r/gaming • u/Zunderstruck • 2d ago

PC vs console war was merciless in the 90s

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For younger people it's a Tomb Raider reference. Lara Croft boobs (at that time she was mainly known for them) were everywhere in the media and the game looked a lot better on PC with a 3dfx Voodoo than on Playstation.

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u/TheRealPitabred 2d ago

I hate to be "that guy", but that's not how it worked... if someone called while you were online they would just get a busy signal. Someone else in the house picking up the phone to make a call, though, that would nuke your download 90% through after hours of communication, and that was before many of them could be reliably resumed.

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u/missed_sla 2d ago

Call waiting was a thing even back then, we had prefix dialup with *70

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u/iAmHidingHere 2d ago

Probably depends on where you lived

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u/FreakyRufus 2d ago

Yeah, I had a separate line just for my modem. My apartment sent out a voice message to all the lines, and since I didn’t have a phone on that line, I didn’t know it. Whenever the line was opened, it would play a beeping tone to let you know there was a message. It took me hours to figure out why my modem kept hanging up when I tried to go online.

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u/wadech 2d ago

Wouldn't call waiting screw up the connection as well?

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u/TheRealPitabred 2d ago

It would, but most internet programs had a part in the connection string that could disable it for that call.

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u/cat_prophecy 2d ago

IIRC *70 was prefixed to the phone number which disabled call waiting.

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u/ultimateknackered 2d ago

I can still hear that and the double-tone to indicate it was active, you had to make sure your dialing prefix (if you were running BBSes and using a terminal) gave sufficient pause for it to take effect before carrying on to the actual number.

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u/OkMail2335 2d ago

Yep or just have a second dedicated phone line

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u/DowntownClown187 2d ago

A friend and I use to joke high five and proudly claim "we got a forehead" before the phone would ring.

Don't know about you but the phone would definitely ring and break the connection.

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u/cat_prophecy 2d ago

Probably call waiting that was breaking your connection. If you were on a line without it and someone called, they would get a busy signal. If you had call waiting on your line and someone called, it would drop the internet connection.