123
votes
Accepted
Why did modems have speakers?
Much of this has been covered by previous answers, but to try to summarize:
Adding a speaker was cheap and easy. The additional parts were standard, reliable, and inexpensive.
It provided rich, ...
- 2,826
110
votes
Accepted
What technological factors drove the rise of "high-speed" modems in the early 1990s?
Up to 9,600 baud it's just iterative application of fairly straightforward analogue-domain ideas as and when standards emerge. Then there's a significant improvement on the digital side that bumps to ...
- 36.9k
73
votes
Accepted
After creating HTML, why did Tim Berners-Lee bother creating HTTP? Why didn't he just write a HTML renderer for a FTP client?
The browser did, in fact, support retrieving pages over anonymous FTP from the beginning, and it also supported other protocols. But, some of the early documents mention additional features for ...
- 1,567
66
votes
Accepted
What warning was given on attempting to post to USENET, circa 1990?
The message was
This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire
civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of
dollars to send everywhere. ...
- 123k
64
votes
Why did modems have speakers?
Not all modems from back in the day had speakers, for example an early popular modem was the Hayes Micromodem II (available for Apple ][ and S-100 machines) and it did not have a speaker.
But the ...
- 16.3k
63
votes
Accepted
What did AOL use for pre-web GUI client?
AOL provided (and still provide) their own client, which — at least back then — was called “America Online”. This was available on a variety of platforms, including DOS:
(based on GeoWorks) and ...
- 123k
63
votes
What did AOL use for pre-web GUI client?
In addition to Stephen Kitt's answer, you can go back even further from Windows 3.1 to the Apple II version of America Online, circa 1989. Certainly not as popular or long-lived as the MS-DOS and ...
- 16.3k
60
votes
Accepted
Detect ancient web browser server-side to present appropriate HTML?
If you want server-side detection, you’d probably have to rely on the User-Agent sent by the browser.
A better approach would be to serve the safe HTML version of the site by default, and enrich it on ...
- 123k
59
votes
Accepted
When connecting to the Internet via Dial-Up, why did ISPs require a username/password to authenticate the session?
No, the identity of the customer couldn't be confirmed by the phone number alone, for a number of reasons:
Customers expected to be able to call in from different locations, using different ...
- 606
57
votes
Accepted
Why weren't audio decoders used to create a makeshift internet in the 70 and 80s?
Of course, people did use modems extensively for ad hoc networking at the time. You'd call up your friend and transfer a file. You'd call up the local BBS and chat and transfer files.
Your question ...
- 13.7k
57
votes
How can I visit HTTPS websites in old web browsers?
Forward proxy
It turned out that configuring my own forward HTTP proxy was actually really simple! Here's how I did it. First, I placed the following nginx configuration file in /etc/nginx/sites-...
- 1,016
54
votes
What was the design rationale behind multi-port and multiple connections (and back-connections) designs of the early protocols like NFS or FTP?
At least for FTP, the actual file transfer happened over a different connection to support a particular file transfer mode that isn't used much today. Suppose you have three machines, A, B, C, and you ...
- 6,999
46
votes
Accepted
When did HTTP start compressing text?
Compression of document bodies is negotiated between clients and servers (and proxies), using notably the Accept-Encoding header: the client indicates which compression algorithms it supports, and the ...
- 123k
40
votes
What were the major things that caused TCP/IP to become the internet standard protocol?
Back in the 1970's, there were essentially two candidates for a potential internet protocol suite: TCP/IP and ISO Open Systems Interconnection (OSI).
OSI was being designed by a consortium of ...
- 2,320
37
votes
How did the AOL software provide internet access to other applications running on Windows 95/98?
In the Windows 2 and Windows 3 days, Windows didn't ship with a means of connecting to the internet. Instead, Microsoft defined the Windows Sockets API for apps to use, and they allowed third-party ...
- 5,093
33
votes
How can I construct a dial-up network in my home, purely for the kicks?
