There was a period of time where you had a 14.4k modem and a sound blaster and it was peak PC.

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TheJokersWild53@reddit

Someone picked up the phone and you lost your connection

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Cross_22@reddit

It was blazing fast compared to my earlier 1200bps modem. The SB was an okay upgrade, but hearing the AdLib card after years of beeps was a jaw-dropping experience.

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Aronacus@reddit

Buddy had a Roland setup. You can find youtube videos today of old Sierra games played with a Roland MT32 it sounds like you have a private synth band

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My job in college was as a lead support engineer at Creative Labs (Soundblaster, video blaster, etc). I worked in the "top" department which was video. The entry level support did sound cards, but the video cards department also handled high end sound card work with MIDI musicians, sound production engineers, etc.

It was a fun job. Did it for junior and senior year of college.

Better than slinging pizza for sure and set me up for a lifelong career in IT engineering.

We had the Soundblaster AWE32 card (you could get a daughter card for your SB16 as well to make it an AWE).

Creative Labs (Soundblaster), Roland, and Turtle Beach where the big boys of the sound card market in that era (mid nineties).

People have typically forgotten, but back then you had to have a sound card to use a new fangled "CDROM" in your computer.

I was there for the introduction of "plug and play" (we called it "hug and pray"), Windows95 disks exploding because they where designed for single speed RPM CDROMs and people started getting 4x and 8x CDROMs. The Win95 original CDs only had paint on half the CD because it looked cool. Turns out that's a bad thing when RPMs get high enough.

Fun times.

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Aronacus@reddit

That was when I started learning computers around 1991 My dad junked our C64 and we got a 486 SX 66mhz with 4MB of ram.

The CDROM was such a huge step up though from the floppy. I had a buddy do the 35 or so floppy install of Windows.

Windows 3.1 being 6 floppies was alot but 95 being 35 that was NUTS.

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Remote-Car-5305@reddit

I dreamed of getting a Roland

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Cross_22@reddit

They always mentioned them in game magazines but I don't think I have ever seen an MT-32 in a store.

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Remote-Car-5305@reddit

I swear the first time I heard a MIDI track on Roland it was magical. All that polyphony and real instrument samples…

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65-535@reddit

Yup. I had a 1200 bps too. Using hyper terminal.

Omg hyper link protocol lets you upload AND download. lol

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User8675309021069@reddit

Sound blaster took me back. But you absolutely doubled down with the AdLib.

Does anyone know where I can play me some Tradewars?

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313Wolverine@reddit

Galactic Empire for me.

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Cross_22@reddit

At tradewars.com of course.

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redoctoberz@reddit

I always like to show people this to see how life used to be in the stone ages: https://youtu.be/a324ykKV-7Y?si=Dj-gXObFl_zXJGIA

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VitalArtifice@reddit

I still vividly remember booting up Prince of Persia and listening to that beautiful intro theme as my first AdLib experience.

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FaithlessnessThin359@reddit

had a friend whose dad worked in the entertainment industry doing “computer stuff”. he had a t1 line to the house. I had never seen boobies load so fast in my entire life.

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Electrical-Bacon-81@reddit

I remember when a T1 line was a dream of maximum speed. Lol, its like 150kbps. I also remember when I got my first DSL line at 1.5mbps & it was like I morphed into unimaginable futuristic speeds.

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bio4m@reddit

Those were so expensive! Had one in my office back in 2002 and it was $600 a month

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BillyDMountain@reddit

Hell, I'm still using my Sound Blaster external 5.1 soundcard, the thing's been a tank.

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RolandMT32@reddit

If it's external, how is it a card?

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mutedagain@reddit

They make modern ones, I think I'm going to get one on my next build. If prices ever lower 😂

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modulus801@reddit

I added one to my latest build and it still has the occasional pop on shutdown.

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BillyDMountain@reddit

Mine did that on my old beater of laptop, so far its been better on the one I have now.

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Bartholomeuske@reddit

How to they compare to the onboard chip of a modern board ?

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Cinderhazed15@reddit

Soundblaster AWE32? That thing was almost as big as my motherboard

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BillyDMountain@reddit

I have the THX X-Fi one.

