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I'm really loving how Mastodon has become a refuge for all the grizzled seafarers on the ocean of the internet. They pop up in my feed and their bios all say something like
"I've been online for longer than the internet. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. 56k modems on fire in the light of Usenet. I watched IRC forks glitter in the dark near the Gateway 3000. All those moments will be lost in slop, like tears in rain. Time to deshittify."
<fake Yorkshire accent>
56k modem? Luxury! When I were a lad ...
@TheLancashireman Yeah, I've already had a mate saying "Pah! 2800 baud rate was all we had".
I'm not actually sure how fast(slow) my first connection was, because after I finished my MA in 1991 I was offline for about 8 years and missed all the very slow bits!
@Janeishly @TheLancashireman I started at 300 baud. I can still picture the Tandy/Radio Shack modem.
@leobm@norden.social@shawnhooper @Janeishly @TheLancashireman I had this here as my first device to the online world.
But even had the authorization of the German Federal Post Office (at that time also called the yellow plague)
300baud on #c64
the story behind my regular mailbox (bbs), which I visited regularly at the beginning:
https://tecs.de/box/geschichte.html
@leobm @shawnhooper @Janeishly @TheLancashireman
I used to have one that looked just like that. Still mad at myself for not hanging on to it. Don't even remember where it went :(
@mavu Unfortunately, I no longer have the device either. 
After that I had a 2400 modem (I can't remember the brand) and then a Zyxel 19200 model, which I still have in the cellar. I also used it to run a mailbox myself for a few years. First Amiga then on a 386sx 16 MHz and 40 MB HD 
@mavu
As a teenager, I spent a really long time delivering newspapers to be able to afford the 40mb hard disk (if I remember correctly)
But 40Mb was huge at the time, I didn't even get it full.
@leobm@norden.social @mavu@mastodon.social I bought my first 20mb HD for my Atari 1040ST for 998,- DM, damn, that was expensive. The same for my first colour printer and later for 16mb RAM for the 386sx! Must have been around the time SuSE Linux 4.2 came on the market. The connectivity to mailboxes (FIDO) was similar, first 300 baud coupler, then 1200 and 2400 modem, then 19200 Zyxel or US Robotics. 
@leobm@norden.social @mavu@mastodon.social
I had the Megafile 20 or SH205. It had a SCSI-to-MFM/RLL controller from Adaptec as a circuit board in a pizza box housing, matching the optics of the 1040.
