56k.rip brings back the 1996 dial-up internet, modem screech included
56k.rip – the 1996 dial-up internet experience
A retro website that recreates the dial-up internet experience of 1996, complete with the modem handshake and painfully slow page loads. Hacker News commenters found it fun and nostalgic, though one joked that the pages still load too fast, and another recalled the ripterm client and the Remote Imaging Protocol.
Cool, but webpages load too fast.
- jermaustin1
This is very similar to a project I'm working on called Sim95 [1]. It has an entire networking stack and visual basic style language. You can host your own websites, chat servers, anything you want, and everything runs over a virtual network (websocket that passes through a relay).
It has all the warts of the early internet era: you can program a virus, get people to download it, delete their documents, etc., but it also has a lot of the charm, build a website, chat with strangers, enjoy the lack of facebook (for now until someone builds it).
- cainxinth
I was a high schooler working at CompUSA when 56K modems were first available and it was a sensation. They were flying off the shelves. I still had a 28.8 modem at home at the time.
- h4kunamata
Like others mentioned, the intention is great but too much AI.
The icons do not even look remotely close to the dial-up computers.
When it disconnects, the reconnection sound is not that at all.
Pages load too fast.
- waldopat
Love the detail of getting kicked off the internet because someone picked up the phone.
Back when I was 12, I installed linux on an old 386 to set up a little server. I remember writing the connection script to get on the internet. I still wonder how I learned to do that. Still a mystery! But those were the days when you just figured things out.
- krunck
Sadly, the same amount of knowledge was conveyed by a 56k modem in a 5 second page load as a 1GBps instant web page load today.
- 101008
Amazing. When we were all living offline by default, and you had to go online. Now sadly it's the opposite.
(When did this change? Around 2012?)
- artyom
Lovely. 16MB of RAM in the 90s? That's luxury.
And that dial-up sound always takes me back to happier times. Not unlike normal people's childhood songs.
- KellyCriterion
Love it how short the startmenu & its entries were back then!
Today, startmenu is showing me Xbox & videos on a MS server installation.