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Weird-Ninja8827@reddit

And that set of little speakers and the slightly bigger box that was "the subwoofer". Playing Thief in surrounds sound? Peak.

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bowleggedgrump@reddit

Me and my friends huddled around our comp and staring at limewire and GOING APESHIT if we got a sustained 10k dl speed

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photogdog@reddit

I remember downloading mp3s and hitting a 5KB/sec download speed felt absolutely insane.

Now I get annoyed when YouTube music takes a half second to buffer.

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oliyoung@reddit

Leaving a CD overnight to rip too

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Cool_Dark_Place@reddit

And don't touch the mouse, or it'll make a skip on the CD

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saadakhtar@reddit

Don't remember CDs ripping overnight. Earlier drives were 2x/4x but still wouldn't take all night. Do you mean ripping and encoding to MP3? Even that won't take all night for 1 CD.

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oliyoung@reddit

Ripping & Encoding, and I remember it taking 3-4 hours at the start, so not "overnight" but I'd leave it to run

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unbanned_lol@reddit

2.4k actually. On the family computer.

Then I mowed lawns, built myself a k6 ii with a voodoo 3 and a sound blaster. And I owned Tribes and quake all day long.

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Low-Instruction8353@reddit

14.4k was a game changer for M.U.D.ding.

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bascule@reddit

I remember my first over-the-modem Doom deathmatch with a friend circa 1994 or so. High technology at the time. Then I’d discover the Internet and Kali and start playing games like Descent and Command and Conquer online over the modem. Then 1996 or so QuakeWorld dropped and blew everything else out of the water when it came to online play

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Kidkrid@reddit

Mate, I even had a maths coprocessor...

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Nonsenseinabag@reddit

For a brief shining moment my family had the best computer of the computer kids at our school. 386 DX33, math coprocessor, 8MB of RAM, 100MB hard drive, and a 14.4 modem when hardly any BBS had one. Then everyone but me upgraded to a 486, lol.

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saadakhtar@reddit

486DX2 SUPREMACY!

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PoisonMind@reddit

Get yourself a Voodoo2 graphics accelerator card, and you're set to play GL Quake.

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Logical-Cherry9395@reddit

Odd. I've always had 56K or better and I'm an older Xennial.

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rotorocker@reddit

I was so jealous and used to ride my bike 1.5 miles uphill (it was a development in process) to use ISDN and bitched to my parents why we only had 56k when they had double. Looking back at the costs, ISDN was a ripoff of hell. Also way back home was gliding hehe

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MCA2142@reddit

SB 16:

Port 220

IRQ 5

DMA 1

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RoidVanDam@reddit

Your comment reminds me of something. Back in about '95, my dad noticed that every commercial started directing people to the company's website by fully reading the web address out loud, "h t t p colon slash slash double-U double-U double-U dot whatever dot com". He wanted to shorten it by not spelling out "www", replacing it with "thrubba-U" instead. We don't really spell that out anymore but I like his solution.

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SunshineInDetroit@reddit

a soundblaster card still sounds a ton better than some DAC now.

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Man_in_a_chair@reddit

4gb of ram and a heavily overclocked amd opteron

Sli and ccfls

Giant chieftec case and neon green watercooling

p.e.a.k. 👌

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MLDaffy@reddit

Had a 14.4 and finally was able to save up for a 28.8 when 33 were out Not long after that 56k came out and I got made fun of by friends for it. Where we lived even if you had 56 you still only connected at 28.6-33.6 so jokes on them 😂

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night-swimming704@reddit

I was the oldest child and neither of my parents were tech inclined at all. But they got me a computer so I could stay ahead of the curve. Man, I was so fucking lost starting out. None of the terminology made any sense, I had no clue what any of the DOS commands were for, and there was no google to reference. But I sure did learn fast and was always on the bleeding edge of computer tech as I got more and more knowledgeable on the subject.

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hyjnx@reddit

ATi All-in-wonder card!!!! watching coax tv on my computer....that shit was peak for me! and had the sound outputs hooked up to my Aiwa Shelf system!

