Or you got into carding so you could be a courier...

US Robotics was the Cadillac of modems back in the day, that's for sure. I never had one, but Zoom gave you pretty nice bang for your buck.

I still have my USR Courier :)

It would be fun to test if it would still work but I have no landline anymore and I'm not sure where to dial too.

There are still BBSes running with dialup lines. See https://www.telnetbbsguide.com/connection/dial-up/

My USR Courier and solid ISP would allow me to rock a 185 ping in Quake 1. So many fond memories of those devices.

Zoom was my go-to brand. They were decently well built and inexpensive.

I think the first US Robotics product I bought was a Palm Pilot.

Firmware upgradeable 33.6k "Sportster" with the promise of a rebate on the front of the box.... no actual rebate coupon IN the box... and it's not like any of my friends actually received their rebates anyway.

Trying to get that thing to run on Linux via LinModem was fun.

And let me tell you, Redhat 6 did not like the Winmodem

If I recall correctly, wasn't that because WinModem was a software modem whereas USR modems were hardware modems? The WinModems were a glorified single chip on a board (analog <-> digital converter), with all the actual work being in the Windows Drivers.

Which on modern computers wouldn't be a big deal (see modern onboard sound) but back then a slower computer actually could mean slower data rates.

There was a way to get the winmodems working on Linux. Lots of fun with configuring obscure drivers, I/O base address, DMA channels, etc. https://tldp.org/HOWTO/pdf/Winmodems-and-Linux-HOWTO.pdf

I recall the big transition from 2400 to 9600, and as a teenager I couldn’t afford any of the modems. But then IIRC CompuCom came along with a much more affordable 9600 modem, with the catch that it could only talk to other CompuComs, which my local BBS offered special numbers for. I can tell you going from 2400 to 9600 was massively beneficial, much like my first “broadband” experience. Every bump since then has been marginal improvement, really.

Before internet smart people went for Supra modems, performance at a budget.

History of Supra Corporation from Japanese perspective https://ascii-jp.translate.goog/elem/000/001/425/1425488/?_x...

Thank you for that Link. Supra FaxModem v32bis was what got me into BBS scene back in the early 90s

I guess the Rockwell chipset based would be "middle class". But what about Zyxel?

In Europe, Zyxel was top of the line at the time, Elite class.

I had a Zoom external 56k. My internal 14.4 went kaputski and to replace it I went external because by that time, all the internal modems were WinModems and I had Linux.

My firs modem was an Atari 835 300 baud modem, but the second was a Zoom 300baud, in a smoked black transparent case. I loved that thing.

I’m surprised I’ve gotten this far and no one has mentioned the 16550 UART requirement for external modems above 9600.

Mine was USR, 14400, 28800, 33600 then finally 56k. We didn't have money, Dad just ran the IT department

How much did a USR 56k cost back then?

For me? Same as a copy of windows, office, visual basic 3, etc -- £0.00

No idea what the company paid for it

$100~ USD

Just until 3Com actually bought USR. A friend of mine helped the USR founder with his taxes from that deal.