there.

      I remember I used that not so much to “accelerate” downloads but mostly because it let me download stuff in multiple sessions, instead of trying to do it in my browser and lose everything because of a lost connection.

      Hours to download a few MB, interesting times.

    • @[email protected]
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      511 months ago

      I remember the anxiety of downloading the Quake demo the afternoon it was released. My mother is a notorious phone talker, so I guarded the handset like a hawk and prayed to God that no one called. By some miracle it completed after a an hour or two. 1.1 mb I believe it was.