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AppliedCarbon@reddit

It still peak

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LonghornJct08@reddit

Don’t forget the 2x CD-ROM!

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UndisturbedInquiry@reddit

Miss those days. Technology was still something I could turn off.

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Ok_Program5748@reddit

What do you mean there was a time period when…?

Did I miss something?

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Pleasant_Expert_1990@reddit

I distinctly remember buying my first 28.8 modem

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relikter@reddit

Did you also have a Monster 3DFX graphics card?

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Yrch1@reddit

Tnt2

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TheMagicalSquirrel@reddit

Dual SLI with a 20” Sony Trinitron …. heavy bastard lugging that to LAN parties but Q2 life as a railgunner high on Jolt was worth it.

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oliyoung@reddit

Look at Mr Moneybags over here

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dl_mj12@reddit

Playing Quake over dialup with my Voodoo Banshee was peak

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barktwiggs@reddit

Some of us had the Pro Audio Spectrum and a 19.2k modem!

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cropguru357@reddit

Turtle Beach was fancy back then, too

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FoppyRETURNS@reddit

Yes it was.

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Dildo_Shw4ggins@reddit

My first PC was a used 386 with an after-market 1x CD-ROM drive lol. Also had a 14.4 modem that I used to log on to local BBSs.

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orthomonas@reddit

My sound card worked perfectly.

It didn't get any better than that .

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MaruSoto@reddit

We measure connection speed in Baud in this house!

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chronicnerv@reddit

I am waiting for it all to come back around. First, it was my Spectrum 128K loading games, then the modem in the late 90s with one house phone.

I would not be surprised if computers in the future start using light and sound to process information, repeating the cycle. I will probably be long gone before we get to that point.

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ohmbrew@reddit

"I am Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you. Please say what is on your mind freely. So, tell me about your problems."

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this_knee@reddit

Speak for yourself. I had 56k modem and Diamond Monster Sound MX300, and A3D compatible stereo speakers. That was peak

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trichotomy00@reddit

And we had speakers! Gaming rigs have been headphones only for 20 years now. I guess because of voice chat.

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snow1868@reddit

I used to work for Creative back in mid 00s. Too bad they fell, they had some quality products.

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ken830@reddit

Started with no modem. Then a 300 baud. Then saved all summer for a 28.8kbps V.Fast (before V.34 ratification). I used to live in BBSes!

And remember back then, sound cards came with a 15-pin game port for your analog joystick!

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kombatminipig@reddit

Holy shit, core memory. And of course you plugged the joystick into the sound card, as of that remotely made sense.

Ah, my old trusty Thrustmaster.

I can’t believe my dad kept a straight face.

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ken830@reddit

Thrustmaster

OMG. This just hit me.

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stompy1@reddit

Listen to Ronald Jenkees- 56k. Pure gold.

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ET2-SW@reddit

What do you mean "had"? It's still in my basement on a shelf.

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Werftflammen@reddit

I had a whopping 1024 K of RAM when using HIMMEM.SYS from AUTOEXEC.BAT. I had a huuuuuuge 20Mb harddisk I wouldn't know how to fill, ever. So I thought.

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dominator5k@reddit

Original quake online multiplayer on a 14.4 modem was awesome.

+mlook

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Spare-Good-5372@reddit

I remember the commercials advertising how blaziny fast a 56k modem was. It was a grocery store and the 14.4 checkout clerk was just dragging ass.

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Far-Education5778@reddit

Take me back!

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oliyoung@reddit

If I close my eyes, I can still hear the modem handshaking

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Spartan04@reddit

Actually I never had a 14.4 modem. We started with a 2400 baud modem we bought for the family computer (a Mac LC, so no separate sound card). Took long enough to upgrade the next modem was a 28.8. Next, and last, modem upgrade came when we replaced the computer in the late 90s and it came with an internal 56K modem.

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a_seventh_knot@reddit

my friend in hs had a 486 beast w/ a sound blaster and could play wolfenstien 3d w/ actual sounds rather than pc speaker.

i was so fucking jealous.

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