this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
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I'm intimately familiar with waiting for interlaced 4 colour gif images to load at 1200 bps.
Wow you were and early adopter. I remember my first modem being 14.4k and I was the first along the people I knew at the time. It was an external modem that plugged in the parallel port.
I ran a BBS back then too.
With some wild ascii art I hope.
Absolutely
Since that's so wildly unlikely, do you remember what the model was?
No way I remember that, tried google image and couldn't find it but found a lot of similar products.
I've run into a few of these at work in recent years actually. This is a 56k modem but given 14.4k is even slower, it is very likely.
US Robotics 1 020 0439-00 80-010955-01 56Kbps Courier Everything External Modem https://itinstock.com/us-robotics-10200439-00-80-010955-01-56kbps-courier-everything-external-modem-56878-p.asp
Couldn't open that, but web searches say rs232. Serial, not parallel, just like essentially all external modems.
I fixed the link. I hate that my phone browser defaults to the stupid Google analytic links. Need to find out if there's a setting to turn it off.
And you're likely correct. Any modem I used growing up were internal cards. As another commentator mentioned I likely confused the port type given it's size.
People may be confusing the connector type, the horrendous 25 pin DB thing, with the protocol.
cindy15.gif? 😏
Oh baby.