A/the correct solution would be to set up some sort of small local PBX. In the spirit of retro you can probably score an analogue PBX for not very much money and the mechanical ones are arguably even ...
- 11.3k
32
votes
When TCP was first invented, was the initial sequence number required to be random?
The first standard specifying modern TCP is RFC793 from 1981 (with predecessors dating back to 1974), which says about initial sequence number selection:
To avoid confusion we must prevent segments ...
- 1,695
32
votes
Why did modems have speakers?
So why were modem speakers such a persistent feature, and "fixture" of the time?
Three basic reasons:
Adding a simple amplifier and a speaker is the most easy way to handle unexpected situations
In ...
- 223k
32
votes
Accepted
What led to the fall of shell accounts?
There were probably many reasons, but I can think of these:
Misuse/abuse. When I had shell access to systems (with my private TCP/IP provider, or later in uni) in the mid 1990's, there was a constant ...
- 1,579
30
votes
Accepted
Why does the default base64 encoding use forward slash /?
I'm not aware of a (published) rationale for the choice of '+' and '/' as encoding characters, as well as '=' for padding / end-of-message, and I strongly suspect there isn't one.
Base64 was designed ...
- 10.1k
29
votes
Accepted
Was ARPANET connecting mainframes or terminals?
Strictly speaking, ARPANET connected IMPs (Interface Message Processors), or similar pieces of equipment, but people thought of it as connecting mainframes or minicomputers and that’s what appears on ...
- 123k
29
votes
What led to the fall of shell accounts?
The two most significant reasons were:
Direct TCP/IP access via dialup SLIP and PPP protocols (and later via broadband connections to homes and offices) eliminated the need to access the Internet ...
- 956
28
votes
Latest web browser compatible with Windows 95 / 98
That latest web browser I am able to find is K-Meleon 74 Windows 9x Edition. It was created in 2014, when the Pale Moon engine (Goanna) was backported for Windows 2000. It requires KernelEx (and the ...
- 383
28
votes
Was the Stack Exchange "Happy April Fools" page fitting with the '90's code?
People have actually tried this. The answer is "No".
In particular, you may notice, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, an old-timey "Best viewed in Netscape 3.0" bug. It does not in fact work ...
- 1,479
27
votes
When IPv6 was designed were there any specific considerations for other planets?
The address space is only one (maybe the easiest to solve) problem you'd have when extending Internet protocols beyond earth, especially with a supposed pretty low number of projected extraterrestrial ...
- 35k
27
votes
Why was Wireplay "faster and more reliable" than dial-up Internet, since they both used the same hardware?
This article from British Telecom says Wireplay launched in June 1996 as a way to host multiplayer games over a closed dial-up network. This is why it was "non-Internet": All players were ...
- 3,783
27
votes
Why did they switch from phone numbers to IP addresses?
Phone numbers are no more related to IP addresses than USPS ZIP Codes are. I believe you are conflating these two concepts:
Phone numbers were, and still are, used to identify the endpoint of a ...
- 3,049
26
votes
Accepted
What was the equivalent of "America Online" (AOL) outside America?
In the UK, CompuServe, CIX, and Demon Internet were the most influential early ISPs, but there were plenty more, such as Dircon, Pipex and Freeserve.
Freeserve built by far the largest customer base,...
- 13.2k
26
votes
Latest web browser compatible with Windows 95 / 98
I have not tried any of these, not having a Windows 98 system, but a bit of research reveals:
Internet Explorer 6 SP1 was the last IE, in 2001.
Firefox 2 was the last Firefox in 2006.
Netscape 8 (...
- 13.2k
26
votes
Why weren't audio decoders used to create a makeshift internet in the 70 and 80s?
Much more than speed (typical ordinary user modems in the 1970s and even early 1980s were just 300 bps), the problem was long distance.
Many areas did not even have unlimited local calling at the ...
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible