I'm so old that I built my first modem out of scrap parts from an electronics dump. I used it in combination with my Commodore-64 to get access to BBS systems - internet access was a thing of the future - at the blazing speed of 300 bits per second/300 baud. Yes, here bits per second and baud are identical because those modems did not do anything fancy like QAM to push more than one bit into a state transition, it was beep-high or boop-low and that's it. Initially I had to dial the phone number using the rotary dial phone, wait for the beep on the other side, then switch the modem onto the line. I later built a pulse dialling circuit so I could automate this chore and go 'war-dialing'.
The computer at school was a Philips P2500, sturdy as a brick and about as dumb. It video circuitry was based around a Teletext chip so it could not do anything interesting. It did have floppy drives where my C-64 made do with a 'Datasette' (a cassette player chugging along at about the same speed as the 300 baud modem).
Then I went to university where I met the PDP-11 and VAXen. Tried to produce a book using RUNOFF [1] but gave up after getting bored of waiting for the terminal to respond, instead using a system comprised of an IBM Selectric connected to a box with a cassette player in it which recorded what was typed and could regurgitate it line by line or character by character. A stack of tapes later the book was typed in upon which we needed to print it out to paste the output on stand sheets so of course the motor in the Selectric broke down. I managed to source another motor and eventually got the device running again after fighting the furiously complex mechanism for a weekend or so - realigning the thing so the correct letters appeared in-line without documentation was, let's just say, an interesting puzzle.
University is also where I got on the 'net, it is where I started off in forestry (it was an agricultural university) but ended up in IT.
The computer at school was a Philips P2500, sturdy as a brick and about as dumb. It video circuitry was based around a Teletext chip so it could not do anything interesting. It did have floppy drives where my C-64 made do with a 'Datasette' (a cassette player chugging along at about the same speed as the 300 baud modem).
I build an analogue synthesizer based on plans published in the 'Elektor' magazine. It was monophonic and only had a single VCO (oscillator) but I wanted polyphony. I therefore changed the keyboard circuitry to add an interface to the C-64 to which I connected it using a thick cable with two D-25 plugs on each side. With the keyboard on a guitar strap around my neck, the C-64 in an attaché case on the floor running a synth program I could play it live.
Then I went to university where I met the PDP-11 and VAXen. Tried to produce a book using RUNOFF [1] but gave up after getting bored of waiting for the terminal to respond, instead using a system comprised of an IBM Selectric connected to a box with a cassette player in it which recorded what was typed and could regurgitate it line by line or character by character. A stack of tapes later the book was typed in upon which we needed to print it out to paste the output on stand sheets so of course the motor in the Selectric broke down. I managed to source another motor and eventually got the device running again after fighting the furiously complex mechanism for a weekend or so - realigning the thing so the correct letters appeared in-line without documentation was, let's just say, an interesting puzzle.
University is also where I got on the 'net, it is where I started off in forestry (it was an agricultural university) but ended up in IT.
[1] https://www.osti.gov/biblio/5968126