this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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Enthusiasts bond twelve 56K modems together to set dial-up broadband records — a dozen screeching boxes achieve record 668 kbps download speeds | Tom's Hardware (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 2 months ago by Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world to c/hardware@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/post/504934

Original YT Video | The Serial Port

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[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 33 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

One thing I do not get happy nostalgic vibes from is dialup. I like 90s games (and play some to this day), I've been meaning to get a Windows 98SE box (it's not easy finding good components), I even like the mid 90s UI style (think Win 3.11, Win95) more than Frutiger Aero which seems to be having a retro resurgence.

But I do not miss anything about dialup, the experience was terrible.

It's like with VHS. Adding VHS styling to a FHD video is cool, now try watching a VHSRip (as a fan of 80s/90s b-movies, there are a few niche releases that are only available on VHS), the quality is terrible.

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Once upon a time I used a phone line in a camping ground put in by a new company called Sprint. For the short time we used it, we had a solid 53333 bits/sec, which is perfect 56k because of technical reasons. It was glorious. Still not cable, but at the time it was something else from having grown up with 300/1200 baud in the past, being able to read the text as it came in.

[–] tal@olio.cafe 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Totally spoils those nice scrolling ANSI banners that BBSes used where it wss intended that the line speed would regulate the unveiling of the art. :-)

[–] Rhaedas@fedia.io 3 points 2 months ago

YES. Loved my little Enterprise warping in image built from Commodore PET characters for my BBS signature.

[–] qupada@fedia.io 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

This video made me wonder what is the most PCI slots ever found in a single system.

During the dialup era, the most reliable modem I ever used was the 3Com 3CP5610A, which to be fair is probably much the same hardware as in these external models (just packed onto a PCI card).

It's just an awful lot harder to cram a dozen into a single PC when it's one modem per PCI slot.

(It was a great modem because it appeared to the system as a hardware serial port, so was 100% Linux compatible without crazy driver hacks unlike most "winmodem" devices of the day)

[–] grue@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

PCIe 1x -> 4 serial port cards exist. Multilane PCIe slots can be bifurcated to the point that, in theory, you could have as many cards as the CPU had PCIe lanes. The biggest number I've seen for number of PCIe lanes in one system is 256 (in a dual-socket Epyc server), which means it could theoretically support 1024 serial modems and a connection speed of 57 Mbps.

The practical limit is gonna be a lot lower though, because the biggest actual motherboard I've found had 3 PCIe 16x slots, 2 PCIe 8x slots, 1 M.2 (x4) slot, 5 SlimSAS (U.2 x4) ports, 1 external serial port and 1 internal serial header, for a total of 88 accessible PCIe lanes and thus 162 modems. That would equate to 9 Mbps of bandwidth.

[–] qupada@fedia.io 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Per the video though, the problem clearly is Windows' ability to enumerate the serial devices and assign COM* port numbers to them. Linux might do a bit better there, although looking at my Ubuntu systems the hard-coded maximum serial port count is 64 (adjustable by recompiling the kernel, at least).

In any case, that is only an attempt (as they say themselves) to maintain period accuracy. If you ignore that, you'd probably have a much easier time with USB modems connected to either a bunch of hubs, or a handful of multi-port PCI(e) USB cards.

Also - and we are getting extremely off-topic here - individual Epyc CPUs allow 128 PCIe lanes, but 48 or 64 are used for the inter-socket link in a 2S system, leaving a maximum 128 or 160 available as external connectivity. A moot point anyway as PCIe switches exist, and can be found in all manner of hilarious expansion chassis that could allow hundreds of PCIe cards even on a desktop system: https://shop.bressner.de/en/products/hpc-solutions/gpu-computers/gpu-expansions/gen5-4u-pro-16-slot/

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Hey! I used to work for the company that makes that expansion system, One Stop Systems. :)

[–] PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I remember in the good old bad old days of the UK, British Telecom launched their Home Highway services which was primarily their ISDN service. They did however have a form of bonded dial-up (usually two lines, but theoretically could support more) which cost a fucking fortune - usually two lots of line rentals; two lots of ISP service packages; and a fuck you fee for wanting to bond them.

Outside of real niche use cases like contingency lines or short term medium and requirements, I don't think it saw great popularity - particularly when ISDN was expensive but comparatively cheaper.

668kbps though, fuck me. That would have been mindblowing at the turn of the century.

[–] tal@olio.cafe 7 points 2 months ago (3 children)

At about 12:33, it looks like they're plugging expansion cards into a motherboard that still has power, as there's what appears to be an LED on on the motherboard. It's possible that this motherboard doesn't power the PCI slots in that state, but man, I would not be plugging any expansion cards into a motherboard without the PSU powered off.

[–] CabbageRelish@midwest.social 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

It has been quite a while so I’m fuzzy on it, but I had a board with a status LED and it would stay on for a bit as the capacitors drained? Generally a good thing to watch when you wanted to properly pull power from it for whatever reason though, especially with how often I was thoroughly crashing it and then resetting things with my overclocks. :P

[–] tal@olio.cafe 1 points 2 months ago

and it would stay on for a bit as the capacitors drained?

Yeah, I've had that too, but I don't think that that's likely what's going on there, if they fully shut the thing down, flipped the PSU switch off, and then started filming the card being inserted. LIke, it was maybe a couple of seconds at most. And honestly, I'd probably still want to avoid plugging stuff into a board while that is on, since I don't know what other stuff also might be powered up on the motherboard. :-/

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Perhaps the LED stays on without PSU power (CMOS battery status LED)?

This is a relatively big channel. It's unlikely they they would make such a mistake.

[–] tal@olio.cafe 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I guess anything is possible, but I don't think I've ever seen a CMOS battery light, though I've seen a lot of motherboards with an LED to indicate that they're getting power from the PSU. I'm pretty sure that you'd burn through a CMOS battery pretty quickly if you just left an LED always on powered off it.

[–] Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

I've also never seen a CMOS battery LED, that was a random though.

I just don't the idea of them messing around the with PC with the PSU on a bit shocking.

[–] x00z@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I once dropped a screw into a running PC and it shorted. Sparks and all. I just turned it back on again and it was fine.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

What stopped them from going over 12? Some sort of Windows limitation?

[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 months ago

From the video: lack of non-conflicting serial ports.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Probably couldn't find a telecom willing to bother with that many POTS landlines.

[–] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

The video shows that they are their own telco. In addition to the modems, they’re also running the upstream equipment.

[–] Confused_Emus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago

From what I gather from watching the video, 12 is just the number of functional modems they had on hand.

[–] Eat_Your_Paisley@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

That's fucking awesome

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