How I long for the past, when things like email were so much simpler and took less time. Not really, some things DO get better as we fumble and bumble along!

Whoa, memories. I grew up with rotary phones like that and "party" lines. Pick up the phone and hear your neighbor down the road talking. "Oh, sorry William. I'll pick up again in a few minutes and see if the line is free."

Aw shucks, Daniel. You seem to be on top of everything...wait a second. Now I get the joke! Me slow on the uptake?

Ugh, memories. Dial-up was so cool. At least the handshake didn't take forever and a day when I started out. We had to start somewhere, thank goodness that those folks had infinite patience +++ plus!

Mo-DEM indeed. Betcha it had baud rates of data flow!

A pal used to work for the phone co. Little red plastic clips near the two storey tall switching machines were used to cut of someone's service for non payment. He'd remove a few at random to help "fight the power."

First email: CIX, via a 2400 baud modem my Dad had lying around, using an Amiga 500. The modem didn't use the Hayes AT instructions set but prefixed everything with GD, and some sometimes bizarre combinations of characters.

After first learning how to solder*, my 9 year old self finally (and with blistered fingers) managed to create a working serial cable, thereupon joining Amiga to modem and beginning a week-long task of working out how to get the bugger to reset, dial and hang up. Got connected, sent an email, gave up for a month until Watford Electronics ran a sale on 14k4 modems a couple of months later and my Dad bought two.

Sadly, it had a different form factor serial port, so I got busy with the soldering iron again.

* My Dad's school of teaching was, "I'll show you once, after that you're on your own. Here's the schematic. See ya."

You were a true pioneer, Kaitain. I'm such a newbie that I started with a 28.8k modem. But I did know how to solder. Soldering micro-components? No can do.

No soldering of micro-components involved! Just cables.

At that time, buying a factory-made serial cable would cost something of the order of £15, whereas buying enough parts for a dozen serial cables cost a fiver. Plus the Amiga had a 25 pin serial port, while PCs had long since standardised on 9 pin. So... quicker to make my own than to find somewhere that sold the right thing (in the pre-internet days of trawling magazines for small ads.)

And back then, 15 Quid was a lot of money!
Many three hundred plus conductor cable plugs were assembled in the shipyard by your's truly. A Resistance Soldering iron was needed. It was fun, nostalgically speaking.

Kaitain learned to solder when he was nine years old? Now THAT'S hard core!

That was part of the reason why I got taught - so I could put some of the stuff I broke back together again...

Wow, did you two guys even know that there were capacitors with a deadly charge in those tv beasts of old?